KUOW Blog
News, factoids, and insights from KUOW's newsroom. And maybe some peeks behind the scenes. Check back daily for updates.
Have any leads or feedback for the KUOW Blog? Contact Dyer Oxley at dyer@kuow.org.
Stories
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Seattle approves new director of Planning and Community Development
On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council unanimously confirmed acting director Rico Quirindongo as head of the Office of Planning and Community Development.
Quirindongo spent part of his childhood in South Seattle. He says he thinks a lot about the challenges local Black and BIPOC families face when looking for affordable housing.
“How do we upzone in such a way that we can create opportunity for developers to build more housing that is affordable for first time home buyers?” he asked.
Quirindongo spoke to KUOW in December.
As director of Seattle's Office of Planning and Community Development, Quirindongo would play a key role in bringing Seattle into compliance with the state of Washington’s new “middle housing law.”
That law requires opening up most residential neighborhoods to duplexes, fourplexes, and in some cases, six-unit townhomes. Those options must be included in Seattle's comprehensive plan update, due at the end of 2024.
Actual homes built under those rules could start rolling out in mid-2025.
Quirindongo said the new housing options will mean fewer families get pushed out of Seattle due to high housing costs.
“What we do now is gonna make a really big difference and is gonna set the stage for the next 20 years," he said.
But Quirindongo also said the city must do more to help Black and other BIPOC families afford those new homes. Census data shows that home ownership among Seattle’s Black families has fallen in recent years.
Quirindongo also says he’s committed to the principle of making Seattle a 15-minute city where the businesses, schools and parks people need are within a short, safe walk or ride from their homes.
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Seattle museum celebrates Black history, honors Juneteenth
Over the weekend, the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle will host a series of Juneteenth celebrations, highlighting a variety of events, talks, and activism in the city celebrating the nation's newest federal holiday.
Juneteenth started in 1865 in Texas, when union troops told thousands of enslaved Black people that they had been emancipated.
Despite that, Black Americans have faced resistance as they began to assert their freedom. The legacy of those injustices rooted in white supremacy still continues today.
“Juneteenth is an opportunity for all of us, no matter who we are, for all of us to commit ourselves to taking action for equity," said LaNesha DeBardelaben, president and CEO of the Northwest African American Museum. "If we don't, who will?"
Over the next few days the museum will host a youth game show, a film festival, and a final community skate party celebration on Monday, June 19.
Events from other groups around the city celebrating Juneteenth include a workers' march organized by the Juneteenth Committee to Stop Police Terror and End Systemic Racism, and an Africa Town Community Land Trust celebration at Jimi Hendrix Park.
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Could all these city slickers ruin rural Washington? Today So Far
- A lot of city folks have moved out to rural Washington over the past few years.
- Seattle is still booming and will soon require a new area code to handle all the phone numbers.
- Families in this rural town worry about food security once school is out for summer.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 16, 2023.
Will all these new city slickers change the rural Northwest? For better, or worse?
That's a question a lot of folks in rural corners of Washington state may be asking themselves these days. Northwest News Network's Courtney Flatt recently visited Waitsburg, Wash., to get some answers. The small town is about a half hour drive from Walla Walla, and is surrounded by an expanse of open land — where all our food comes from. In 2020, Waitsburg had just under 1,200 people living locally. But the pandemic changed a few things.
Less populated, rural areas across the USA were slowly losing their populations before 2020, and urban areas were gaining people. The Census Bureau noticed that this trend reversed over 2020 and 2021. Suddenly, rural areas were gaining people, and city populations were declining. The national trend continued in 2022, but to a lesser degree. The severity of this trend depends on where you look, but according to the Bureau, it definitely happened across Washington state.
That's why small towns like Waitsburg have noticed a few new faces around town. A while ago, that would have made Markeeta Little Wolf feel a bit nervous. She's a former mayor of Waitsburg and has been cautious of newcomers.
“I wanted to put a moat around Waitsburg with a drawbridge, don’t let them come in," Little Wolf told Northwest News Network. "They’re going to ruin the place."
