Cascadia Report

Seattle's clubs, musicians may be on way out

Seattle is close to snuffing out its club scene and is losing the people who produce the city's music, according to a pair of articles in The Stranger. Whether you're a club-goer or not, Seattle needs all the diversity it can get.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is drafting a series of rules that reportedly would make it easy to close down all of the city's clubs on drug-related technicalities. The proposal is unworkable in the extreme, as shown in this hilarious story.

Meanwhile Portland is becoming "Seattle's hot new neighborhood" as musicians move south. The attraction is a lower cost of living, an influx of talent into the city and new music venues. Not that this is a new trend -- the Doug Fir lounge, cited as one of the new draws, opened two years ago.

The proposed rules are part of a trend that threatens Seattle's character by discouraging vibrant nightlife. No doubt The Stranger would argue that outspoken coverage of these issues is important for the city. It's convenient that it also makes a brilliant defense of the paper's advertising base.

Canada bails out Olympics budget

The 2010 Olympics are getting another $100 million from the national and B.C. governments to cover soaring construction costs.

The capital budget for the games has swollen 23 percent since 2002 to $520 million, despite trimming or cancellation of some projects. The spending plan came under scrutiny earlier this year in comparison to the$1.2 billion budget for the games in Turin, Italy. Vancouver organizers say they have less to build and that the venues can be completed with the current budget.

Critics maintain that the projects still lack transparency and accountability. They charge that the true cost is hundreds of millions more because project costs have been shifted to other agencies for accounting purposes.

Check how candidates near you rate

To help voters navigate through the thicket of competing political campaigns during the election season, the Municipal League of King County just published its series of candidate ratings for legislature, supreme court and Seattle city council.

The nonpartisan community group has been rating candidates for office since 1911 based on four critieria: Involvement, Effectiveness, Character and Knowledge. The ratings are the only independent non-partisan, non-agenda driven evaluation of candidates in the area. On the group's web site voters can see the ratings and read questionnaires filled out by the individual candidates.

I served as a volunteer on one of the evaluation committees that met evenings throughout August to rate some candidates for legislature. I can attest to the nonpartisan nature of the process and the fairness of everyone involved (the natural result: candidates from both parties earned high and low ratings). A printed voters guide with the ratings will be available at Safeway stores and other locations in King County next week.

Seattle should mimic Stockholm's traffic plan

During the last six months Stockholm tested a sophisticated traffic-management system designed to ease congestion, cut pollution and improve the quality of life in the city, according to a story in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required). It's a model that could easily be implemented in Seattle, which has a central area that's roughly the same size and has similar geographic chokepoints for traffic.

The Swedish city used a congestion-pricing system that charges drivers different amounts depending on the time of day. A windshield-mounted transponder automatically deducts the tolls from the driver's bank account every time the car passes through a checkpoint. Since the tolls rise or fall depending on congestion, drivers adjust their habits. The result is more space for bicycles, pedestrians and buses, and less time for thousands of cars to spew exhaust while stuck in traffic.

A similar system would fit well with the Seattle's stated goal of making the city friendlier for travel by bicycle. Stockholm ran the test and plans a referendum to decide whether to keep it. A yes vote would sustain public support better than any plan imposed by a bureaucracy would.

Similar congestion-pricing programs have been discussed in Cascadia, where gridlock is likely to spread even if residents heavily tax themselves to pay for mass transit and road projects. The Puget Sound Regional Council years ago won a federal grant for a pilot project that would use car GPS to assess tolls on some roads. But it's unclear how that project paid off or might be more widely implemented.

Region grapples with water shortage

It's hard to imagine in this soggy region, but water resources are under pressure.

British Columbia is starting to run out of groundwater thanks to soaring population, more wells and climate changes including less snow, according to the latest in a series of water-related stories in The Tyee.

Researchers don't know exactly how much groundwater is withdrawn now, the story says. But there's evidence of dropping acquifers, especially in the Okanogan and on Vancouver Island. With the area's population forecast to grow by a third to one-half by 2020, alternate water sources need to be found.

