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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SDOT ready to hit the road with new leadership
The Seattle City Council has signed off on Greg Spotts becoming the next director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Spotts just needs to be sworn in by Mayor Bruce Harrell to make it official.
Spotts has been serving as the acting director of SDOT since the start of the month. He used to be the executive director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services. He's said that he's leaving his car behind so he can better understand how people use bikes, transit, and rideshare services to get around Seattle.
As he starts the job, Spotts is hitting the streets of Seattle for a listening tour. He is asking for Seattleites to take him around their neighborhood via walking, biking, bus, or other. The idea is to get a sense of the ups and downs of Seattle travel. You can request such a meet up here.
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Oregon company designs new app for tribal members
A company owned by an Oregon tribe has launched a new app designed to improve communication among its members.
Cayuse Native Solutions has launched "Camp Crier," an app that has been customized for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
“This gives them another tool to be more targeted in their information," Company President Debra Croswell said. "And it also allows tribal members who don't live locally on the reservation to participate in those discussions and be active in discussions going on around the community.”
The app allows tribal members, employees, and people living on the reservation to create focus groups. Those groups could be for everything from book clubs to small business owners.
Croswell says the app also lets the tribe post necessary and sensitive information that users might not feel comfortable sharing on social media.
For example, the app was used last month to share information about an armed robbery at the tribe's Wildhorse Casino. The tribe was able to quickly post information and let people know the status of the situation.
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West Seattle Bridge reopens this weekend
The wait for 100,000 Seattle drivers — whose daily commutes have been snarled since 2020 — is nearly over. The West Seattle Bridge is slated to reopen on Sunday, Sept. 18, after being closed for more than two years so crews could fix cracks that wouldn't stop spreading.
All restrictions on the Spokane Street Swing Bridge, also known as the West Seattle low bridge, will end on the same day.
RELATED: Photos/video of West Seattle Bridge repairs
Seattle city leaders are ready to celebrate the reopening of the bridge. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell will join Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and other dignitaries on Friday for a press conference ahead of the big day.
In the meantime, the Seattle Department of Transportation is running last-minute load tests to make sure the bridge is safe.
"We do that with big trucks that are loaded with 80,000 pounds," said Heather Marx, program director for the bridge repairs.
Marx says they've been load testing the bridge for several months using an intelligent monitoring system. The agency has also tracked how the bridge responds to extreme hot and cold weather conditions.
"We had like a foot of snow on the bridge, so not only was it cold, but we also had the weight of all that snow," she noted as an example.
So far, city engineers say the bridge has passed all its tests.
"We would not open the bridge if it were not safe and stable and secure," Marx said.
The West Seattle Bridge is also getting a facelift in the few remaining days before Sept. 18. Crews are replacing expansion joins, pouring new concrete, and replacing signage.
The span was initially slated to reopen over the summer, but SDOT says the recent concrete workers strike delayed those plans.
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Seattle teachers' strike halted after tentative contract reached with district
Next steps: School resumes for all students, including preschool and kindergarten, Wednesday, Sept. 14; teachers to vote on the tentative agreement in coming days.
Seattle educators voted narrowly Tuesday afternoon to suspend a strike that has delayed the start of school by a week. School resumes for all students on Wednesday.
Although school can start first, union members still need to vote on to ratify the tentative agreement reached with the district late Monday evening. In an all-day general membership online meeting on Tuesday, some educators objected to halting the strike, saying they have only received a summary of the agreement from union leaders. Seattle Education Association President Jennifer Matter said the agreement needs to be edited and proofread before being distributed to members. Ultimately, 57 percent voted to suspend the strike, with 78 percent turnout.
The union said it would not release the tentative agreement to the public until members have voted, but has said that the proposed three-year contract maintains or improves the same special education student/teacher ratios, adds mental health staffing to every school, and boosts staff pay. Some union members said the district didn’t give nearly enough of what the union membership was seeking, including pay raises that keep up with inflation, enough mental health supports, or the level of additional staffing they say is needed for special education and English learners.