I have a certain admiration for many of these rural areas, and if I moved to any of them, I certainly would be viewed as one of these city slickers moving in and threatening the vibe of the place (sorry, not sorry; I just really like the movie "City Slickers" and I don't get to write it very often). I've previously lived in lesser-populated parts of our state. There is a noticeable shift in communities where this sort of migration happens. Folks move in for the slowed down atmosphere, and community attitude. But sometimes, someone comes around and starts saying things like "condos" or "shopping center." Once that happens, things aren't as slow as they once were, and the town might not feel like the same community folks came for. That doesn't always happen, and towns have some control over how they grow, but that is a genuine fear. But fears don't always reflect reality.
In Waitsburg, "that didn't happen," Little Wolf said. "The people that have come from Seattle or Los Angeles have come in and they've said, ‘Wow, this is something that we need to preserve.’”
“You can walk up and down Main Street, you can look into windows. There's things to see, grab a cup of coffee, have a drink or two or three. And there's things to do."
A benefit of the recent influx of people has been a surge of entrepreneurship, and a sort of downtown revitalization. New shops have popped up, including a wood-fired pizza joint owned by a guy who was trained to make pizzas in Italy. Courtney Flatt has the full story here.
While rural Washington has experienced a slight population bump, the population is still booming in the Seattle region — so much that the area is expected to run out of phone numbers by 2025.
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Minneapolis arts leader to run Seattle Office of Arts & Culture
The City of Seattle has chosen long-time Minneapolis artist and arts administrator Gülgün Kayim to serve as the new director of the city's Office of Arts & Culture.
Kayim will spearhead the city's efforts to support the creative economy that has struggled to recover from pandemic shutdowns.
As the founding director of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy for the City of Minneapolis, Kayim took on a similar challenge. She oversaw the creation of arts recovery funds for groups impacted by the pandemic, and helped obtain funding for restorative art in underserved communities, according to a press release from the Seattle Mayor's Office.
Mayor Bruce Harrell said he expected Kayim to continue building the Seattle arts scene, especially for historically marginalized groups.
"I look forward to the new energy and ideas she will bring to our team, helping build One Seattle through a commitment to uplifting the voices of those too often underrepresented, building trusted relationships in our arts community, and supporting a flourishing and inclusive creative landscape," Harrell said in the statement announcing the decision.
Before working for the City of Minneapolis, Kayim was assistant director for the Archibald Bush Foundation, where she worked on a fellowship program for artists. She also served as co-founder and co-artistic director of Skewed Visions, a Minneapolis-based performing arts organization.
Kayim a multidisciplinary artist herself who said she is excited to work with Seattle's arts community.
"Seattle is a city that is known for its world-class artists, creative endeavors, and arts scene, and I look forward to working with them to make the arts more equitable and accessible to all," Karim said in a statement.
Kayim was hired after a national search by a 16-member search committee representing diverse disciplines in the city's arts sector.
Seattle's Office of Arts & Culture manages public art programs, grants, initiatives, ARTS at King Street Station, the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and The Creative Initiative.
Kayim starts in her new role July 19.
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What happened when Tom Hanks' typewriter showed up at this small Bremerton shop
A lot of surprises come through Bremerton Office Machine Company, one of the last remaining typewriter repair shops in the Northwest. There are typewriters from different eras, with different fonts and languages, even machines that type musical notation.
Still, shop owner Paul Lundy was stunned when a typewriter of an uncommon type recently arrived in the mail — a typewriter previously owned and signed by actor Tom Hanks, a 1940 Remington 5 portable.
It came with a Playtone towel (Hanks' production company), and a letter from the actor.
"The typewriter arrived, as many do, unannounced. I was expecting a customer machine and yep, that was in the arrival stack. Then one with a Santa Monica, Calif. address," Lundy said. "I opened the box and the first thing I spied was a dark green Playtone towel — how odd. In a beautiful, deep dark green envelope was Tom’s note donating this Remington 5 portable typewriter to [Bremerton Office Machine Company]. Everyone in the shop was so thrilled to be honored."
Hanks is known for his typewriter fervor and has amassed a personal collection of hundreds of the writing machines. It appears that, lately, he has been freeing up some space on his shelves, to the benefit of small shops across the USA.
The letter accompanying the machine, typed by Hanks, stated that the shop should do with it as it pleases — clean it up, use it, display it, sell it, whatever.