Meanwhile, in the Portland area the EPA recently designated a major aquifer under Clark County for closer consideration during construction projects. The decision doesn't automatically stop any projects but is a sign that the health of the area's water resources should at least be a factor.

Alaska Airlines may fly to Hawaii

Alaska Airlines is working to pass federal safety hurdles that would allow it to fly long flights over water, potentially to Hawaii and Central America, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

The Seattle airline remains tied up in safety and scheduling problems but is expanding to places where people from Cascadia want to go. The new certification would allow it to fly its 737-800 jets up to three hours away from land.

Growth-management laws still aren't safe

Washington's so-called property-rights initiative, I-933, is receiving only lukewarm support from business groups that generally want to roll back land-use laws, according to a report today. Supporters of a similar measures a decade ago reportedly are taking a pass this year because they see it as a lost cause.

Don't be so sure. While there may be differences over this specific initiative, momentum is behind the "government causes our problems" mindset, especially in exurbs and rural parts of the state.

Over breakfast in Concrete, Skagit County, today I noticed that the latest Sedro-Woolley Times-Courier carried an opinion piece by the Building Industry Association of Washington, laying blame for the state's affordable housing cruch on restrictive growth-management laws. Technically the group isn't working to pass I-933 but its efforts to undermine land-use laws will help the measure. Similar screeds are appearing around that state and could easily put I-933 over the top.

Unfortunately the campaign against I-933 hasn't caught fire. They talks about abstractions, like how much traffic the repealing land-use laws would supposedly cause. But it's far from clear that those those abstractions will persuade enough voters to support the status quo in November.

The confessional will help McGavick

The chattering class overwhelmingly seems to think that Mike McGavick's open letter last week admitting several personal mistakes was itself a mistake.

In the letter, U.S. Senate hopeful McGavick said his regrets include being a lousy husband, getting a DUI, being an absent parent and laying off people while he was Safeco's CEO. In 2003 his ex-wife told me that he was on the phone with Slade Gorton while she was in labor with their son.

These issues may have been brought up by Maria Cantwell's camp late in the race. Confessing now gets them out into the open and also makes McGavick seem like the honest, aw-shucks guy who most voters like to support. It's another opportunity for McGavick to talk about personality instead of issues, in a year when his party's record and stance seem deeply unpopular in this state.

The race for governor in 2004 showed that a nice-guy image can nearly beat a solid policy wonk (Dino Rossi would be governor except for a few dozen votes!). By basing his campaign in Seattle and spending more, McGavick is sure to improve on Rossi's record. Until Cantwell's campaign gains some traction on the issues, McGavick's chance of winning remains much higher than Democrats want to think.

Regional support needed for West Coast rail

Eliminate hundreds of cars from the road, stimulate tourism and maintain a viable transport corridor along the West Coast. That's what Amtrak's daily train between Seattle and Los Angeles does. It also may need the support of Cascadia states to stay in operation.

This piece in a California newspaper makes the case that passengers are effectively supporting the 1,400-mile run despite repeated Bush Administration attempts to eliminate its budget. The three states should provide financial support in exchange for better service, which would fit with Cascadia's regional trasport needs.

Expect more cross-border timber mergers

More deals between U.S. and Canadian forestry companies are likely as the industry continues to struggle with excess capacity in North America and low prices, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This week's combination of paper units of Weyerhaeuser and Domtar, a big Montreal-based firm, brought more attention to the trend. Weyerhaeuser, with annual sales of $23 billion, is trying to boost its profitability by jettisoning one of its paper businesses and hopes the move helps fend off hostile takeover attempts by private equity firms.

The industry has been cutting costs for years by closing mills and consolidating. In fact, Weyerhaeuser became a major Canadian operator in 1999 when it bought MacMillan Bloedel. But an acceleration of the trend could further undermine employment in rural parts of Cascadia and continue development away from the industry that largely built this region.

Alaska voters okay tax on cruises

Cruise ship passengers who sail to Alaska from Seattle or Vancouver will each pay a $50 tax under a new law approved by Alaska voters this week. New taxes also will cover gambling and profits from cruise-related excursions in the state.

The cruise industry spent heavily to counter the measure and is already threatening cutbacks. Carnival says the measure will cost it $24 million in 2007.

