Friends and Neighbors,  I suspect many of you have seen announcements through various list serves, the stories in our own CD News, and a piece on the Local page of the Sunday Times about the N’hood University.  As the N’hood U admin I’d like to encourage any and all who would like to offer a course to check out the blog, nhoodu.blogspot.com, send your offering to [email protected]

You don’t have to live in the Colman neighborhood to offer or take a class.  And please feel free to add to this thread if you’d like to discuss.

Here’s the format for advertising a class:

Name of Class

Instructor’s Name

Short Description

When: Starting date, frequency, end date if there is one

Where

Cost

Contact name, phone number, email

A short bio of the instructor, facilitator, host, whatever..

Yesterday county auditors gave a preliminary presentation to the King County Council about the opportunity for new efficiencies at Metro. You can get a full overview at the Seattle Times, but one item in particular caught my eye. The auditors claim that the county could save $8.7 million a year by converting trolley buses to diesel hybrids. Trolley buses are the electrically powered vehicles that connect to wires above the roadway.

We’ve got a lot of trolley bus routes in our neighborhood, including the #2, #3, #4, and #14. As someone who lives within earshot of the diesel #48 route, I can tell you that low noise is a big advantage of the trolley buses. And it could be in my head, but I’ve always felt like I’ve received a better quality of ride on the electric buses vs. their fossil fuel brethren.

Full details of the Metro performance audit won’t be available until later in the month. But I spoke briefly to Kymber Waltmunson today, one of the auditors, who said that the cost savings of diesel vs. trolley buses come down to three main categories: 

• The procurement costs are “significantly higher” for trolley buses. It’s not clear yet if that analysis includes replacing or reusing the electric motor that drives the buses. The new models put in use several years ago reused the motors from buses built in the 70s, saving significant funds.
• There’s costs associated with maintenance of the overhead infrastructure of wires that power the trolley buses
• $3.1 million in savings can be attributed to scheduling and operational flexibility of diesel vs. trolley buses. This is because the trolley buses can’t pass each other, can only turn around at certain points, etc.

Detailed figures on the cost savings of using cheap hydropower vs. diesel are not yet available. And the auditors make it clear that their analysis does not include social factors, such as the zero-emissions of electric vehicles, noise advantages, and other things that can’t be broken down to specific dollar amounts.

We’ll continue to track this issue and will dive into the details when the final report is made available. In the meantime, fans of trolley buses may want to make their feelings known to the King County Council ahead of time.

And three apples. And a plum.

To promote earth-friendly banking initiatives such as online banking and eStatements, Group Health Credit Union (GHCU) launched its Neighborhood Harvest campaign. Five immature fruit trees were distributed to the Credit Union’s five branch locations on September 1. After the campaign concludes at the end of September, GHCU is donating the trees to a community p-patch.

On October 3, the trees will make the journey to their permanent homes at the brand-new orchard planned for a strip of land at 29th Avenue South and South Dakota St.

The trees will be tended by the gardeners at the Dakota p-patch, and fruit from the trees will supplement tables in the community.

It’s a win-win-win: the Credit Union saves it members money by promoting the far cheaper and less wasteful eStatements and online banking; the community benefits from the trees and their fruit, and our environment wins as we use fewer resources and generate less waste.

The planting ceremony is tentatively scheduled for October 3 at 10 am. Please join us for the planting–all are welcome!

Clean Greens will be harvesting vegetables for the weekly market. There’s a lot of food in the field that needs to be picked so the neighborhood can enjoy this fresh produce at affordable prices. Help us keep this program sustainable for our community, and enjoy a morning in the beautiful Snoqualmie Valley.

Come on out to the farm to help with the bountiful harvest. We’ll meet at New Hope Baptist Church (116 21st Ave East) at 7am to head out to the farm. Feel free to join us later that morning at the farm if you can’t get to the church by 7am. The farm is located at 20121 West Snoqualmie River Road.

So we have some problematic neighbors. They’re druggie loaffers who rent a house and therefore take absolutely no pride in where they live. Garbage all over, home falling apart. Well today, a tent went up in the backyard. I know it’s early, but I get the feeling someone’s gonna be living back there. I’ll give in a couple of days to see what pans out, then I’m leaning on the city for a potential grievance. Anyone ever deal with anything like this before?

Central District News was the first neighborhood news blog in Seattle (maybe world?) that allowed anyone to participate and have their stories placed right on the front page of the site. All it takes is a quick sign-up and then you’ve got full access to report the news that’s important to you. Our editors take the best user content and promote it up to the front page.

One of the many things we’ve learned over the last 22 months is that there’s a lot more of you out there that would like to participate, but don’t have the time for a detailed story or are afraid of cluttering up the system with smaller issues.

So we’ve added a new feature: discussion forums. It’s a open space for you to post whatever you like (within a few rules), big or small, and have a conversation about it with your neighbors. And if something big, we can still promote it up to the front page.

You don’t have to have an account to reply to a forum, but only members can create new forum topics. So be sure and create your account if you don’t already have one. All it takes is an email address and a few minutes.

Check it out. Have a chat. Continue to build our local online community.

And remember that we’ve not multiple ways to participate on CDNews:

• Post an event to our community calendar
• Review local businesses in our directory
• Trade, buy and sell items and services in our classifieds
• Post news and community stories
• And you can always leave a comment against any of the above

Please join us at the next 12th Avenue Neighborhood Plan Stewardship Meeting on Tuesday, September 8th at 5:30pm at the new Seattle University Alumni and Admissions building at 824 12th Avenue (at Marion Street). Drinks and snacks will be provided!

We have a great agenda for the evening:

• Update on the James Court Park from Susanne Friedman, Parks Project Manager
• What’s happening with the First Hill-Capitol Hill Streetcar?
• 12th Avenue Street Furniture Project Update
• Capitol Hill Housing 12th & Jefferson Project Update
• Seattle University 12th & Cherry Project Update

Please join us! If you have questions or agenda suggestions, please contact Bill Zosel, Neighborhood Plan Steward, at [email protected].

Welcome to the CentralDistrictNews.com forums!  Here’s some simple rules:

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See our terms of service for all the details.

Here’s the Wednesday beat from the streets of Seattle’s East Precinct:

Last night’s story about Pony and their new deck that is sided with old street signs was a good reminder of something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. I’ve noticed more and more Central District street signs are being switched out and upgraded to the shiny new fiberglass models. It’s all part of the Bridging the Gap street repair levy we approved a couple of years ago.

Did you know you can buy the old aluminum signs from the city? They’ve got a full list of which signs are available, and if you see one you like, just go down to the city surplus warehouse at 3807 Second Ave. S (just south of the Spokane St. viaduct) and you can get them for $5-$10 each. But be patient if you see the ones on your block were recently switched out. The warehouse staff tells me that it takes a couple of months for the old signs to make their way from the transportation department to the surplus store. Call or email the warehouse if you have any questions.

Here at CDNews World HQ we recently got one with that matched the name of a family member and sent it back east. They loved it, and we’ll be going back through the list for Christmas gift ideas.