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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What can be done to prevent further gun violence in or near Seattle schools?
Garfield High School parents voiced their concerns and discussed solutions at a safety meeting earlier this week.
The meeting comes after a series of after-hours shootings near the school in Seattle’s Central District. An unspecified threat of gun violence also closed Garfield part of Thursday and all day Friday.
Kayla Epting, the president of Garfield's parent-teacher-student association, said she left Monday’s conversation encouraged.
“We will stay diligent in finding solutions that work for our school community around student safety and campus safety,” she said. “And as a result, our larger community will be impacted for the better.”
Epting said she’s glad the Seattle Police Department has increased patrols before and after school, and that Seattle Public Schools has hired additional private security, who are onsite and can intervene quickly if there’s a threat.
But increased law enforcement around the school has some concerned.
A 2021 Brookings study found that school policing often fuels the school-to-prison pipeline, rather than preventing crime.
In 2020, Seattle was among a number of school districts across the nation to remove armed police officers from school buildings in the wake of several high-profile police killings of Black people.
As a Black woman, Epting said she recognizes the harm law enforcement has had on communities of color. But she believes police must be part of the solution to steadily increasing violence in Seattle.
“That’s not lost in this work,” Epting said. “But we also recognize that there is a place for police in this partnership, and we’re working with families to figure out how to best support student safety across the board.”
School officials plan to hold more meetings with parents and the surrounding community this summer and next school year, Epting said. And she hopes the district will work with more community organizations on further gun violence prevention.
In a statement, Garfield Principal Tarance Hart said a new school safety and security plan — for the remainder of this school year and next — is forthcoming.
And Superintendent Brent Jones said the district is taking the threats near Garfield “very seriously” and trying to be both proactive and reactive. But he said the district needs help to make change.
“While these actions address the immediate concerns, we know we cannot act alone,” Jones said in a statement. “We all need to come together around increased gun violence throughout Seattle.”
Late last week, Jones also provided an update on the districtwide security and safety initiative, prompted by a deadly shooting inside Ingraham High School. Ingraham families have been pressing the district for more information since Jones’ last update in February.
On Friday, Jones acknowledged “this update took more time than anticipated.” But he said the district is making “considerable progress in strengthening school safety.”
Jones said the district is in the process of updating building locks so that they can be activated inside classrooms. This fall, Jones said, the district will roll out new signage in all secondary schools to “help students and staff easily remember and follow safety procedures.” And, he said the district has already launched a new anonymous safety reporting app for high schools.
Jones also emphasized the district’s ongoing collaboration with the greater Seattle community — including first responders, the city, and community organizations — to address public safety. And a previously announced wellness council, made up of physicians, clinicians, and first responders, is in the process of making a list of recommendations for a new mental health awareness campaign for Seattle.
He also touted a new pilot program expanding student mental health resources in five schools: Rainier Beach, Chief Sealth International, and Ingraham high schools, as well as Denny and Aki Kurose middle schools.
The program is funded by the city, and Jones said it also allows the district to hire more mental health clinicians and provide trauma-informed training for school staff.
As part of Friday’s update, Jones also shared a summary of the Ingraham-specific safety review. Recommendations the district is considering include:
- Providing additional emergency training for school leaders
- Supplementing the school’s existing public address system to cover the entire campus, in the parking lots, and on the athletic fields
- Upgrading security camera systems
- Increasing the visibility and presence of security personnel
- Altering external landscaping to ensure security camera views aren’t blocked
The district has also hired a full-time social worker for the school, Jones said.
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UW researchers go on strike amid contract negotiations
Hundreds of research scientists, engineers, and post-doctoral researchers at the University of Washington went on strike Wednesday.
The union representing the group said it spent hours Tuesday trying to reach a last-minute deal with the administration, but failed to do so.
Members want salaried workers to get more pay and more support, arguing they help bring in more than $1 billion every year in grants and contracts for the school's research operations.