It's the latest attempt in Cascadia to get the booming cruise business to shoulder more of the costs of cruise-related traffic, pollution and tourism services. The bet is that the Alaska business is unique enough and most travelers wealthy enough to pay the extra fee.

Conference tackles what makes Cascadia unique

A conference starting in Vancouver today explores the similarities among residents of Cascadia. Scholars, pollsters, environmentalists and others will discuss how we relate to the region's geography and our "spirituality, ecology and social transformation."

This is how the organizers describe it:

One focus will be on how public life is developing differently in the continental Pacific Northwest because of the region's cultural openness, signified by a record low level of devotion to formal religion. The flip side of this phenomenon is an unusually passionate interest in "spirituality," including reverence for nature.

The event is all day today and Friday at Simon Fraser University. Call 604-291-5855 for more details.

Vancouver wooing Seattle passengers

A newly appointed Seattle representative of Vancouver airport is launching a campaign to encourage more travelers from the region to use the Canadian airport for international flights, getting them to go north instead of through SFO or LAX.

The number of passengers from Seattle connecting through Vancouver to Asia soared 40 percent from 2004 to 2005, according to the report in the Puget Sound Business Journal. Seattle passengers account for about 5 percent of all YVR traffic to Asia.

And no wonder. Vancouver has 117 weekly flights to 8 Asian cities and 75 weekly flights to 11 European cities, according to the report. Seattle has 36 flights a week to three Asian cities and 24 flights to three European ones. Some of that is because Vancouver is Canada's West coast metropolis.

The development manager at Sea-Tac is quoted as hoping that near-capacity flights from SEA will attract more carriers. But the airport has lost fllights to Tokyo, Osaka and China in recent years.

How state law can respond to the housing crunch

The Seattle area continues to defy the national trend of a sharply slumping housing market. The result is fewer people can afford homes, especially anywhere near their work. So what to do about it?

A thoughtful commentary by a realtor ran in the Seattle Times Wednesday, making the case that the affordable housing cruch was caused by the state's Growth Management Act. That law required counties to figure out how to focus development in order to curb sprawl. It also upset a lot of rural landowners, and spurred a rollback measure this fall called I-933.

Though he doesn't take a stand on I-933 -- which many business groups support -- he suggests five sensible policy steps:

• Require that growth-management plans under the GMA result in no net loss of housing opportunities;

• Require that growth-management plans balance projected job growth with growth in the housing supply, to ensure employees can live in communities where they work;

• Ask communities to increase affordable-housing opportunities. Some strategies include flexibility in lot sizes and allowing detached "accessory dwelling units," such as those proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels;

• Establish performance measures for growth-management plans, to measure whether they actually accommodate growth and to verify that municipalities are adjusting plans to accommodate growth, as they are required to by law;

• Make the funding of critical infrastructure projects — such as roads, sewers and water — a priority in state and local budgeting.

Voiding current growth laws is a big mistake. But there are critical missing links. The Seattle area should follow examples of its Cascadia neighbors Vancouver and Portland in fixing them. Encourage more dense in-fill development and build the infrastructure necessary to make living in built-up areas attractive.

Alaska's governor loses reelection bid

Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski conceded defeat in his reelection bid Tuesday. The longtime politician lost the Republican primary to a small-town mayor who now faces Democratic ex-governor Tony Knowles in November.

While Cascadia includes part of southeast Alaska, the outcome of the election is important because of the impact Alaska's governor can have on the economy of the overall region. Murkowski was a proponent of more oil drilling and construction of a new natural gas pipeline across Canada. The governor also appoints officials who regulate the fishing industry based in Seattle and the cruise industry, whose ships sail from Vancouver and Seattle.

A thorough report on why this governor's race is important to the region and nationwide is here on the Washington Post's web site.

Vancouver airport workers strike averted

A strike by 250 security workers at Vancouver airport was averted Tuesday morning when their union agreed to mediation. A work stoppage could have disrupted travel because other airport staff unions reportedly were planning to honor picket lines.