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WA lawmaker hails tribes' victory in SCOTUS adoption ruling
One state lawmaker says he has a lot to celebrate with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. This week the high court upheld a law aimed at keeping Native American adoptees within their tribes.
WA Rep. Chris Stearns (D-Auburn) described his initial reaction to the ruling as “unbridled joy, coupled with incredible relief.”
He said he’d feared that the U.S. Supreme Court would “gut” the law.
“It would have been devastating,” Stearns said. “Because the Act was created to stop something which was destroying our existence.”
Stearns has a strong connection to the Indian Child Welfare Act. He’s a member of the Navajo nation who was adopted by white parents, before the law gave tribes more power to prevent those separations. Before Congress passed the law in 1978, the Association on American Indian Affairs found that roughly one-third of Native children were being separated from their families.
Stearns calls the court’s decision a victory for tribes, and Native children. He said, “It means that their chances of growing up in their own tribe with their own families, with their own culture – that stays intact.”
Stearns said that as a lawyer, he was glad to see Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, highlight the law’s statement that “there is no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.”
And as a state House representative, Stearns said he’s relieved that the state’s own Indian Children Welfare Act also remains protected by this ruling. The Seattle Times reports that all 29 of Washington’s federally recognized tribes submitted briefs in support of the law.
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Seattle region is slated to get a new area code
Say hello to "564," Seattle. That's the new area code for phone numbers eventually coming online within the existing 206 region.
The "206" area code currently covers Seattle, Vashon Island, Bainbridge Island, and stretches south to cover Burien and Des Moines.
If your current phone number has a "206" area code, this change won't affect you. Eventually, if you're getting a new phone number in the current "206" region, you may be getting a "564" area code.
According to Washington's Utilities and Transportation Commission, the "206" region is expected to run out of phone numbers by 2025, as the population continues to boom around Seattle. The new code has been created to cover the same area, and will go active about six months before the "206" numbers run out.
The commission previously approved the "564" area code in 2017, but only for the "360" region, which surrounds Seattle. The recent decision means that this new code will be used in both the "360" and "206" areas.
The last time Western Washington saw a new area code added to the region was in 1997, when "425" was introduced. That area code now covers much of the eastside of King County, and will not be affected by this new area code.
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King County Council tightens oversight of youth diversion programs
The King County Council is increasing its oversight of programs meant to keep at-risk young people out of courts and jail. The council voted unanimously this week to require information about outcomes of the county’s Restorative Community Pathways program.
Executive Dow Constantine must submit that information by the end of September, with the signoff of the King County Prosecutor, or $3.3 million in funding will be put on hold.
Under the Restorative Community Pathways program, King County contracts with a series of community nonprofits for court diversion. Prosecutors refer youth facing lower-level criminal charges to the program, which is meant to match youth with services that attempt to address the root causes of their alleged crimes. The program is known as “pre-filing diversion” because prosecutors agree to divert the case away from court rather than filing the potential charge.
But Councilmember Rod Dembowski, who sponsored the budget amendment, said reporting by KUOW this spring revealed lax tracking of youth participation and outcomes.
RELATED: King County gave millions to ‘No New Youth Jail’ activists to help kids — and then looked away
“The idea is good here,” Dembowski said, “but I think the county moved too quickly, tried to refer too many kids to too many organizations that weren’t ready from a capacity standpoint to do the work, and we just haven’t had enough transparency on this.”
He said councilmembers want to know more about what happens once prosecutors refer young people into the program, but that information has been hard to obtain.
“Dozens if not hundreds of youth are referred to the program and may never even be contacted, and may never participate in it," Dembowski said. "And then nothing is really done. So we’re spending tens of millions of dollars to support programs that may be providing very few services to very few youth.”
Reporting by KUOW also revealed that King County does not conduct its own background checks on youth workers, and that procedures by some organizations appeared to be looser than others.
"That’s very troubling to me, just from a care for our young people's perspective — also from a liability perspective for the county if something goes wrong," Dembowski said.
Under a council budget proviso approved on Tuesday, Executive Dow Constantine — whose Department of Community and Human Services contracts with the program’s service providers — must submit a letter by September 30 this year with extensive information, including the number of youth “actively being provided services” and a summary of the program’s outcomes.
