Westwood Roxhill Arbor Heights Meeting 6/6/2016
Upcoming Meetings:
·
Delridge Neighborhood Council (DNC): Youngstown
Cultural Arts Center; 3rd Wednesday of the Month; 7:00pm (All West
Seattle Communities East of 35th)
·
Southwest Meeting: West Seattle Senior Center;
1rst Wednesday of the Month 6:30pm
·
City Neighborhood Council (CNC): City Hall – Rm 370,
last Monday of the month; 6:30pm
Events:
·
The West Seattle Grand Parade – July 23rd
– Neighborhood Groups can be in the parade.
Find it Fix it Walk in Westwood:
The walk is currently scheduled to take place on July 25th
around 5pm. More details as we get closer. The city will start doing outreach
at a later time. Laura Jenkins the coordinator said that they like to see
around 50 people attending these events to make it clear to the Mayor and
staffers that people of the neighborhood care. They need people to be a part of
the Community Walk Action Team (CWAT) to help plan the walk. We were told that
people on the CWAT will have more opportunities to speak with the mayor and
department heads. There will be two meetings for CWAT volunteers to plan the
walk typically at a time in the early evening (after 5). Please contact Laura
if you are interested in volunteering. The route is not set but will be created
with the community, and city. They like to keep the walk around 1mile. If you
don’t want to volunteer you can still attend the walk. It’s important that we
show support for our neighbors and represent the entire Westwood Highland Park
Urban village.
If we know of any other community groups that might be
interested pass the information on. A Seattle representative said that they do want
to keep it confined to organizations in or close to the area such as Sealth PTA
etc.
The find it fix it walk also provides a $5,000 grant for
things in the area or slightly outside the area. This money can be spent on
things that beautify or make safer. Examples are Murals, and Staircase cleanup.
The grant can go to many things or a single thing.
Miscellaneous:
An Issue on Longfellow creek was mentioned. There is a trail
along the east side of the school between Trenton and thistle that is owned by
the city. The trail is gated closed forcing kids and other walkers to use a more
dangerous route. A Longfellow creek advocate said that this trail is supposed
to be unlocked and that they had previous agreement that it would never be
locked.
Neighborhood Streets Fund -
Two projects proposed by WWRAH neighbors made the Delridge
Council’s top five. The Delridge Council ranked Holden Street Improvements at
16th and Holden top. The next spot had a tie between a roundabout for
Holden, 9th and Highland Park Way, and “Complete Barton” which is a
number of improvements on Barton near the Rapid Ride bus stop. The community
has been requesting a solution to the Holden, 9th and Highland Park
Way intersection for 40 years.
NDNC.org has links to all 16 NSF projects that were proposed.
The West Seattle Blog also has good information:
http://westseattleblog.com/2016/06/see-which-community-proposals-west-seattles-district-councils-are-advancing-for-neighborhood-street-fund/
SDOT has approved a smaller project to add some kind of non
permanent curb bulb to north side of Barton near bus stop to help with the
crossing. It sounded like they’ll basically make the north or westbound side of
the road one lane instead of the two lanes currently. They’ll do this with
paint and some plastic thingies that stick to the ground and stand up.
The Department of Neighborhoods re-organization/budget cuts
is causing major frustrations with our local councils. The explanations are
complicated and technocratic. I think the main point is that the city is
changing how they communicate with communities. They currently establish geographic
district councils (Delridge Neighborhood Council) and we raise our issues to
these councils. The city would like to change this so that they decide what
communities to reach and then poll these communities when they want input.
There is apparently also an Op-Ed by Mayor McGinn about the
issue.
Speaking of opinions on the issue, the WWRAH chair Amanda
Kay Helmick, the Chair of Delridge Neighborhood Council Matt McBride, and the South
West Council are not happy.
It sounds like if you care about this the best persons to
contact are the City Council, and Department of Neighborhoods head Kelly
Nyland.
