Mayor Harrell gave his annual State of the City speech, which was short on concrete policy proposals but generally focused on the need to revitalize downtown and improve public safety. [Publicola, Seattle Times]
The City Council passed Councilmember Sawant's bill adding caste (as in, the rigid Indian hierarchical system) to the list of protected classes under Seattle's anti-discrimination laws, making Seattle the first city in the country to do so. [Seattle Times, GeekWire, KING 5, KNKX]
Sunday marked the 81st anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which created Japanese internment camps during World War II. [Seattle Times, South Seattle Emerald]
Residents of the Chinatown-International District are advocating for two different alternative sites for the new Chinatown-ID light rail station that will be part of the upcoming Ballard to West Seattle line. [Seattle Times, KING 5]
The ACLU of Washington sued King County over the staffing levels and living conditions in its downtown Seattle jail. [Seattle Times, KING 5, MyNorthwest]
Hannah Furfaro wrote a great piece looking at the decline in mental health beds across King County in the last three decades; the county's shift to the newer permanent supportive housing model (which unlike the older congregate housing model gives residents their own self-contained apartments); and the ways in which sharply increasing housing costs have both increased the number of people who need access to these types of services and made it prohibitively more expensive for public officials to be able to provide them. [Seattle Times]
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) released a detailed report with over 100 recommendations for ways the City could make better progress on its Vision Zero goal of having no traffic deaths by 2030. [Seattle Times, KING 5]
SDOT began collecting on unpaid parking tickets after putting collections on pause at the start of the pandemic--but a lot of people have moved in the three years since the hold went into effect, and about 17% of the notices that have been mailed out so far have been returned as undeliverable. Unpaid parking tickets will eventually go to collections whether or not the notice reaches its intended recipient; if you think you might have one, you can search by license plate number on the municipal court's website. [Seattle Times, MyNorthwest]
Seattle-King County Public Health Officer Jeff Duchin wrote a good tweet thread looking at the current status of the pandemic in King County; and if you want to stay up to date on the national COVID situation, I recommend the People's CDC newsletter. You may be surprised to learn, for example, that 2,838 Americans died of COVID the week of February 15th--while the risk of hospitalization and death is still low if you're vaccinated and boosted, and transmission levels are lower in King County than they are in many parts of the state, including the East Coast, the pandemic unfortunately isn't over.
Seattle's local crab fishing industry is continuing to have tough times, due both to the ongoing cancellations of the snow crab and king crab fishing seasons in Alaska (largely because of climate change) and the declining price of Dungeness crab in local supermarkets in recent months. [KING 5, Seattle Times]
A 32-year-old teacher at Franklin High School was arrested for having sex with a 16-year-old student. [Seattle Times]
Isabella Breda looked at the Department of Natural Resources' recent auction of 111 acres of not-quite-old-growth forest near Centralia that was last logged over 100 years ago and has grown back naturally since then. [Seattle Times]
And Bumbershoot will return to Seattle Center this year for the first time since 2019, this time with a new event production company at the helm. [Seattle Met, KUOW, MyNorthwest]
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