Seattle mayoral candidate Mike McGinn had better hurry or he'll need to update his Government 2.0 plan to 3.0. The Seattle City Council today announced 10 technology initiatives for 2010 and a few of them CHS really likes. 1, 8 and 10 -- yes, please. We're guessing that CHS neighbor Phil will appreciate the way #1 is worded.

#9? Well, it's a nice notion but might be better left to sites like CHS, no?

And #7 is kind of cheating. That was technology committee chair Bruce Harrell's initiative last year.

Councilmember Bruce Harrell, Chair of the Energy and Technology Committee, today proposed a Government and Technology outline that will optimize the use of technology, resulting in increased transparency, enhanced access to customer service and city information, and improved government effectiveness and efficiency.

The initiatives were developed after reviewing the city’s technology, governmental systems and protocols. The next step involves the Department of Information Technology and the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board working with other city departments to provide feedback on the recommendations.

“I am proposing the applications that I believe we should use internally and support externally, both of which can determine the effectiveness of service to our citizens,” said Harrell.

The Seattle Government and Technology outline calls on the city to implement the following in the coming year:

1)      Migrate to a system where publishing and release of city data are in an open format that is more readable and favorable for programming. This allows the public to use city data in the most appropriate way and enhance its original purpose by allowing data collaboration and integration through mashups and semantic web technologies.

2)      Declare an “Apps for Seattle” contest and call upon local web developers to program innovative mobile applications and Internet-based applications using open city data.

3)      Provide service for mobile phone applications that allow residents to report a city complaint such as potholes, graffiti, streetlight outage, or abandoned vehicles.

4)      Use web video conferencing tools for meetings conducted by employees, boards and commissions, resulting in reduced travel time, cost and fuel.

5)      Provide residents with new personal conservation management tools that allow them to maximize their home energy efficiency.

6)      Provide a suite of applications and products that allow residents and businesses to communicate remotely with their security, heating, cooling, and lighting systems.  This will increase consumer utilization and awareness of a smart grid network.

7)      Deploy a “My.Seattle.gov” Public Engagement Portal that consolidates the city’s multiple sign on accounts and provides single sign-on access with features including a customizable interface,  status report checks on problems reported, public polling, and enhanced collaboration with the public using tools such as IdeaScale or Google Moderator.

8)      Maximize the use of technology in reporting, posting, and tracking photos of graffiti and tree inventory on Google Maps or the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS).

9)      Develop a “Wiki” website format for city information that allows online public collaboration, editing and content moderation.

10)     Implement new city-wide software to reduce the volumes of wasted printed pages at the end of print jobs from the Internet.

“These technology initiatives will engage our local high-tech industry and spur entrepreneurs and development of business,” said Councilmember Harrell.  “Now, more than ever, we must embrace the use of new technology as a strategic tool to better communicate with residents, drive innovation and economic development in our local workforce and save money by improving operational efficiencies in governmental systems. I look forward to working with our Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board to help drive the process of moving forward in 2010.”

Additional information regarding “Apps for Seattle” will soon follow.

It is unclear exactly how the project to transform the old Sunset Electric building at 11th and Pine will play out. Will the development be the first inspired toward greater preservation by the newly installed Pike/Pine Conservation District or will it be one of the last in the area to use permits filed long before the new legislation was put into place? Or, worse, will it represent preservation in name only and reveal the conservation district zoning as 'toothless' as its critics contend it is? Here's neighborhood activist Dennis Saxman's thoughts on that from last fall as the new rules were being discussed. (It was Saxman's research, by the way, that provided the explanation for what the letters on the building stand for.)

The Early Design Guidance meeting with the Capitol Hill Design Review Board is slated for August 19th but in the meantime, CHS will bring you more information about the project -- including the proper design proposal document that DPD says they are working to get in place after accidentally posting the wrong one when the meeting announcement first went up -- and more voices from the community. You've already read thoughts from Capitol Hill developer Lizz Dunn.

