Kent: A good piece. It highlights both the attractive and maddening aspects of our local governance. The goals in many cases are commendable.
But are they priorities?

Usually, setting of priorities for the year ahead is tied to the public budget.

The city enters the year deeply in the red. We have been hit less hard than many localities by the continuing recession. But we have been hit nonetheless.

How can we get out of the red? Then, what can we afford to do within the resources available? What is the "to do" list? Which projects are worthy of funding? Which must be deferred or addressed partially? Which must be thrown overboard?

You are quite right that ordinary citizens have different priorities than
elected officials. The ordinary citizen is worried about his job, his tax burden, the quality of his kids' schools, public safety, and the provision of basic public services. The elected official, too often, is concerned with trying to please a source of political support or money.

Of all levels of government, city government is judged most often by
the nitty gritty services it is expected to provide. You could ask Paul Schell or Greg Nickels, for instance, what happened to them when they were perceived as being unable to keep public order and/or clean up streets after a snowstorm.

Vision is great. Provision of day-to-day effective governance is essential.

@Ted - NPR had a great quote on vision this morning in the context of Obama's space program, paraphrasing - "Vision without funding is a hallucination, resources spent without vision is a total waste of money."

For one, spending money developing 'planning principles' and the like such as this priority process is a waste of money.

These things are important but they are the exclusive domain of the electeds, to be most widely discussed during election cycles. Spending money on such is nothing but a symptom of a dysfunctional local government.

City government is retail government, it is where **individuals** have their one on one interaction with THEIR government.

If a corporate municipality is too big to have those relationships, it needs to be made smaller. Period.

Procedures such as this are really just corporate bureaucratic excuses to avoid responding to individuals (as likely is the 'work better with other governments 'priority).

This, in my mind, amounts to corporate treason. We need to take these corporate welfare/bonus sucking bums and put them in the proper place, panhandling outside a light rail station. And if they aren't civil about conforming with their own common and statutory law, proceed accordingly.

FWIW, that's MY top priority!

"Let's get practical"

That's been the message voters have been sending, for years, via initiatives. Too bad the press and the politicos continue to misread (ignore, more likely) that message.

Kent, that really needed saying. Thank you.

Seattle, home of "basics to the back" governance.

@bubbleator - can I quote you on that?

Also, "Seattle, home of backseat driver governance!"

Yes, the City Council is irrelevant, but the author merely flirts with the obvious rather than shedding any light on the situation. This is highlighted by his ignorant use of urban agriculture as a punch-line, while delightfully conflating politics and economics--a bad habit picked up by the chattering class, as the language of economics became fashionable amongst the cognitive elite.

Were the author actually to inform himself, he'd be forced to confront the fact that the financial crisis negatively impacted agricultural production, only compounding the affect of 5 years of rising energy costs. In other words, the urban agriculture movement is a response to the persistent food inflation experienced for the better part of the decade. Frankly, I see no reason to expect food inflation to abate anytime in the near future.

Van Dyk, another author prone to parroting economic language, and routinely invoking the depression, never manages to note the common-sense, low-cost solutions enacted throughout the period. During the Depression, the Federal government established programs to stimulate the HOME ECONOMY; agricultural services were established through Universities to assist home-producers. The Home Economy was if fact a branch of study. Home food production generated 40% of the nations calories during war time rationing; any serious student of history can not help but note the role self-sufficiency plays in a nations success and self-determination.

To put this in economic terms the author could understand, my delightful hobby is now a seasonal enterprise that requires a retail license and wholesale license. I estimate that this years activity will generate enough income to meet my entire needs for the year!

That's a wholesale nursery license.

I think what Kent is looking for is statements that are measurable and/or falsifiable. While those kind of goals may not encompass all of human experience, a goal that is neither measurable or falsifiable should make the author think twice about whether it is even worth writing down. If you can't determine whether you've achieved your goal, how can you be held accountable for it?

@Fly
I assume you carry on your hobby inside city limits and that it is organic, i.e. actually sustainable, not just called that like the city's award winners from the construction industry who have designed demonstration gardens on midrise/highrise walls and rooftops.

If you are the former, you would be wise to make sure that Priority 1/ 2 Recover Development is not in fact (detail) at cross purposes with Priority 10—Local Food. The waiting lists for P-Patches are very long and more patches, some existing ones too, are in serious competition with Priority 1/2.

The most interesting aspect to me is who/what is dejected and running in last place. For as long as goals and priorities have been made public—it's been: Here comes Beetle Bomb! Priority 17— Access and Transparency. At least the new mayor gives off enough of the right appearance to draw a turn-away crowd without too much ultra-staging. Kent phrases the right concern: he might be abnormally slow at "something strange happens to them."