The district largely backed off its proposal to move some special education students out of segregated classrooms and into more mainstream classes, which it said was critical to comply with federal disability law. The union had questioned the district’s willingness to adequately train, hire and place staff for those “inclusion” classrooms.
Neither district nor union leaders have yet granted interview requests, but the teachers union president called the agreement “huge,” and the district released a statement after the tentative agreement was reached calling the proposed contract “an incredible effort by the (Seattle Public Schools) and (Seattle Education Association) bargaining teams,” and thanked both teams for their hard work.
However, because the contract has yet to be ratified, the union retains the right to go back on strike if its members ultimately reject the agreement on in a final vote.
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Is Seattle about to go back to school?: Today So Far
- Seattle's teacher strike may soon come to an end.
- Western Washington may have to get used to wildfires getting closer.
- The University of Washington aims to divest from fossil fuels within five years.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for September 13, 2022.
If you're a parent of a Seattle student, good news: the teachers' union and the school district have a tentative agreement to end the current strike that has delayed the start of the school year.
If you're a Seattle student, sorry kid, summer is almost over, for real this time.
The tentative agreement came down late last night, so the union still has to vote on it. The district also has to re-plan the start of the school year, but the general vibe from union organizers and the district seems positive. So students can dust off their Pee-Chees and Trapper Keepers, roll out some fresh Lisa Frank stickers, and get those troll doll pencil toppers and milky gel pens ready ... those are all still things, right?
Wildfires throughout the Northwest have had us watching air quality monitors (air quality is pretty good as of this morning). Usually, fire season sends smoke into Western Washington from areas east of the Cascades. But blazes are getting closer and closer west. The Bolt Creek fire is proving to be a lesson in this. So far, it has burned 7,660 acres around the border of Snohomish and King counties.
One lesson came from a pair of hikers who filmed their series of life-threatening mistakes that put them up close with the Bolt Creek fire.
Conditions in the area are making it difficult to control this wildfire. A fire this severe has not been experienced in that area for at least 100 years, so there is a lot of debris/fuel on the ground to feed it. The mountain town of Index, 40 miles east of Seattle, has had to learn how and when to evacuate, quickly.
Amanda Montei is a former firefighter based in Bothell. She says there's another lesson the Bolt Creek fire is teaching us: "It's something we should consider to be our new reality, and therefore start figuring out how we can adapt to those conditions and to the potential for fire in our neighborhoods."
"Moving forward, we can expect to have more events like this," Montei told Seattle Now. "The western Cascades are traditionally known as this high severity, low frequency fire regime ... so when you do see fire, it's going to be really intense, even if you only see it every 100 years in some areas, maybe seen 200 or 300 years in certain areas."
Montei says that the eastside of the state has become used to wildfires in recent years, but the westside is not as aware.
"It's fair to predict that we will see more fires like this in our backyards on the west side of the Cascades, which feels very rare and feels very unprecedented for folks who have lived in this area for decades."
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Omicron booster is step toward Covid 'normalcy'
Heads up: A new booster shot, updated for omicron, is here.
UW Medicine's Dr. Shireesha Dhanireddy spoke to Seattle Now about how this vaccine booster is different and when you should try to schedule an appointment to get it.
"The original boosters are really just the same vaccine that we had been getting for the original series, just to give an additional dose to improve that immunity that may have waned," Dr. Dhanireddy said. "This vaccine is a little different in that it contains the original strain... but it also contains the newer variants."
Dr. Dhanireddy says that we are in a different phase of the pandemic, with fewer hospitalizations, though some people were still hospitalized during the omicron wave. Vaccinated individuals notably held up against the virus far better than unvaccinated people. Dhanireddy says that we could be heading into a situation similar to the flu, which has routine vaccines updated each year.