The letter must also include a plan to evaluate the efficacy of the program by contracting with an external evaluator like the University of Washington. The proviso said the executive's letter “shall be signed by the prosecuting attorney” as well, “to ensure that the prosecuting attorney’s office concurs with the accountability and transparency measures established by the executive as described in the letter.”
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UW reaches deal with postdocs and researchers, ending strike
The University of Washington, and the union representing thousands of its postdocs and researchers, agreed on a tentative contract Thursday. The deal brings UAW 4121’s strike to a close.
The six-day strike was the second-longest in UW’s history, according to the organizers.
“I think everyone out here is doing the work that they are doing because they care about their research, and they want to make the world a better place,” said research scientist Katie Osterhage on the picket line last week. “Also, while we're doing it, we'd like to be able to make a living wage.”
Under the tentative deal, minimum wages for postdocs will have increased 28% by January 1 and will be re-negotiated within a year. Postdocs also secured an increased child care fund and other benefits they were seeking.
Researchers will see a 33% increase to minimum salaries over the life of the contract.
“We are pleased to have reached agreements with the postdocs and the research scientists and engineers,” said UW spokesperson Victor Balta in an email to KUOW. “Details on the agreements will be available once the contracts are ratified.”
The union will begin voting on the proposed contract on Friday.
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Highest level of Seattle office workers since the Before Times: Today So Far
- Half of Seattle's downtown office employees have returned to their desks ... what does that actually mean?
- We need to get fish back into the Skagit River.
- These starfish are coming back.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 15, 2023.
Half of Seattle's downtown office employees have returned to their desks. That's according to new numbers from the Downtown Seattle Association, which says that downtown office foot traffic is the best it has been since before the pandemic.
Here's the nuance in the numbers. They're comparing May 2023 with May 2019, before the pandemic shut things down, as the standard of measurement. Also, the in-office numbers only account for Tuesday through Thursday, which are the most common days that folks are coming into the office. People still prefer to stick around home on Mondays and Fridays.
The increased foot traffic has come as good news to downtown businesses, and bad news for anybody on the area's roads. The sudden influx of office commuters has been noticed on the routes into Seattle.
There are some other takeaways from the DSA's numbers. Check out the full story here.
Seattle City Light operates hydroelectric dams throughout the region, including three dams on the Skagit River. If you turn on your lights in Seattle, this is where about half of that energy comes from. We value those lights, and also Netflix, PS5s, and plugging in electric cars. But this energy has come at the cost of salmon runs.
City Light is now engaged in a project expected to take about two decades — create a path for salmon to get around three dams on the Skagit River. This would reintroduce salmon to habitats they have been cut off from for generations.The project is bigger than City Light, too, with partners ranging from local tribes to federal agencies. It's early in the process and there are still hurdles to jump before getting started. Read the full story here.
Folks have their eyes on another species out on the coast. Starfish are showing signs of a comeback after years of suffering from a wasting disease. Ochre star populations are on the upswing across the West Coast, including in Puget Sound.
“The population has been rebounding,” Olympic National Park biologist Steve Fradkin told KUOW. “It's still not to where it was, but we're not losing a lot of organisms.”
That doesn't mean things have entirely corrected. There are about 20 species that this disease has affected, and they remain under threat. Scientists also do not have an answer for where the wasting disease even came from.
“As a scientist, it's troubling to not be able to have a definitive answer for what is causing it,” Fradkin said.
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Dockworkers reach tentative deal with West Coast ports, averting strike
The organizations representing dockworkers and ports along the West Coast reached a tentative agreement Thursday after months of tense negotiations.
Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su stepped in to help broker the deal and avoid a looming strike that could have severely disrupted the supply chain.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced the agreement in a joint press release. If ratified, the contract will cover all 29 West Coast Ports for the next six years.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement that recognizes the heroic efforts and personal sacrifices of the ILWU workforce in keeping our ports operating,” said PMA President James McKenna and ILWU President Willie Adams in the joint statement. “We are also pleased to turn our full attention back to the operation of the West Coast Ports.”
ILWU declined KUOW's interview request, but provided details on next steps.
