Thousands of people in Seattle celebrated Tuesday’s “Night Out Against Crime,” not realizing it could be the last one.
Neighbors at 70th and 28th celebrated their 18th annual block party.
Earlier this summer we wrote about the Seattle Police Crime Prevention Coordinators possibly losing their jobs next spring due to budget cuts. But the coordinators wouldn’t be the only victims to the cuts. “I think it is important for neighbors to know that the services we provide including block watch, community meetings, security consultations, personal safety and Night Out will be gone,” Diane Horswill, one of the north precinct Crime Prevention Coordinators tells our sister site MapleLeafLife.com.
You can read more about this on Maple Leaf Life.
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I don’t get it. Unless the people being fired are the same folks who review and grant street closure permits, there’s absolutely no reason these budget cuts would affect the ability of anyone to have a block party whenever they want. If you want to be part of some national movement, then when the first Tuesday of August rolls around next year, just apply for a permit and hold your party the same as you did this year. Or, if your neighborhood is seriously into togetherness, get together and pick a date of your own. Heck, why not block parties every couple months?
Neighborhood watch, security consultations and community meetings may need the help of a paid city staffer to coordinate, but applying for a freaking permit and pulling some lawn chairs into the street doesn’t seem that hard.
I agree…what EXACTLY do city staffers have to do with people walking out their front door with a plate of home made food to share? Are we supposed to be afraid because we don’t have someone to tell us it is okay to talk to neighbors? This seems like much ado about nothing.
I completely disagree with the comments above. If someone doesn’t organize this, it won’t happen. Of course it should, but it won’t.
Maybe if the city pulls the plug, some group will come forward and organize a night of block parties, maybe put up a nice little map of all the parties… some popular neighborhood blog, for instance….
I would be a lot better to have it on the weekend. Besides all i found out is i have some boring old neighbors, and neighbors with loud annoying kids. Fun Fun Fun. LOL
McGinn’s only rewarded constituencies are apparently rabid cyclists and criminals.
+1 bark more
Bark More, you forgot his Number One:
The professional bums.
Note that the city just gave SHARE (the professional advocates for permanent homelessness as a legitimate lifestyle choice that must be subsidized by the taxpayers) another handout yesterday – on top of what they’ve been given previously in this budget cycle – they were demanding extra. This while the city runs out of money for less important things.
gurple- seriously, you don’t need anything from the city to have a block party. The very fact that we (taxpayers) are footing the bill for this is a travesty and an absurdity.
We used to just get some barracades on each end and everyone would bring some food and beer. Is that hard to “organize”? If the city has to organize it is it really a block party?
Try it, it isn’t hard.
Don’t worry. No one will be around next year to enforce us if we barricade our roads without permits.
Gee, maybe if the city wasn’t forced to defend itself from unnecessary lawsuits and appeals by wealthy fourth-generation Ballard business owners like Warren Aakervik, the “little people” in Ballard could get a little help from city hall throwing their block parties.
We have Ballard Oil and the Ballard Chamber of Commerce to thank for wasting our tax dollars.
The owners of this blog are members of the Chamber. How ironic to see them write about funds for positive neighborhood projects running out. They are part of the reason why!!
McGinn is doing a great job as mayor.
He is working hard to save us all hundreds of millions of dollars when the five billion dollar tunnel inevitably gets screwed up.
“He is working hard to save us all hundreds of millions of dollars when the five billion dollar tunnel inevitably gets screwed up.”
Oh that’s right, and with McGinn, Seattle’s port economy will start using fairies to ship the billions of dollars of trade flowing in and out of the city.
Yes, too bad Republicans aren’t in charge of the economy anymore. I heard they work wonders.
McGinn is kicking ass.
This yellow dog Democrat thinks McGinn is an ass.
Seattle is the 10th largest manufacturing economy in the country yet the mayor has no one on his staff to work with the many businesses manufacturing goods in Seattle. But at least one to advise him on bicycle issues.
In favor of what McGinn’s doing? Spend the next 24 hours consuming things made within 10 blocks of your house. No fresh produce, even whats at Top Banana was trucked in from somewhere south of the Ballard Bridge, no milk, Smith Brothers drives in to the hood to deliver,
believe it or not the roads are there for more than millionaires driving to play golf tht’s how everything in your house got there.
