In the Northwest: City Council must can recycled promises and deliver

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Joel Connelly

Wednesday, January 7, 2004

In the Northwest: City Council must can recycled promises and deliver

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Against a backdrop of stark monumentalism -- the new Seattle City Hall is NOT a people place -- a turned-over, stirred-up Seattle City Council took oaths of office and made promises of performance on a cold Monday afternoon.

Bold words were the order from three rookie council members who ousted incumbents last November: Jean Godden spoke of a "shared vision to bring Seattle back," David Della of the goal to "again get Seattle working again," and Tom Rasmussen of "a city that works."

The acid test of politics -- the "acid final test" in Adlai Stevenson's words -- is the ability to govern.

We'll soon see if a cohesive, collegial council makes us forget the dysfunctional civic family that sparked a voter rebellion last November.

The upcoming confirmation hearings of Seattle City Light superintendent-designee Jorge Carrasco, before a committee chaired by the newly elected Godden, will be a tip-off to council relations with Mayor Greg Nickels.

Citizens will also see if Seattle city officials -- often so preoccupied with what George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing" -- ever get down to the nitty-gritty of improving delivery of city services.

One initial discouraging sign showed through at Monday's swearing-in.

The outgoing Seattle City Council recently voted to make recycling mandatory come January 2005. By 2006, homeowners won't get their garbage picked up until the trash is sorted out.

It sure would make us feel better about complying if they picked up the full recycling and glass bins that have sat for the past week outside hundreds of Seattle homes.

An inch of snow fell on the Emerald City early last Wednesday. It was rapidly melting off the streets when yours truly drove in to work at midmorning.

Still, neither the recycling nor garbage trucks ever appeared. A Capitol Hill friend called the city utility and was told she'd have to wait two weeks for recycling pickup.

Newly re-elected Councilman Jim Compton, chairman of the committee overseeing our waste utilities, came up full of smiles at the swearing-in. I asked him about all the full bins sitting outside houses in the neighborhood (Madrona) where he resided until recently.

Compton treated it as a big joke.

"If you bring it down here, I'll take care of it," he said and quickly exited the conversation.

The response was typical. During his four-year term, Mayor Paul Schell was guaranteed to move away whenever any deficiency in city services was brought up.

The new council members, we can only hope, will know better. After all, a donation-greased rezoning for a strip-club operator helped spark voter anger that put Godden and Della into office.

Rasmussen is already showing signs of running the kind of accessible service-oriented office that, in years past, was a hallmark of former council members George Benson and Jeanette Williams. Rasmussen worked 12 years for Williams, who was on hand to see her former aide sworn in Monday.

If the council is serious about "putting people first" -- in the words of its outgoing president, Peter Steinbrueck -- a few modifications to the new City Hall are also in order.

Scrap the security system that walls off citizens from council offices! Once past security at the main door, citizens can wander into the offices of Congress members in Washington, D.C., and legislators' digs in Olympia.

What makes the Seattle City Council so special? On Monday, a council aide was scolded for letting Rasmussen's partner into his office without first signing in.

As well, why not bring our city's lawmakers down to earth? The new chambers has council members seated in front of and elevated above the citizenry who come to witness their deliberations. It's reminiscent of a pre-Vatican II altar in a Catholic church. Serious business does not need such solemnity.

Leaving aside Compton's offer for me to drop off recycling out front, how do things look for the Emerald City (formerly the Queen City)?

The far right and far left are grumbling.

This column gets conservative e-mails ridiculing everything from Seattle's bike paths to the city's congressman. On Republican Radio last Saturday, one anti-tax crusader talked about the business climate going to hell.

The Stranger has gone into a permanent pout since watching its pet politicians (Judy Nicastro, Heidi Wills) and causes (council districts) bite the dust in November. The Capitol Hill newspaper rants at new council members, ridicules Godden's political strategist and sniffs that Seattle is "back in our place as a regular third-tier American city."

These folks ought to get together. Complaining is easy, and they can find a lot of common ground.

What'll be more difficult is creating what Godden called a new era of "progressive activism."

Its basis, however, is there -- the three-year recession withstanding.

After doing a guest gig on Republican Radio last Saturday, I walked out of the Entercom studios on Eastlake and looked around for reassurance that our town isn't going to the dogs.

A half-mile to the south rose the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In front of me was a building housing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's most innovative philanthropic organization. Across Lake Union, I could spot offices of the Institute for Systems Biology -- one of the nation's pacesetters in biotechnology.

Nothing third-tier about these institutions, nor the city in which they have grown up.

Seattle can be a feisty, contentious place: Just ask visiting presidents or trade ministers. Still, the town is a magnet for talented people who pump new blood into its economy -- and lately its politics.

At City Hall, Monday may well mark the start of a new energy and new focus.

Does Compton really want me to mark such an occasion by unloading all my Christmas refuse at the front door?

P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com

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