Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Lakewood Police Memorial
The Lakewood Police Department has settled on a design for the permanent memorial to the fallen four, and construction has begun. It has room if there are more names to come. I sure hope there are not more names to come; we've had more than our share.
You should be able to click on the picture to see a larger version. The memorial is pretty self-explanatory, but if you can't read the bit at the left, it's a quote from Mayor Doug Richardson at the memorial service:
“There is no higher calling than to do one’s duty, and they served well.”
The project will be completed with the generous donation of time, money, and supplies by ART Rasmussen Architecture, Porter Brothers Construction, and Quiring Monuments. Both the architect and builder were involved in building the police station, and it was kind they stepped forward to donate to create this very, very sad addition.
The monument will be unveiled Nov. 29, the anniversary. Details to come.
I don't know about you; I sure don't know if I feel ready to revisit those memories. I will be by then. And I know you will too. We owe it to the four, their families, the other officers and the rest of the family of Lakewood.
Forward this post
You should be able to click on the picture to see a larger version. The memorial is pretty self-explanatory, but if you can't read the bit at the left, it's a quote from Mayor Doug Richardson at the memorial service:
“There is no higher calling than to do one’s duty, and they served well.”
The project will be completed with the generous donation of time, money, and supplies by ART Rasmussen Architecture, Porter Brothers Construction, and Quiring Monuments. Both the architect and builder were involved in building the police station, and it was kind they stepped forward to donate to create this very, very sad addition.
The monument will be unveiled Nov. 29, the anniversary. Details to come.
I don't know about you; I sure don't know if I feel ready to revisit those memories. I will be by then. And I know you will too. We owe it to the four, their families, the other officers and the rest of the family of Lakewood.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
More Patch-es to local news
In the ideal world, a blog tells you about something you will see in your future. That's what this post is about. There's another news source coming. The only reason I happen to know much about the subject of the latest in local news sources is I helped organize a Social Media Club Tacoma panel last month about local news. So here's your fyi so you can know something before a lot of your neighbors.
I'm often asked about the subject of local news since I was the editor of the Lakewood Journal back when the city incorporated in the 90s. I was also the founding editor of the University Place Journal in 1995 or 1996 (the years blur the farther you get from them) Neither paper is around any more. It's often been a struggle to share local news here in the shadow of Tacoma and the even bigger shadow of Seattle. One of the reasons I started the predecessor to this blog many years ago, was because there wasn't even a reliable place to share events on the Internet. You may remember I was typing in events, etc...
That's when we all rejoiced about The Suburban Times. It's a cross between an electronic newspaper and an electronic bulletin board. You can't possibly understand what's going on in Lakewood, UP, Steilacoom, DuPont, etc.. without reading The Suburban Times. Can't happen. Yes, we have a daily newspaper, but The News Tribune is expressly designed for the region, not the specifics of day-to-day living in any one town.
The Suburban Times has that quirky, personal touch that a human being, not a news corporation, can provide. Take a look at their legislative coverage - candidates forced to hold up signs saying whether their stand is yes or no.
The Suburban Times is of course not alone in its methods when it comes to providing local news. The Times use of the Internet is one example of an enormous online news movement. There are a lot of local news blogs of different shapes and sizes. A couple of the more famous examples in Washington are the West Seattle Blog and exit133 in Tacoma. Others are also offering local news in various ways, such as the interesting KOMO experiment with local news blogs.
So ... enters a media giant. America Online. Yes, I'm serious. America Online. And its first site in Washington is, in all places, University Place.
Now you may have stopped reading at reference to AOL, because you remember all those dang CDs they kept sending around, but here's the deal. Experienced journalists are signing up for these jobs around the country. This is a serious, well-funded effort. AOL is committing a lot of money to this. Of course, money does not equal success. How it all turns out will depend on where readers and advertisers go.
If you are interested in the ebbs and flows of local news, I highly recommend you read this article about America Online's news efforts here via TechFlash. The TechFlash article is worth reading because you and I are are the ground zero of AOL's efforts in Washington. The first Patch in Washington is the University Place Patch, which is edited by Brent Champaco, a former reporter at The News Tribune. He'll be doing stuff like covering City Council meetings in UP.
Soon, one of the first Washington Patches will debut in Lakewood. The editor is journalist Marques Hunter, who most recently worked for the Gig Harbor newspaper. It will be fascinating to see how the Lakewood Patch intersects for us as a news provider with The News Tribune, The Suburban Times, and other publications. More news is better. And anyone who guesses how you'll get your local news in, say, five years or even two years is surely only guessing.