We asked Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, the driver behind the new conservation district legislation, for his thoughts on the Sunset Electric building project:

I know the building well and I had heard that it was going to be demolished, which I do not want to happen.  Here is what I know:

According to DPD the lot does have an active application since 2005 that includes demolition of the building.  Now, the developer is proposing to gain ten feet in additional height in return for saving the existing character structure on the site. The fact that the owner is now proposing to save the building implies that the new height incentive under the Pike/Pine Conservation District legislation recently passed has made a difference.

Whether the project will just save a small portion of the facade as decoration-only, which some people decry, is difficult to know at this point because the project is in the early stages of design review and plans are not yet available.  However, to qualify for the height incentive, the Code requires that the new structure be set back at least 15 feet from the street-facing facades of the existing building.

The set-back should help address the concerns I read about in some of the comments you received.    A waiver from the 15 foot requirement is possible, though, if the design provides that the existing building still gives the appearance of a free-standing structure, or does a better job of integrating the old and new structures.  These code provisions that address setbacks and design should make it more difficult to just patch on portions of the old building as decoration.

I hope this answers your questions.  I  would love to see as much of the building saved and reused as possible.

It appears that the new Pike/Pine Conservation District regulations are influencing this project and may prevent the demolition of the building.  But, as I said they are at the early stages at this point in designing the project.

EDG--Early Design Guidance--
Project: 1530 11th Ave
Date: August 19th, 2009
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Seattle Vocational Institute, 2120 S. Jackson St. Rm 102/103 [map]

The Seattle City Council approved legislation this afternoon creating a Pike/Pine Conservation District designed to preserve the neighborhood's historical character. CHS detailed the latest discussions surrounding the legislation when it was approved by the Council's land use committee last week.

In comments before the vote, councilmember Sally Clark said of the Pike/Pine 'character:' "We like it because it makes us feel a little bit warm and fuzzy but there's something about the buildings that lend themselves to the types of businesses [we] want to see in the area."

Meanwhile, a related bill that will enable the Polyclinic to develop a parcel of land it owns on First Hill into a new facility also passed the Council today. The legislation allows medicual uses of large developments within the city's 'highrise' zones. The Polyclinic is now able to build a new facility on First Hill to replace their aging structure on Broadway near Union. The Polyclinic had been considering building the facility on a lot they...

Last week we wrote about City Council Bill 116508's upcoming public hearing. The city's Department of Planning and Development is positioning the legislation as the first phase of a zoning overhaul designed to preserve the 'character' of the Pike/Pine neighborhood. A spokesperson for Tom Rasmussen, the council member driving much of the city's work around the plan, described this Wednesday's 5:30 PM meeting as one of the necessary last steps in the Council's process before bringing the new rules up for a vote.

So Wednesday's session will be one of the last opportunities citizens have to provide public testimony on the preservation plan. Expectations for any new issues to emerge are low -- the DPD has been meeting with groups in the neighborhood for more than a year. But we were interested to find out what one of the neighborhood's most active activists thinks about the city's plan and what he plans to say Wednesday night. Below is Dennis Saxman's response to the plan. You might know Saxman best for his involvement with the Pine parking lot situation. We don't endorse, support, embrace or extend his position but it is interesting to see what the neighborhood's fiercest advocate against development has to say about the Council's plan.

By Dennis Saxman

Out of a list of over 20 stakeholders proposed to be consulted, only a small percentage had a seat at the table or were consulted at all. The individuals who were most thoroughly canvassed for their opinion were developers with a financial stake in this legislation and condo owners - no renters, no artists, no low-income people, no disabled.

The number of the buildings listed in the ordinance is considerably smaller than the total number of character buildings in the area. A neighborhood with a unified style cannot be preserved if only some of the buildings that reflect that style are included. As an example, look at the buildings going up between 11th and 12th on Pike. If the erection of such buildings, which are incompatible with the existing buildings, continues, the Pike/Pine will lose its identity as a neighborhood. Also, the ordinance provides for the erection of buildings that do not reflect the historic vernacular. If you were to look at other cities - Snohomish is a good example in Washington State - you would see that much greater architectural compatibility is required than is required by this ordinance.