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Pierce County Sheriff warns of candy-colored fentanyl pills
They appear like attractive pieces of candy or sidewalk chalk, but the Pierce County Sheriff's Department is warning that these rainbow-colored items are not for kids, or anyone else for that matter.
"Rainbow fentanyl" has been showing up in the Northwest, notably in Oregon, according to a Sheriff's Department Facebook post. It has also been seized at the southern border. The post, however, does not indicate that rainbow fentanyl has shown up locally in Western Washington.
RELATED: Fentanyl is a great drug for cartels. But those blue pills are killing King County
RELATED: King County declares fentanyl a public health crisis
The rainbow variety is the same as other fentanyl-laced items, but it has been dyed bright colors. It has shown up as multicolored pills and as small chunks — the Sheriff's Office notes these chunks appear like chalk children use on sidewalks.
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Seattle Pacific University leaders sued over LGBTQ policies
Several students and faculty members at Seattle Public University have filed a lawsuit over the school's anti-LGBTQ policies.
The lawsuit is against members of SPU's Board of Trustees. Plaintiffs claim that SPU is not fulfilling its duties as a university and is adding to enrollment challenges.
SPU has faced pressure this year over its policy to not hire members of the LGBTQ community. Awareness of the private Christian university's LGBTQ policies was heightened when students and staff held protests in spring.
The Washington State Attorney General's Office then launched an investigation into SPU's LGBTQ policies and hiring practices, looking into potential discrimination.
SPU has previously argued that, as a religious organization, it does not have to follow anti-discrimination laws. It has also sued the state over the AG's investigation. SPU's leadership has claimed that the Constitution allows the university to require staff to "agree" with the its perspective on marriage and faith. The AG's Office says the university's lawsuit is an attempt to obstruct a lawful investigation.
The lawsuit filed this week is the latest chapter in SPU's battle over its LGBTQ policies. NPR reports that 16 plaintiffs, along with Our Community Protest, LLC, have sued SPU's Board for its refusal to hire members of the LGBTQ community.
"This case is about six men who act as if they, and the educational institution they are charged to protect, are above the law," the lawsuit's introduction reads. "They are powerful men who use their positions, as trustees of Seattle Pacific University (SPU), to advance the interests of a religious denomination at the expense of the students, alumni, staff, and faculty of the university."
The lawsuit claims that six members on the Board of Trustees have formed a "rogue board" to advance their religious interests. It states that the Board inflicts trauma on the campus and it must be "held accountable for placing their personal religious beliefs above their fiduciary duties to SPU and its people." Plaintiffs claim the university's hiring policy is "loathed" by the SPU community.
The university has not yet responded to the lawsuit, but it did provide KUOW's Soundside a statement: "Seattle Pacific University is aware of the lawsuit and will respond in due course.”
Read NPR's full coverage here.
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How do you deal with online negativity?: Today So Far
- The internet is a wonderful tool for information, but it can carry just as much negative energy. How do we deal with the trolls and aggravating content?
- Also, I'm back from vacation.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for September 12, 2022.
Hello there! It's me, Dyer, your Today So Far guide to KUOW's newsroom. I'm back from a long vacation / two-year delayed honeymoon. I hope you're ready to jump right back into things, however, there is one reader who likely isn't so happy about my return. As I slide back into the TSF routine, I'd like to reset the tone here and chat about something I come across often as someone who works in the online space. Perhaps it's something you encounter too — negativity.
Just before I headed out the door two weeks ago, I got a letter from a reader who we will call "D." The letter stated, "Happy you will be gone for a while!" and threw a couple names my way. I have a general rule to not feed the trolls, however, I have to admit that I sort of agreed with this reader. You see, they objected to a previous "Did You Know" factoid in this newsletter about the "aroma of Tacoma." D insists that such an aroma no longer exists, and that I am a "typical Seattleite, scared of your better neighbors to the south." They called me "childish" and did not appreciate my "belittling of a truly magnificent city." I may have been joking around, but I clearly struck a nerve.