More trouble at Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines continues to struggle with its core business: getting passengers to their destination safely and on time. The airline claims it's making progress fixing maintenance and delay problems, but anecdotal evidence and recent statistics suggest otherwise.

Yesterday, passengers used an emergency slide to evacuate a flight in Long Beach after smoke filled the jet's cabin. A separate flight arrived in Chicago three hours and 15 minutes late after a delay in Seattle due to maintenance problems. And a Vancouver-to-San Francisco flight on Friday made an emergency landing in Seattle after the cabin failed to pressurize. Several passengers were treated for ear pain.

Maintenance issues are particularly sensitive for Alaska Airlines since a faulty tail screw caused a deadly crash near Los Angeles a few years ago. One of its planes took off from Seattle earlier this year with a dent in its fuselage and another filled with smoke after arriving in San Francisco.

Also important for regular fliers, the airline's on-time performance has worsened, according to federal statistics. Less than 73 percent of flights were on time in June and about 50 percent earlier this month, when the airline had baggage-sorting problems at Sea-Tac airport. Those numbers don't tell the whole story since they count any flight arriving at the gate 15 minutes behind schedule as late. Twenty-six percent of Alaska's flights in June were delayed, by an average of 38 minutes, according to the Department of Transportation.

Alaska Airlines didn't return a call for comment on Monday.

Seattle-based Alaska has the most extensive route network throughout Cascadia so the region would benefit if it operated efficiently. But if the recent performance continues Cascadia travelers will increasingly avoid it, despite the convenience of its timetable. "I really want to like the airline," a man told the Anchorage Daily News last month. "But they really, really need to reorganize and get their act together or they're going to do permanent damage to their image."

Widening gap in urban-rural income

The wealth gap between rural and urban areas is the subject of a New York Times story today that focuses on the waning fortune of Oakridge, Oregon, a depressed logging town near Eugene.

As elsewhere in rural Cascadia, high-paying blue-collar jobs that supported families disappeared when the local mill closed:

Expressed in 2005 dollars, the average pay for a full-time worker in rural Oregon fell to $27,600 in 2005 from $34,200 in 1976. Over the same period, average pay in urban counties in Oregon climbed to $37,800, putting the rural-urban gap at $10,200 and rising, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

In Oregon the rural poverty rate was 13.8 percent in 2003, 2.4 points higher than in urban areas, according to statistics from the U.S.D.A. Rural poverty in Washington rose to 13.4 percent, 2.7 points more than in urban areas.

Time to plan for more open space

A century ago Seattle was barely a frontier town, but it still had the foresight to sponsor the Olmstead Brothers to design a plan for parks. Today the plans that set aside well-used green space from Lake Washington to the Arboretum to Ravenna are a key part of the city.

Now Seattle needs to plan for new open spaces to support a city that may have, by 2100, twice its current population. This article by a designer and a professor tries to get the ball rolling.

Fixing globalization will take more than this

"I always vote but it doesn't seem to make a difference. What else can I do?" That was the question of a gray-haired lady who took time on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear a senator from North Dakota talk about making globalization more fair.

Unfortunately Senator Byron Dorgan didn't give answers. In Seattle to promote his new book Take This Job and Ship It, he told a few dozen people sad tales of workers who had lost their jobs when companies shifted production abroad. An example: he said he's outraged that Huffy bicycles are now made in China by workers who are paid 33 cents an hour while American taxpayers are stuck paying the pensions of former American workers.

Dorgan wrote the book because he's frustrated that Republicans in Congress control trade policy. He rightly blamed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its corporate backers for laws that ignore the concerns of workers. But will populist anger without solutions win Democrats votes?

Obviously there are lots of losers in the current form of globalization. Yet in Cascadia, the most trade-dependent region on the continent, people want to hear how to make the system work better. Leaders need to explain concrete steps that can help more people benefit, things like better educating Americans (and Canadians!) while improving environmental and worker standards overseas.

In a nod to Seattle's reason for being, several times Dorgan said "I support trade. I'm not against trade. But it has to be fair trade." But that's a classic canard of protectionists. In fact, Dorgan voted for the 2002 Farm Bill, which unfairly doles out billions of taxpayer dollars to support prices of U.S. crops so farmers in poorer countries can't compete. Their only choice is to shift to cut-rate manufacturing -- an opportunity corporations eagerly provide.