No one at all seems to consider that one factor that makes the Pike/Pine is the extent of the sky and other parts of the neighborhood and City we can see. That will change if all the buildings go to 65-75 feet. This ordinance simply reflects the preferences of a small group of area stakeholders who favor modern design and the attitude of an administration that is not as committed as many other cities around the country to true neighborhood conservation.

I hope the Council will delay a vote on this until they have had the time to more thoroughly investigate what other cities have done. The consultant on the project was originally supposed to do a survey of other cities' laws, but somehow that fell by the wayside. I have been working with a professor at UW whose classes are and will be studying the Pike/Pine, and I also think the Council would find the results of that study useful before proceeding with this important legislation.

Two announcements from City Hall today -- a plan to promote local economic recovery and a relaxation in the fees and rules around parking strip gardening -- should improve life on Capitol Hill and beyond.

First, City Council today approved a 19-part plan to help aid the local economy including changes in business taxes, programs to lend money to small businesses and improvements in social services to aid the homeless. There is also language related to fast-tracking 'shovel ready' projects in the city. Wonder if the Summit/John park project would fall into that bucket. You can read the entirety of Resolution 31135 here. Here's the Council announcement about the resolution:

CITY COUNCIL APPROVES 19-PART ACTION PLAN TO PROMOTE ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Council resolution includes providing relief to small businesses, supporting individuals affected by the recession, and improving the business climate

May 11, 2009 - SEATTLE - Acting on recommendations from a result of a series of public meetings with citizens, business...

A group working on an initiative to transform the Seattle City Council into a district-based body says it has raised $20,000 and is putting plans in motion to raise $100 grand and collect the nearly 40,000 signature required to get the initiative on this year's ballot. If they succeed and the measure passes, the City Council will be made up of representatives from five city districts and four at-large members. The group is lead by Andrew Lewis, campaign manager for Councilmember Nick Licata's re-election bid.

The plan calls for the five districts to be approximately the same size as a legislative district. The districts would be redrawn by a city commission every 10 years based on the results of the Federal census. Here is a map of the 43rd Legislative District, for example:

In a statement e-mailed to potential supporters, organizers said the district-based council would:

• Increase the diversity of the current Seattle City Council.
• Make Seattle City Councilmembers more accountable to neighborhood groups.
• Require...

Adding to the list of things Seattle votes on that seem like we probably shouldn't need to, the Seattle City Council today, as expected, voted unanimously to allow an initiative on August's ballot asking voters to approve a 20-cent grocery bag fee. The City Council approved the fee last summer. A chemical industry trade group was able to gather enough signatures to keep the law from going into effect and, now, get the fee on the ballot.

ENVIRONMENT, EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND UTILITIES COMMITTEE:
Council Bill 116477 PASSED (8 – 0)
This bill allows a disposable bag fee ordinance to be submitted on the August 2009 ballot for voter approval or rejection. Approved by the Council and the Mayor in July 2008, the ordinance arose from an SPU study that found significant environmental impacts from the use of paper and plastic disposable shopping bags. The ordinance seeks to reduce those impacts and the use of throwaway bags by requiring grocery, convenience and drug store shoppers to pay a 20 cents “Green Fee&...

A busy night for you community organizers out there.

• First, Seattle City Councilmembers Sally Clark and Tom Rasmussen will meet with citizens and take a short tour of the future site of the Summit at John park project tonight. If you're interested in talking to them about the project, swing by Shinka Tea on Olive at 5:30p. You might recall the project requires more than $100,000 in funds from 'the community' to be completed as designed. Slog wrote about the challenges the park faces here.
• Meanwhile, there is a Capitol Hill design review double header tonight including a second session going over the latest plans for the building envisioned to take the space of B&O Espresso and a mixed-use apartment building being planned for 12th and Pine near the fire station. Here is the CHS coverage of projects being discussed. That crazy party starts at 6:30p at Seattle Central room 3211.

In a move that will rankle citizen groups (one prominent advocate was tossed from the meeting) and ease the process by which large public projects get built in Seattle, the City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved legislation making it easier for large projects to apply for -- and get -- variances to the city's construction noise laws. We wrote about the legislation and surrounding issues last month -- Round-the-clock construction noise vs. public projects that don't drag on and on.

