When Leschi Neighbor brought us the news of the new taco truck at 23rd & Union, I assumed it was probably an itinerant thing. But we stopped by last night and found out that they’re planning on being there 7 days a week, from 11am to 9pm.

You can see from the picture of the menu below that it’s the menu is what you’d expect from a taco truck, all reasonably priced. We had three beef tacos for $3.50, and they were tasty, even after suffering a bumpy bike ride for a mile down 22nd Avenue.

They’re parked next to the ’76 station on the NW corner of the intersection.

Try them out and let us know what you think on their review page.

The attached information is for your consideration to nominate a deserving African American community member to be the 1^st recipient of the annual “R. Gil Kerlikowske Volunteer of The Year Award” presented by the Council. We have put in a lot of time and work to create a positive and proactive approach to recognizing caring and dedicated individuals who understand the need to build a quality of life for our communities and city in cooperation with our SPD.

 

The award will be presented at a banquet affair on June 10, 2010, at the African American Museum starting at 6:30pm.  The event will be by RSVP only, made by May 31, 2010, limited seating to 144 persons. We will have 4 finalists and one of them chosen to be the “2010” winner.  ALL NOMINATIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY MAY 29, 2010 and selections will be made from those applications received by that date.

 

Please mail your entry to: African American Community Advisory Council, PO Box 22794, Seattle, WA  98122

 

For more information or additional forms go to the following link: http://www.seattle.gov/police/programs/advisory/africanamerican/default.htm

 

Our general membership meeting is always the 3^rd Thursday of each month, so please mark it on your calendars, this months meeting is May 20^th @ SVI (Seattle Vocational Institute) 22^nd & S. Jackson, all meetings start at

 6:30pm – 8pm, come and get updated on our various activities for the community and SPD.

 

Mark the various times on your calendar!! 

 

Paul A. Bascomb

Seattle Neighborhood Group

I got a chance to check out some of the wine tastings at Wilridge‘s spring release party last night, including their first estate wine from their own vineyard in Eastern Washington.

The lineup of wines to taste:

Barrels and boxes stacked high:

There was a good crowd on hand both downstairs in the basement and upstairs at Bottlehouse:

The winery is always looking for volunteers to help with bottling and events – you can contact them at [email protected] if you’re interested in getting involved.

You are reading the last CDScanner for the month of May, 2010. Savor it:

If you’re looking for a holiday weekend activity that is compatible with our damp holiday-weekend weather, our friends at Central Cinema (longtime CDNews sponsors) are showing one of our all-time favorite movies: The Big Lebowski.

You can catch it at 7pm and 9:45pm tonight through next Wednesday.

And of course we’re also right in the middle of the SIFF schedule, with lots of showings within walking distance over on Capitol Hill. The SunBreak and Seattle Post Globe have great ongoing converage of the film festival.

It’s been almost a year since we got the scoop on the city’s Drug Market Initiative, which focused police resources and community involvement to clean up the open-air drug sales in the area around 23rd & Union. Dealers were identified, cases were built against them, and they were given a choice: get help and stop dealing, or go to jail for a long time. More than a dozen dealers took them up on their offer and left the streets.

For about six months afterwards the comments from community members were glowing. Residents could walk to the post office without wading through crowds of users and dealers. Nearby streets that were once occupied at all hours were suddenly quiet. 

But things began to take a turn last month, where residents at the East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition meeting reported seeing an increase in activity around 24th & Union. And based on reports from tonight’s EPCPC meeting, the situation has only worsened since then.

A resident on Spring Street near 24th said that traffic is way up on that street at all hours, with people hiding out and doing deals behind the bushes. Other neighbors confirmed the increase, including reports of new issues around the post office parking lot.

Police Lt. Sean O’Donnell says that they are “well aware of it, and there are issues being worked.” Residents confirmed that, saying that they’ve seen a frequent police presence in the area.

Bob Hood, the former Director of the criminal division in the Seattle Attorney’s Office, has been described as one of the prime forces in launching the DMI program last year. We spoke to him at the meeting tonight, and he said that temporary setbacks have been seen in other cities where DMI has been tried. “When you think about how these things have happened in the past, big sweeps come through, everything calms down, and then it’s time to go back into business as it has been before.”