Dorgan's book actually includes some solid ideas (tax policy that discourages exporting jobs and pollution, for example). If the book reaches readers who are brainwashed by pro-globalization cheerleaders like Tom Friedman it may add to the policy debate. But Dorgan wasted his opportunity in Seattle, leaving yet another old lady and many like her worried about globalization with no idea what to do about it.

more on mcgavick's contortions

To win a seat in the U.S. Senate this fall, Mike McGavick needs to persuade Washington's middle-of-the-road voters AND every conservative Republican.

On issue after issue, this requires contortions. The Stranger has a succinct report on how McGavick is finessing his support for teaching creationism in schools. He's repeating the performance on other subjects at campaign stops around the state.

To keep the effort going, McGavick announced on Friday that he is loaning his campaign $2 million. The money, of course, is part of the mega-million payday McGavick got from his time as CEO of Safeco. Thanks to Safeco, McGavick can more than match the personal fortune Senator Maria Cantwell used in 2000 to defeat McGavick's old boss, Slade Gorton.

Restraining Cascadia's nanny side

Restraining Cascadia's nanny tendencies seems about as easy as eliminating salal from one of the region's fields.

Just as Seattle seems to grow up and enjoy itself, opposition fights to keep it quiet. The number of licenses to sell liquor, for example, has risen almost 60 percent since 1997 as new clubs and bars have opened.

But Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is harassing bar and club owners into signing agreements with a long list of operating limitations designed to make them "good neighbors" by keeping the area around their businesses quiet after hours. The city has obsessed for years over how to handle benign strip clubs and police regularly crack down with excessive force on club-going crowds downtown.

Now this week city police handed out a record number of tickets for "boating while intoxicated" during the annual Seafair hydroplane races. Editorialists applauded the crackdown.

There are similarities in Vancouver, where at least some residents have been trying to shake the city's "no-fun" image with a campaign and a web site, funcouver.com. Why become just another picturesque town filled with restaurants and shopping but scant nightlife?

The city is considering if it could loosen its drinking laws. Drinking at the summer fireworks show should lead to less enforcement in general, according to the argument.

Clearly the rules are local land-use issues that need to take into account the wishes of all the residents. But they should consider that having places to party, let off steam and celebrate is part of what makes Cascadia's unique quality of life.

Burner launches first TV ad

Darcy Burner launched her first TV ad in her challenge to Republican Congressman Dave Reichert (R - WA, 8th) today. The introductory 60-second spot can be viewed on her campaign web site.

The ad is running thanks to Burner's fundraising, which made the suburban Seattle U.S. House race one of the few competitive ones in the country and the only in Cascadia that's drawn significant national attention. Republicans drew fire for inaccurate TV ads paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Burner's restrained ad makes the case for "change," hitting all the popular notes. She talks about her family connections to the military and her personal history, all over film of her walking with her family and talking with nodding senior citizens.

Green's strange rationale to defeat cantwell

Green Party candidate Aaron Dixon has a novel justification for his run against Senator Maria Cantwell, who is well-known for having a strong environmental record.

Dixon claims there's no difference between Cantwell and Republican challenger Mike McGavick, who benefits from oil industry contributions and whose environmental policy includes support for increased drilling on public lands. Never mind that McGavick's more pro-Iraq war than Cantwell or that Cantwell led the campaign against oil drilling in the Arctic, allowing tankers in Puget Sound and for more renewable energy.

Apparently Dixon doesn't mind if he siphons enough votes for the Republican to win: "Maria has supported the war, and the war has created a tremendous environmental destruction in Iraq," Dixon said, according to the report.

New growth spilling over the Cascades

The Puget Sound-area economy has long been red-hot thanks to the technology industry. Two reports suggest some of the growth is spilling over the mountains to eastern Washington.

Suncadia, a 6,300-acre resort project 80 miles east of Seattle, announced multi-year plans to add more condos, golf courses and a major retail community. The project targets urban residents who otherwise would have driven to British Columbia for a resort. The article quotes a Bellevure resident who just bought:

"We always wanted to get some place that we could get to from Seattle," she said. "We were looking at Whistler, and it was just too far."

