Seattle Politics This Week Feb. 16, 2009
By Keith Vance
February 16, 2009
Now while it's a fact that Mayor Nickels is committed to open and responsive process of public disclosure, it says so right on his Web site, but if you missed the announcement, on Tuesday Nickels will be at the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club to deliver his state of the city address at 12 p.m.
Also on Tuesday, the City Council will hold its weekly full council meeting at 2 p.m. Besides the usual mundane tasks of appointing this person, and a concept approval of that, there's a couple of interesting items on the agenda.
The council is expected to show its support for universal health care by passing resolution 31111. Passing this resolution is merely a token action on the part of the council to show politicians in Washington, D.C. that the Seattle City Council supports universal health care, but it's up to the federal government to provide it. In this particular instance, if the resolution passes, the council will join Rep. Jim McDermott in supporting the passage of U.S. House bill 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan. The Culture, Civil Rights, Health and Personnel committee moved this resolution forward last week.
Also on the docket for Tuesday's meeting will be noise control relating to construction sites. Item number two on the agenda, it has something to do with "unexpended funds for non-capital purposes relating to the Surplus Allen/Phinney Neighborhood Center." Yeah that.
The council will also discuss increasing your water bill by something like $0.70 a month, and to draw more than $14 million from the general fund to fix an accounting error relating to fire hydrants. The Finance and Budget committee moved this bill to the full council last week.
On Wednesday the City Council Energy and Technology committee will meet at 2 p.m. Nothing too exciting happening here, other than Utah's software company Novel is losing another customer to Microsoft. Item four on the agenda is a project update on their migration from GroupWise to Exchange. There will also be an update on the digital television transition. Read the full agenda here.
The Finance and Budget committee meeting for Thursday has been cancelled.
As usual, nothing appears to be happening on Friday, but something will surely pop up.
Correction: The mayor's state of the city address was at 12 p.m., not 11 a.m.