The BIG strange thing that happens to 'em is they suddenly come under a lot of pressure connected to selective information that can only be overcome by getting the whole picture as soon as possible and there is no better way to do that than bring all of the city's residents into the process of learning and puzzling it out together, continuously, and from the beginning, not after burning money making muddles bigger & bigger and windowing the possible to far less than it could have been.

So you say citizens are not capable of that? Whose fault it that? When developing citizenship (as opposed to employees) is routinely at the top of the list, not the bottom, Seattle will be a great city.

@afreeman,

Clearly, your not interested in my technique. I don't support the P-Patch system; I'm well aware of the long waiting list, while I'm also aware of individuals who tend more than one patch. As far as the City's priorities, I have my own. As Ernest Becker wrote, "Only self-reliant people see their leaders as they are, and not as projections of their own fond hopes or foolish fears." Good luck waiting on that priority list. A consensus driven process produces vague, contradictory, and ineffectual results. Dissensus is the approach needed, yet the least likely to be employed.

My point, however, is that the author doesn't know squat about the goings on in the neighborhoods. Urban food production has been a trend in the neighborhoods for nearly a decade. The growth is real. On average, I commit 25 hours a week for approximately six months of the year, and I expect to generate enough income to cover my ANNUAL LIVING costs. In fact, there is a trend in small-scale enterprises operating from residential properties; I'm aware of several small-scale manufacturing set-ups that produce customized parts, along with the run-of-the-mill repair shops. Of course, I actually live, walk, and recreate in my neighborhood; an entirely different quality of attention than those whose civic engagement ends at the curb, as they get in their car.

"Home food production generated 40% of the nations calories during war time rationing"

Fly, I would like to believe that. Poking around Google for three or four minutes I couldn't find anything that would support that claim (or even define "Home Economy").

And Fly, you are lucky to be able to live, walk, and recreate (hopefully not literally anymore) in your neighborhood, and also you are lucky to not have to work 40+ hours outside your neighborhood supporting your family. Those whose civic engagement ends at the curb are often those who are living near the poverty line. They live in "neighborhoods" also, just not yours.

Fly, sorry you got the idea I was not interested in knowing whether your nursery was inside the city limits and organic or at least more sustainable than the construction industry award-winning gardens. I am. I am also interested in whether you feed yourself directly from it as well as sell starts. I am also interested in your strategy for moving your operation or otherwise keeping the shade of sun pirates at bay.

There are times when these threads start reading like some of the dystopian sci-fi I read in the ‘70’s.

I’m still not clear on how I can raise an appreciable portion of my annual caloric intake on my 4X8 deck. Any suggestion?

If you live in an apartment, you're automatically saving land (and potentially horticultural/agricultural land) compared to anyone with a house.

Ha ha, praise from Ted Van Dyk and Doug Tooley- time to stock up on the Geritol, Kent.

What Kent is doing here is a sort of random-walk theory of journalism. Grab some general truisms and complaints, season lightly with city-specific examples, and serve with a garnish of broken-windows theory.

But in the process he gets a few things wrong. For starters, it's not the City Council's job to "take care of the nitty-gritty, pay the bills, stay within the budget, and keep their city in repair". That's the Mayor's job, using the city departments that report to him. The job of the City Council is to make sure the Mayor doesn't go off on some wing-ding, like, say, proposing that city residents tax themselves to pay for "emergency" repairs to the seawall, when the City Council has been working to get funding in addition for that work and the process is right on schedule (unless the Mayor decides to derail it).

And the City Council has been doing pretty good at that. South Lake Union has some of the oldest water mains, sewers, and utilities in the city, and the City Council, working with our two Senators, now has some federal funding to help with the Mercer Street project, which will be digging up and replacing that rotten infrastructure.

Nor does Kent apparently understand the savings that can be made by reducing the trash footprint. Garbage trucks are part of why city streets get broken. Cut down on the garbage and you save money on trucks, streets, pollution, AGW, and, of course, the cost to the consumer of the wrappings that form such a large part of the trash.

Well, fish gotta swim and some journalists gotta crank out a piece like this every few months, but there's no reason to gobble it down like a mechanical duck in a novelty shop. The City Council is stepping right up to the challenge of not having a Mayor, and so far they're doing pretty good.

Karen Sebulius, the head of HHS, invited the heads of 5 health insurance companies, including WellPoint Inc, to have a chat. It was clear they weren't running for payday loans as companies, but still had plenty of cash to lavish on executives while raising rates almost 40% for some customers.
The Obama health care summit doesn't appear to have made any headway, but the story that didn't get covered, was that while health care reform was being discussed at the Blair House, it was also getting discussed by HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) just down the hill.

It's estimated that Victory Garden's produced 40% of the produce during WWII rationing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden#cite_note-3

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1