While passing the legislation to approve the changes was not unexpected, there was a notable division on the council regarding councilmember Nick Licata's proposal to increase the opportunity for public review of the noise process by creating an annual review of the ordinance. The proposal failed 5-4 with Jan Drago, Sally Clark, Tim Burgess, Tom Rasmussen, and Jean Godden weighing in against the amendment.

Perhaps helping to illustrate some of the reasons more public process isn't always better public process, advocate Chris...

We told you the city council was voting yesterday on revisions to the city's noise ordinance rules to make it easier for 'large,' 'public' projects to receive variances allowing round-the-clock construction. So, how'd the vote shake out? Delayed. One week. Stay tuned.

Pick your poison. Night time noise for neighbors or even slower construction schedules for large projects like Capitol Hill's light rail construction? I'll take the noise -- but I don't live near the light rail construction zone on Broadway.

Seattle City Council is scheduled to vote next Tuesday on legislation that would create variances to the city's noise ordinances for "major public construction projects." At stake are limits on the duration of variances that these projects require -- and typically get -- for round-the-clock work. The new rules would make it possible for projects to apply for -- and likely typically get -- long-term and sometimes life-of-project variances to allow for things like night-time construction.

Here is the proposal:

1.  C.B.  116204
Relating to noise control, amending various sections 
and adding new sections to Chapter 25.08 of the 
Seattle Municipal Code, to provide for a major 
public project construction variance for major public 
construction projects, to update various provisions...

(more)

I spent the end of last week in San Francisco. Indulge me one SF post. Like any good city, Seattle has doubts about its ability to guide itself. We frequently look to SF and sigh, wishing we could be more like that city -- cosmopolitan, sophisticated, modern, progressive.

Some of us are embarrassed by things like Seattle's development strategies.

Some, our version of progressive politics.

Me, I envy the city's district-based board of supervisors (For one, I believe it's a better way to represent a city. For two, man would it create more content for neighborhood blogs!)

But last week, San Francisco was going through its own session of self-flagellation and embarrassment that made Seattle look relatively well adjusted.

• The Mission District rose up against the opening of an American Apparel, of all chains
• At a hearing on the Thursday of my visit, the city's planning commission denied AA a use permit. The meeting included a whopping 3 hours of public comment. The SF Chron lamented, "If you can get 200 people together and persuade them to show up at a meeting and raise a fuss, you can stop damn near anything in this town."
• The location will remain empty until a new potential tenant braves the waters

I don't hold this up to say SF was wrong to reject AA. I don't hold this up to applaud SF's NorCal pinko commies. Instead, I want Capitol Hill and Seattle to feel better about ourselves. It's hard to be a city run by hipsters. SF struggles. We struggle. Now let's go shopping.

If you are a reductionist, you might want to consider only a single element of the new Pike/Pine preservation legislation proposal being floated to stakeholders (that's you!) before going to a city council vote this spring. It includes language somewhat limiting the big, fat, "ugly ass" buildings we've been asking about lately.

From a DPD staffmember who worked on the proposals:

We do limit (in the current proposal) the amount of frontage that a project can occupy on Pike and Pine Streets; they can not exceed half the block width, which ranges from about 105' to 128', depending on the block.  We also limit the size of the upper floors to 15,000 square feet.  To require the spacing of projects is a problem--the issue of first come, first served--for example, we anticipate that downtown, where we have a tower spacing requirement, we may have issues with how to handle projects competing to build a lot within the same area (and the spacing is only required to be usually only a distance of 60 to 80 feet, and only applies to projects within the same block; what they (Slog commentator) are suggesting is way more restrictive than that).

So, limits on frontage but not spacing. There you go, reductionist. Be happy.