Meanwhile another kind of growth is coming from tech firms planning to use cheap power in eastern Washington for data centers. Investments by Microsoft and Google have been well reported. Now a Seattle developer plans a facility for smaller tech companies looking for similar services.

Though neither promises massive job gains, diversificatin is good for the agriculture-dominated economy. "It is really a shift and a change into a whole labor market that we have never had before," an official with the Port of Douglas County told the P-I. "We are quite excited about it."

Cascadia ports may get new local competition

Ports in Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver are Cascadia's shipping gateways. Now an American man is investing up to $500 million to build a container-port operation in Prince Rupert, a town on the British Columbia coast about 500 miles north of Vancouver.

A story in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday explains that the new operation through tiny Prince Rupert could shave two days' transit for goods from China bound to Chicago. Ships would arrive in the town's naturally deep harbor and travel across Canada on a train line that has excess capacity (instead of on congested routes through the U.S.).

The project still faces many obstacles. But it underscores how much competition Cascadia's major ports face.

A couple of years ago Vancouver benefited while Seattle, Portland and California's ports suffered through a strike. Each port has since expanded to meet demand from the booming trade with Asia, providing more business for everyone.

Yet when an inevitable downturn in business comes, the key question will return: who can do the business fastest and at the lowest cost?

Now Victoria has to figure out HOW to treat its sewage

According to recent orders by the provincial government, Victoria has to start treating its sewage. But how?

The orders, reported here last month, require the British Columbia capital to have a plan for at least some treatment of its outflow by June 2007. But according to this concise report Monday in The Tyee, there is no agreement on what to do by that deadline:

The politicians are swimming hard to pop up on the right side of the tide now, but they are largely still coming to terms with having to move forward at all.

Local business and tourism groups want strict standards for secondary treatment, mimicing what's long been done a few miles south in Washington. Proposals range from simple processing plants to expensive measures that would reclaim usable water and generate power.

It will be fascinating to see if B.C. chooses the bare minimum or technology that sets a new standard.

Plan focuses on Puget Sound's health

Sunday's Olympian has a thorough, easy-to-navigate report on the health of Puget Sound. The occasion is the state's attempt to kickstart a new group of government and private organizations to do what previous government-only efforts have failed at: save the Sound.

Details so far are few. The plan was announced in July and reported here.

But the latest Olympian report offers a trove of data and an excellent multimedia show demonstrating the link between population growth, pollution and the region's economy. There's less contamination of soil and heavy metals, and herring populations have grown, for example, but the polluted runoff from roads has increased, more areas are closed for shellfish harvest and some populations of birds are in freefall.

Oil spill pollutes near Squamish

An oil spill near Squamish, British Columbia, threatened a sensitive bird habitat and covered several Vancouver sailboarders in slime this weekend.

About 8,000 gallons of heavy bunker oil leaked Friday and quickly soaked into a nearby marsh. The estimated size of the spill fell during the weekend but locals were questioning the response, especially since a similar spill occured nearby exactly one year ago.

A similar, larger bunker oil spill along the Washington coast in 1991 killed thousands of birds and spurred debate about oil shipping in the area. This month marked completion of Washington's response to that accident: a habitat-restoration plan and stationing of an emergency-response tug nearby.

What will be B.C.'s long-term response to the repeated spills?

Trains aren't just for tourists

Vancouver, one of the two big Cascadia cities with functioning mass-transit systems, has a new tourist sight: its trains.

The city's SkyTrain is selling automated guided tours for the light rail line. For C$24 riders can rent headsets that provide commentary of the train's route and walking tours in several neighborhoods along the way -- in six languages.

Apparently 16 percent of the train's 200,000 daily riders are tourists, so the transit system figured it makes sense to turn them into an additional revenue source.

Meanwhile in Seattle, where the first beleagered train line is three years away from opening, a local columnist piled on last week by suggesting that urban trains really are just for tourists. Maybe Vancouver's example will force such critics to come up with more creative rationale to slow progress.