27 July 1999

Steinbreuck apologies for being late; introductions are made all around.

Ave group & Laurelhurst & Ravenna & UPCC (me) & others present. Later, more people from Ravenna show up, to talk about the Ravenna Woods situation.

Patty Ave Group on art & sidewalk space. Sees good signs of progress.

Work Zone about jobs for homeless youth. 3 sites they work with. Training a big part of the programme, including "shadowing" working adults for a shift to see what they do. 80 youth trained per year. Funded through HUD.

Steinbreuck wants youth commission to deal with youth issues, hasn't had time to push it.

Work Zone feels they're being cut in favour of emergency shelters. They consider those worthy too, but don't want to be cut out.

Should metro park district be part of lobbying group? Initiative 42? is coming up this year. Labour hates outsourcing portion. Lots of talk about money & problems with getting government money without direct public involvement in how it's spent; some thought that people want to run the zoo and the aquarium as private facilities while receiving public money.

I bring up Ravenna Woods. Steinbreuck says sector management should be involved. Asks what options are available. Lots of talk about how to raise money. LOTS of people (about three of the six non-staffers present) start coming in with data.

Nobody (on the Council) is champion of this right now, somebody needs to be (says Peter).

Steinbreuck will talk to Licata, see what's up, what all is going on w/this property. Steinbreuck phones Lisa Fitzhugh live at meeting. She's not around. Lisa gets voicemail asking for status. Also leaves mail with Nick Licata. Ravenna feels betrayed as they upzoned other areas in trade. (I've heard other groups say they see this as a test case for the whole planning process, and that so far, the city has dropped the ball very badly.)

LOTS of detail talk about the Ravenna Woods situation. Steinbreuck is particularly interested in the $200K profit/4-day turnaround.

Steinbreuck does not seem real optimistic but will see what possibilities exist.

More details of the development plan emerge - it's even worse than I thought, with even less thought to the neighborhood than I imagined. They want to widen the end of Ravenna to 20' to allow (as if) two reduced-size lanes of traffic. This would kill all the houses front yards. They want to put a 12 foot tall retaining wall next to Burke-Gillman Trail along the length of the property. They want four buildings, three stories tall each, with 11 individually-rented bedrooms per floor all sharing ONE bathroom and kitchen. This goes on quite a while, as it violates everything about the planning process. Eventually, the Ravenna group has to leave and the meeting starts to break up.

Before that happens, though, I bring up why I only like ADUs if they're owner-occupied. Steinbreuck looks understanding on bad-landlords issue but still appears to think we can magically make them all better. "The people spoke, and we listened." Specifically does NOT say that removing the owner-occupancy portion wouldn't come up again sometime; I think he still wants it gone, but thinks it's politically unpalatable now.