+1 gts
I think my IQ dropped about 50 points reading gts206’s comment.
If that’s the level of discourse on this site I am out of here.
But thank you for the clarification on roads. That was pretty damn enlightening.
The piggish, less educated American middle class has no idea how uncompetitive they have become in the world economy and that’s one of the greatest challenges facing progressive politicians like McGinn.
No fresh produce, even! And no milk? You don’t say!!
Kind of skeptical that the coordinators are making the statement that it may be the last night out due to the coordinators losing their job.
GTS, Bark More, you do realize that once this tunnel goes massively over budget and Seattle is stuck with the bill that we’re screwed? We won’t have any funds to build and maintain any of our infrastructure for decades. McGinn is at the point where he is simply trying to make sure that we don’t get screwed by the state for the overruns.
The more a government does FOR us, the more it does TO us. Why do so many in Ballard put all of their marbles in the “D” column year after year? Absolute power does what again? The “ruling class” just loves this activity too. More people coming to them for answers to all of their daily lives/problems. Screw the city etc. Want a night out, have one then. Organization isn’t an issue with this thing called the internet, is it?
yeah, norwegian. let’s just go build that bike trail and tunnel right now. who needs silly things like discussion.
I’ve been to one of these ‘crime-preventer’ meetings and really didn’t learn a darn thing. I’m not sure what other duties those two jobs entail, but with a budget crisis they would be one of my first cuts.
“Yes, too bad Republicans aren’t in charge of the economy anymore. I heard they work wonders. McGinn is kicking ass.”
You must think you’re living in some other city, when was the last Republican Mayor in Seattle?
“piggish, less educated American middle class ”
Wow, such respect for ordinary Americans….. no wonder the looney left never wins elections above Mayor of Seattle.
“I think my IQ dropped about 50 points reading gts206’s comment.”
Right, you probably think a ‘yellow dog’ is a small , golden shi-tzu.
gts, who needs manufacturing jobs (or things like kids) in Seattle when folks like Taxpayer will tricycle to his barista job while dreaming of holding down a neighborhood social services job making $24K a year.
“you do realize that once this tunnel goes massively over budget and Seattle is stuck with the bill that we’re screwed? ”
Except that language is totally unenforceable, even the writer says so.
But don’t worry, we’ll all get jobs sitting at desks in Seattle, no need for stinky jobs, trucks, oil or any of that stuff. We’ll just have an economy base on tricycles and sustainable, locally made hemp products that can be delivered by cruelty-free mules.
When will Seattle (and Washington for that matter) elect someone with a strong business background?
Far left wing economics only work in fantasy land.
Barney,
Have you been sleeping for the last 10 years? Where , pray tell, have right wing, libertaian economics ever worked? No where in the world that I’ve lived in.
If Seattle is such a horrid place to live, there are lots of other places where your kind of beliefs are wide spread and I
m sure they’d welcome you with open arms…
does it matter who we elect? seattle politicians do very little and then the initiative process stalls any kind of progress in one direction or another. so much wheel spinning, seattle. such a waste.
Another lifelong, yellow dog Democrat here who thinks McGinn is a complete ass. And a liar.
All the hand waving going on now about tunnel cost overruns are just theater. They guy ran for mayor and told the voters, over and over, that he would not try to kill the tunnel project.
He is a liar.
“so much wheel spinning, seattle. such a waste.”
That was referring to the comments here, correct?
Taxpayer –
Sorry to see you go. Surprised to hear you had the 50 points to give up.
I’m not a fan of the tunnel project but our fair mayor seems to think everyone can get around on bikes and buses with no reason to have internal combustion vehicles. Fact is unless you harvested veggies out of your garden and slaughtered an animal in your backyard everything you ate for dinner tonight got to your house thanks to a commercial vehicle.
I actually heard someone at dinner last summer say “I don;t use anything that is trucked in” so forgive me if what I said was obvious but you would be surprised at the people who think that cotton for the clothes they are wearing is grown, milled, woven and made into clothing somewhere on Sunset Hill because they bought it locally.