He says that the key is to maintain a strong relationship between the community and police, with open communication from residents about what they’re seeing on the street. Citing new statistics that show that 50% of area residents call 911 to report drug crimes, Hood said that “we’ve seen a great improvement, but we still have a lot of work to do. To really make the impact, the police need to know about it when it happens.”

The Garfield Messenger recently published a feature chronicling the many delays, problems and miscommunications that have left the school with a building that is still under construction after four years of work.

Sitting in the Garfield counseling office, Ken Courtney points to spots of mud spattered on his window. “See this? This is left over from work they did two years ago. There are two switches in the counseling office that have never 

worked, and we can’t turn the lights off. I don’t believe Garfield will ever be finished,” he says.

The beginning of the next school year will mark Garfield’s second anniversary in the new building, yet construction is not yet complete. Random holes in the walls are still apparent, and the water fountains still run warm on occasion. Contractors can still be seen flitting around the school on a regular basis, and the list of teacher complaints with the building spans nine pages and hundreds of entries.

The rest of the article can be found at http://www.garfieldmessenger.com/focus/2010/05/21/the-never- and tells a tale of the mismanagement and communication failures seen throughout the project.

At today’s Regional Development and Sustainability meeting at City Hall, one of the council members announced an upcoming meeting on Transit’s replacement of the electric trolley buses. If you’re interested in the trolley replacement issue which has had some discussion here before, I urge you to attend this meeting. 

The meeting will be on Wednesday, June 16th at noon in the City Council Chambers. 

Today’s meeting was quite inspiring, with a speech by Van Jones and some great questions from members of our own Umojafest P.E.A.C.E. Center’s Got Green program.

Last fall we told you about Meg Diaz’s report on the Seattle School District budget and how her analysis showed that the district was spending much more on central administration that other comparable districts in the state.

This week a commenter reminded us that it needed follow-up, so we got the latest details from Diaz, who sent us the district’s formal response to her analysis (attached as a PDF above). 

The district’s finance team found that:

• They had been miscoding some expenses as being overhead when other districts assign those costs to classroom instruction. The biggest item was teacher coaching, which was 111 employees and $10.3 million
• Another 29 employees were incorrectly coded as supervisors
• Fixing the miscoding brought central administration costs to $33.4 million, or 6% of total expenses
• The statewide average for admin costs is 7% of expenses
• Central Administration costs have increased 1.6% in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1998

The district issued some new budgeting rules and now the teacher coaching costs are reported the same way as other districts. But Meg Diaz claims that the Seattle School’s budget for coaching is still high when compared to other large districts, saying in an email:

Districts like Lake Washington, Tacoma and Bellevue have a lower proportional coaching investment (adjusting for the size of the district compared to SPS)…

I’m not against coaching. There are numerous papers about its potential as a professional development strategy. However, I think that SPS has its priorities out of whack when it protects its professional development staff/spending ahead of the professionals working directly with children. Rebuilding a much-reduced professional development program would still be easier than recovering a couple of years of inadequate education in any individual student’s time in the system. I hope that made sense. If it didn’t, please ask for clarification.

Diaz’s updated analysis (also attached above) shows that a change in budgeting priorities could shift $4 million or more from coaching to things like reducing class sizes. In addition, she raises concerns that coaching expenses increased 8% in 2009-10, even while classroom spending declined by $2 million over the same period.

I’ve remarked before that an independent ice cream shop could really do well on 34th Ave – just look at the popularity of the sweet treats at Cupcake Royale.

In the meantime, the next best thing is to let Molly Moon know that your neighborhood (ahem, Central District, Madrona, Leschi…) would be the best place for the maiden voyage of the ice creamery’s new truck.

From her press release today, she’s clearly already considering Madrona an option:

Madrona? Maybe. West Seattle? It’s a possibility. Starting today, ice cream lovers, local foodies and everyone else in between are encouraged to Tweet @mollymoon or comment on Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream’s Facebook page with their suggestions for the Truck’s first route. Moon will post the Truck’s finalized schedule on her blog at mollymoonicecream.blogspot.com on Friday, June 4.

Salted caramel delivered to my street? Yes please.