Non-reductionist types can dig through the rest of the councilmember Tom Rasmussen-driven legislation in the PDF attached to this post. Here are the proposal 'highlights,' as the staffers who assembled the report see them:

1. Rezone the NC3 areas within the current boundaries of the overlay to a pedestrian zone designation (NC3P), while retaining current height limits. 
2. Adjust the boundaries of the Capitol Hill Station Area Overlay District and remove the First Hill Station Area Overlay District to exclude areas that overlap with the Pike/Pine overlay and eliminate redundant and potentially conflicting regulations. 
3.  Designate E. Pike/Pike Street and E. Pine/Pine Street, which currently require commercial uses at street level, as principal pedestrian streets, as well as segments of 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Avenues east of Broadway and north of Pike Street, which currently do not require street level uses.
4. Expand the boundaries of the Pike/Pine Overlay District to include existing NC3P and NC3 zoned areas in the Pike/Pine neighborhood along Broadway and east of Broadway and south of E. Pike Street, excluding the half"block bounded by Broadway, E. Union Street, E. Madison Street, and Broadway Court. 
5.   Establish a floor size limit for upper floors of new development throughout the overlay area and a maximum limit on structure width for new structures with frontage on E. Pike/Pike Street and E. Pine/Pine Street.  Provide flexibility to allow limited increases in floor size under specific conditions—primarily to retain existing structures.   
6. Identify structures that are 75 years old or older as character structures and provide flexibility to retain these structures, with special emphasis on designated landmarks and structures identified as having potential for landmark nomination in the Department of Neighborhood’s Historic Resource Survey.  
7. Provide incentives through exemptions from floor area calculations and/or limits on non"residential use to:
   o retain existing character structures on a development lot, including either the whole structure or at a minimum the “envelope” created by the structure’s street facing facades;
   o encourage development on small lots of 8,000 square feet or less;
   o include space for small commercial uses at the street level of structures;
   o include arts facilities and theaters in existing structures and new projects; and
   o maintain the economic viability of character structures by allowing permitted uses to fully occupy these structures and limited additions to these structures. 
8. Allow a ten foot height exception for projects that retain existing character structures and portions of existing character structures on a development lot. 
9.  Limit the street frontage of uses at street level in new structures on Pike and Pine Streets. 
10.  Restrict certain types of signs that are incompatible with the local business character of the Pike/Pine area. 

The proposal will now go through a public review and discussion process before being presented to the counci in mid-March, presented at a public hearing on March 30th, and, ultimately, voted on by late April/early May. Get all the details on the council's Pike/Pine Conservation page.

You should also read Dominic Holden's report on reaction to the proposal from area stakeholders and additional information about an element the legislation cannot guarantee -- survival of Pike/Pine's oldest buildings.

Asked earlier this week about worth of organizing a Capitol Hill community discussion to talk about -- and document -- the impact of December's snow and ice problems. Here's the Seattle City Council plan (pdf) for how they plan to postmortem the situation:

Monday, January 5 at 9:30 a.m. - Council Briefings: An overview from Office of Emergency Management and Seattle Department of Transportation on the Storm Response, including information from the Seattle Fire Department and Seattle Police Department.

Tuesday, January 6 at 9:30 a.m. - Joint Meeting of the Transportation and Environment, Emergency Management, and Utilities Committees: Briefing and Discussion with Seattle Department of Transportation, Human Services Department, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, Office of Emergency Management and King County Metro Transit. Time will be available for public comment.

Monday, January 12 at 9:30 a.m. - Council Briefings: Identification of immediate steps that can be taken for improved storm response....

My initial report from last night's meeting to discuss the city's plan for preserving Pike/Pine was, how do you say it?, a little light on content. But, hey, I was phoning it in. And I was a little jaded after wading through the whole thing in this gargantuan post about the study and recommendations.

Refreshed by a brand new day, here are a few of the best questions I heard from neighbors in the open forum portion of the night and a few more notes.

Best Questions from Pike/Pine Conservation Meeting

1. With the predominance of renters in the neighborhood, why weren't any renters interviewed for the studies? (from Dennis Saxman, an anti-development activist)
2. Are there funds available to protect existing businesses from changes in the area? She made point about existing businesses suddenly being "attacked" by building code requirements when development happens in their area and the difficulty for any existing business to conform to the new requirements. (from a Pike/Pine business owner whose 10-year-old recording studio...