Forward this post
I'm often asked about the subject of local news since I was the editor of the Lakewood Journal back when the city incorporated in the 90s. I was also the founding editor of the University Place Journal in 1995 or 1996 (the years blur the farther you get from them) Neither paper is around any more. It's often been a struggle to share local news here in the shadow of Tacoma and the even bigger shadow of Seattle. One of the reasons I started the predecessor to this blog many years ago, was because there wasn't even a reliable place to share events on the Internet. You may remember I was typing in events, etc...
That's when we all rejoiced about The Suburban Times. It's a cross between an electronic newspaper and an electronic bulletin board. You can't possibly understand what's going on in Lakewood, UP, Steilacoom, DuPont, etc.. without reading The Suburban Times. Can't happen. Yes, we have a daily newspaper, but The News Tribune is expressly designed for the region, not the specifics of day-to-day living in any one town.
The Suburban Times has that quirky, personal touch that a human being, not a news corporation, can provide. Take a look at their legislative coverage - candidates forced to hold up signs saying whether their stand is yes or no.
The Suburban Times is of course not alone in its methods when it comes to providing local news. The Times use of the Internet is one example of an enormous online news movement. There are a lot of local news blogs of different shapes and sizes. A couple of the more famous examples in Washington are the West Seattle Blog and exit133 in Tacoma. Others are also offering local news in various ways, such as the interesting KOMO experiment with local news blogs.
So ... enters a media giant. America Online. Yes, I'm serious. America Online. And its first site in Washington is, in all places, University Place.
Now you may have stopped reading at reference to AOL, because you remember all those dang CDs they kept sending around, but here's the deal. Experienced journalists are signing up for these jobs around the country. This is a serious, well-funded effort. AOL is committing a lot of money to this. Of course, money does not equal success. How it all turns out will depend on where readers and advertisers go.
If you are interested in the ebbs and flows of local news, I highly recommend you read this article about America Online's news efforts here via TechFlash. The TechFlash article is worth reading because you and I are are the ground zero of AOL's efforts in Washington. The first Patch in Washington is the University Place Patch, which is edited by Brent Champaco, a former reporter at The News Tribune. He'll be doing stuff like covering City Council meetings in UP.
Soon, one of the first Washington Patches will debut in Lakewood. The editor is journalist Marques Hunter, who most recently worked for the Gig Harbor newspaper. It will be fascinating to see how the Lakewood Patch intersects for us as a news provider with The News Tribune, The Suburban Times, and other publications. More news is better. And anyone who guesses how you'll get your local news in, say, five years or even two years is surely only guessing.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Budget Discussions, including option of raising taxes, under way
So far, as promised, the Lakewood council has had one work session on the proposed city budget. Here are highlights about the budget proposal. Remember the draft comes from the staff and manager. So the draft budget is subject to change and almost certainly will change.
For one thing, if you own a house in Lakewood, your taxes would go up under the draft. Should the city of Lakewood charge homeowners $1.75 a month (on average) for sewers via a sewer tax? That would raise $300,000-$350,000 a year but be yet another tax in a down economy. I seriously don't see the seven of us doing that ESPECIALLY in this economy.
But who knows? Three new council members took office in January, and unless you polled everyone I don't know how you would predict whether this council is willing to raise taxes or not.
You can find a plethora of other highlights in the materials provided to council, some of which I scanned in and placed at this site below. (Tip - Click on 'Go to SlideShare and then click on the little Full-Screen icon on the lower right of the frame in order to actually be able to read the document)
After I scanned this in I saw the last several pages are already on the city website, so that's a clearer option for the PowerPoint slides.
There are no layoffs contemplated in the budget - that's different than what you've seen in many other cities - but Lakewood has apparently had its pain for now though then you'll recall this is budgeted with a tax increase. The city shed 19 positions over the last couple years. How we maintain our services - and yet don't raise taxes - will clearly be a focus of discussions. I've known a lot of people who've been out of work for far longer than I would have expected. We can't raise taxes, and we all need to adjust our expectations for what any sort of budget - be it a home budget, a business budget and certainly a government budget - can do.
It's not a very eventful budget. I had the chuckle because if you read the slides called 'Budget Highlights' you'll see that the very first screen has the budget highlights for this year, 2010. This budget is so quiet we had to import accomplishments from the previous year! There are also some highlights of course that apply to 2011 and 2012. There is a position added to work on economic development: we need to bring more jobs to Lakewood to help invest our way out of the slumping economy, and make better use of the land along I-5.