Local chapters of the union will send delegates to a contract caucus to review the agreement and make a recommendation to rank and file members. Those workers will then vote on the tentative deal. The union said the ratification process can take a few months.
Adams said, "time at the bargaining table was well spent and that the agreement represents the hard work of our rank and file and the sacrifices they made during the pandemic," in a statement shared with KUOW.
PMA did not respond to requests for interviews.
Both groups said in the statement they will not be providing further details about the agreement.
Longshore workers have been negotiating with the ports since their contract expired last July. The dispute grew heated in recent weeks, with the PMA accusing the union of grinding port operations in Seattle and beyond to a halt through work stoppages. The ILWU denied those claims.
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Would you pay $20 for a pampered cherry? Today So Far
- They're called "ultra premium" cherries and they're grown right here in Washington state.
- Three glaciers disappeared from Mount Rainier.
- Seattle's City Hall Park has reopened after a two-year closure.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 14, 2023.
It's a cherry worth $20, perhaps even more. They're called "ultra premium" cherries and they're grown right here in Washington state. But to get one, you'll have to travel outside the USA.
"They're like pampered cherries," Northwest News Network's Anna King told Seattle Now, also noting that, "Right now, it is for the super affluent, and it is for those premium markets."
King has been reporting in the Northwest's agricultural region for a couple decades and says she has never seen an operation like this one, outside of Kennewick, that produces these high-end cherries. They're grown in an upscale greenhouse in a highly controlled environment. The roof can open and close depending on the conditions — temperature, wind, moisture. A farmer controls it all through their smartphone. They're not harvested like other cherries. These are harvested in the middle of the night, when it's dark. The result is a cherry that is absent any bruises or blemishes, about the size of a half dollar.
"They want to preserve that crispy crunch when you first get into a cherry," King said of the nighttime harvest schedule. "We don't see that because our cherries might be harvested during different parts of the day, or they might be a little bit longer from tree to market. But these cherries are off the tree and in a market within 48 hours. That's pretty amazing timing given that they are going to Indonesia, Japan, China, all over in the Pacific Rim. So they are very preciously handled."
These cherries are not likely to show up on local grocery store shelves. King notes that Costco attempted to get ahold of some, but walked away with sticker shock. These cherries are slated for export. This luxury agricultural process could become more common in the Northwest as climate change alters farming conditions. Check out the full story over at Seattle Now.
I keep asking myself: What would I spend a spare $20 on? A cherry? I put this question to my KUOW web team colleagues. The idea around this quickly soured for those living in Seattle, where $20 perhaps doesn't go so far.
Reporter Ashley Hiruko would buy a ticket for a show at the Sunset Tavern, or some ice cream for the family from Salt and Straw. Editor Isolde Raftery argues that Seattle is not a $20 city, and says Seattle has a "mountain tax" — you pay a lot to live here and every now and then the mountain comes out and that's nice. But she'd probably go for coffee and a couple cookies for the kids. Editor Stephen Howie echoes that sentiment. When he comes into KUOW's Seattle office, $20 covers lunch for him. Otherwise, he'd go for a movie ticket, nice olive oil, a piece of halibut for two, or a "fancy-ass bouquet from Pike Place Market."
A Seattle lunch can cost $20 (unless you go to Dick's where you can get a week's worth of hamburgers). My problem is that when I buy lunch in the U-District, I usually walk by Pink Gorilla and end up buying a couple NES games, so that brings me to $20 real quick. Otherwise, I could probably get a cheap drink and an evening of pinball at Teddy's. I could get 40 pinball games if I stuck to Safecracker at Shorty's. You could get a game of pitch and putt for two at Green Lake, a cup of Mrs. Bennet's Nerve Tonic at Distant Worlds, and some noodles at Time Warp on Capitol Hill (and again, more pinball). Outside Seattle? I'd recommend a road trip to any of our region's drive-in movie theaters.
What do you think $20 can get you these days? In Seattle or elsewhere? Let me know at dyer@kuow.org.
Climate change is being blamed for the disappearance of a few more glaciers on Mount Rainier. Three glaciers are now absent from the mountain. They include Stevens Glacier, which is located on the southern slope. Its ice has dwindled so much that it can no longer be considered a glacier.
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