This put me in a weird spot — I agree that Tacoma is a truly magnificent city. That's sort of why I moved there. While I don't condone the unkind tone this person, or any online person, sent onto the World Wide Web, I can say that we both agree Tacoma is pretty great.
How do you deal with trolls, or just aggravating online content? The internet can transmit beneficial information as much as it can carry negative energy. We have a choice about what to do with it. You don't have to allow it to infect you (I know, that's easier said than done).
I've encountered an array of negative people in my work as a reporter. In fact, I used to keep a list of all the names I was called. Once, I was both a "communist" and a "fascist" in a single week. Still, as odd as this sounds, I find it's best to listen first; they may have a point in there somewhere, or maybe not. Keep in mind there is a person on the other side of that tweet or email, and they are likely more vulnerable and complex than the internet can convey. Endeavoring to understand doesn't mean you have to agree or engage with such negativity, and it doesn't mean that you can't set boundaries.
This is not an original approach. I'm reminded of conversations that journalist Monica Guzmán had with KUOW. While she covers more of a political angle, I feel it relates here. It's also something KUOW has dabbled with in the past via its Curiosity Club.
Frankly, this approach is a lot harder than simply calling someone a name and writing them off. In the long run, however, this is a choice that I feel is more constructive. As someone who consumes this online content, I hope this may help you in some way. Or maybe you disagree. That's OK. At least you listened.
With all that said, let's get to the real reason we're here with a few recent headlines from KUOW's newsroom.
- Shootings spiked during the pandemic. The spike now looks like a 'new normal'
- This Seattle arts space provides sustenance to the Black community
- In the post Russell Wilson era, what's in store for the Seahawks this year?
- 'Making good progress on negotiations,' Seattle schools says after three days of teacher strike
AS SEEN ON KUOW
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UW has 5 years to divest from fossil fuel
The University of Washington has five years to pull its investments from fossil fuel companies and refineries.
UW's Board of Regents voted unanimously in favor of a resolution last week stating the university will divest those funds, based on advice from its financial advisors. That advice says the university could do it by 2027.
“The Board of Regents recognizes the gravity and the urgency of the situation with respect to climate change," said David Zeeck, chair of the UW Board of Regents, in a statement. "With this resolution, the Board wishes to avoid greenwashing and to take meaningful action, putting the University of Washington in the front ranks of universities addressing climate change through research, teaching, operations and investments.”
Zeeck added that this is an "early step in a very important journey to reduce the UW’s impact on the environment through our investments and operations."
Second-year student Jacob Anderson is part of a student-faculty activist group. He says UW currently has $124 million worth of investments in the fossil fuel industry through its endowment fund.
"The UW kind of leans on this endowment fund," Anderson said. "They're taking out a lot of loans to build new construction all across campus and they do rely on a lot of the earnings, but how much money you make is not as important if the world is uninhabitable."
Anderson says he wants their success to inspire other students to create change at their schools.
The resolution that the Board of Regents passed also states a goal of investing 2.5% of UW's endowment fund in companies involved with climate solutions.
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Memorial services being planned for 10 people lost in floatplane crash
Memorial services are being planned this week for the 10 people who died in last week's floatplane crash near Whidbey Island.
- A prominent civil rights activist from Spokane, Sandy Williams, and her partner, Patricia Hicks.
- A family from the eastside: Ross Andrew Mickel, Lauren Hilty, and their small son. Hilty was pregnant with another child. They were married just a few years ago on San Juan Island.
- A young attorney from Seattle, Gabby Hanna. Her family says she loved to travel.
- Jason Winters, the pilot, who’s been around seaplanes for decades.
- Rebecca and Luke Ludwig, a married couple who were visiting from Minnesota.
- Joanne Mera, a business owner from San Diego.
Federal investigators are still searching Mutiny Bay for wreckage.
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