At Wednesday's hearing, Councilman Mike Brandstetter made a good point about the council getting more involved in figuring what businesses we want to attract, and how to attract them. A huge thrust of the city economic development plan right now is to bring hotels, and that's great as far as it goes. Hotels raise land values and make the area more attractive, bring visitor tax dollars in, etc..
But Mike works at Bates Technical College, and he made the point that a lot of people who work in the hospitality industry are taking classes so they can get jobs that pay more than jobs in the hospitality industry. What's Lakewood doing to attract higher-paying jobs such as, say, contractors who serve Joint Base Lewis-McChord. We began a good dialogue on this subject Wednesday night.
Anyway, that's about economic development. I refer you to the slides for more detail about the budget. Basically, what I called this draft budget at the first budget meeting, Monday, was a "duck, cover, hold" budget: we're trying to protect what's going on good now within the city. There's no money for the kind of simple stuff we might have imagined five or even three years ago. I remember when we got all excited about how many police officers to assign to neighborhoods; now we're excited to still have our current staffing level of police officers.
If you like a lot of interest and have passion about roads, parks, and/or planning issues, click here for links to more information specifically about what was presented regarding planning, economic development, parks and public works.
The budget hearings continue for the next couple of Monday and Wednesday nights. The police budget is up for discussion Monday. I'll keep you posted. We're about a month away from intense deliberations and final decisions.
Forward this post
For one thing, if you own a house in Lakewood, your taxes would go up under the draft. Should the city of Lakewood charge homeowners $1.75 a month (on average) for sewers via a sewer tax? That would raise $300,000-$350,000 a year but be yet another tax in a down economy. I seriously don't see the seven of us doing that ESPECIALLY in this economy.
But who knows? Three new council members took office in January, and unless you polled everyone I don't know how you would predict whether this council is willing to raise taxes or not.
You can find a plethora of other highlights in the materials provided to council, some of which I scanned in and placed at this site below. (Tip - Click on 'Go to SlideShare and then click on the little Full-Screen icon on the lower right of the frame in order to actually be able to read the document)
Lakewood's Draft Budget Overview
View more presentations from Walter Neary.
After I scanned this in I saw the last several pages are already on the city website, so that's a clearer option for the PowerPoint slides.
There are no layoffs contemplated in the budget - that's different than what you've seen in many other cities - but Lakewood has apparently had its pain for now though then you'll recall this is budgeted with a tax increase. The city shed 19 positions over the last couple years. How we maintain our services - and yet don't raise taxes - will clearly be a focus of discussions. I've known a lot of people who've been out of work for far longer than I would have expected. We can't raise taxes, and we all need to adjust our expectations for what any sort of budget - be it a home budget, a business budget and certainly a government budget - can do.
It's not a very eventful budget. I had the chuckle because if you read the slides called 'Budget Highlights' you'll see that the very first screen has the budget highlights for this year, 2010. This budget is so quiet we had to import accomplishments from the previous year! There are also some highlights of course that apply to 2011 and 2012. There is a position added to work on economic development: we need to bring more jobs to Lakewood to help invest our way out of the slumping economy, and make better use of the land along I-5.
At Wednesday's hearing, Councilman Mike Brandstetter made a good point about the council getting more involved in figuring what businesses we want to attract, and how to attract them. A huge thrust of the city economic development plan right now is to bring hotels, and that's great as far as it goes. Hotels raise land values and make the area more attractive, bring visitor tax dollars in, etc..
But Mike works at Bates Technical College, and he made the point that a lot of people who work in the hospitality industry are taking classes so they can get jobs that pay more than jobs in the hospitality industry. What's Lakewood doing to attract higher-paying jobs such as, say, contractors who serve Joint Base Lewis-McChord. We began a good dialogue on this subject Wednesday night.
Anyway, that's about economic development. I refer you to the slides for more detail about the budget. Basically, what I called this draft budget at the first budget meeting, Monday, was a "duck, cover, hold" budget: we're trying to protect what's going on good now within the city. There's no money for the kind of simple stuff we might have imagined five or even three years ago. I remember when we got all excited about how many police officers to assign to neighborhoods; now we're excited to still have our current staffing level of police officers.
If you like a lot of interest and have passion about roads, parks, and/or planning issues, click here for links to more information specifically about what was presented regarding planning, economic development, parks and public works.
The budget hearings continue for the next couple of Monday and Wednesday nights. The police budget is up for discussion Monday. I'll keep you posted. We're about a month away from intense deliberations and final decisions.