The union representing the group is also accusing the administration of using unfair labor practices and trying to evade Washington's fair wages laws for salaried employees.
Read the full story here.
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Tacoma police arrest 5 allegedly attempting to break into power vault
Tacoma police have arrested five people they say tried to break into a Tacoma power vault.
The five individuals were caught Monday night after police allegedly saw them on video trying to get into a city-owned power vault on South Tyler Street. The vault is fenced off.
Police say that one of them had a firearm.
KING5 also reports that the suspects allegedly had drugs and paraphernalia in their possession.
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How Seattle's churches are evolving: Today So Far
We're becoming less religious, and that poses a problem for our region's churches, especially if they own considerable property.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 6, 2023.
These days, church buildings not only offer Sunday worship, they are a place for 12-step programs, schools, child care, homeless outreach, and a lot more. They often act as community centers. But times are changing. Church members generally bring in money, and that money pays for upkeep and costs for buildings and property. Seattle's churches are finding that they have more space than people to use it, and that creates an insecure financial situation. For some, it's prompting a change in perspective about how churches can serve their communities. This shift was the subject of a recent Soundside segment. It's had me reflecting for a few days. Churches, and what they mean to a community, can be quite different, depending on where you stand.
Growing up, my family had a Sunday morning routine. My mom would pack us all into a car and head to church. We'd sit there in service for what seemed like an entire day. This would be around the ages of 5 or 8, and I would get scolded for swinging my legs, shaking my legs, or playing drums on the music books left in each pew. The silver lining to this whole trip, for young me, was that after each communion time, I would ask to go to the bathroom. I would casually walk in the direction of the restroom, but before getting to the door I would immediately take a hard left and hurry down the stairs to the basement where the church kitchen was. That's where they left all the unused communion crackers on little plates and grape juice in tiny cups, unsupervised. After making sure I was alone, I would quickly scarf down a cracker and chase it with shots of that sweet, divine grape juice like a barfly with a boilermaker. I'd do that until I could hear steps coming down the stairs, and hurry back up to the pews where my leg shaking and drumming received a renewed, sugar-fueled burst for the remainder of the service.
After it was all over, my brother, sister, and I would hurry out to the car and wait for my mom. Whereas my addiction was geared toward shots of grape juice, my mom couldn't get enough socializing. She'd chat while we waited. We once clocked her at around 45 minutes. When we kids would complain about how long she took, she always said the same thing: "You don't understand. This is our family. We are spending time with family." My 8-year-old reply was that any family who forced us to wake up so early on a Sunday morning should be disowned.
More recently, as an adult, I've found myself taking trips to Thai temples throughout Western Washington. It's usually on a special occasion and we take my ma-in-law. Each temple has has a similar vibe. There are resources for Thai-Americans, language classes for kids, and books. Visitors usually bring food and clothing for for the Buddhist monks who live at the temples. There are chants, prayers, and other traditions during service. Sometimes folks bring food from home. In the temple kitchen, it is organized into a feast for everyone to eat together and socialize. During these temple visits, I think my ma-in-law enjoys explaining to me what is happening and why, and commenting on how similar or different it is to her time growing up in Bangkok. Culturally, I have little connection to what is happening, but at the same time, it's all very familiar. Once, during service, I turned to my wife Nina and said, "So, this is basically church then?"
There was a generation gap in my family when it came to church. We moved around a bit, and while I found grape juice, my mom found a community wherever we landed. It was where her friends gathered. For my ma-in-law, a temple is a place where she can connect with a community of others who have experiences like her own. There is something that words can't really touch when it comes to a community, wherever you find it, and how it holds you up as an individual. I may have not caught on to church like my mom did, but I did come away with a certain understanding. What a lot of folks miss is that, beyond religion, churches often serve as community centers, for places to organize for causes. For example, I guarantee that while our region's agencies have tried to catch up with the overwhelming challenge of homelessness, there have been religious organizations tackling it this whole time.
As Soundside notes, religious affiliations have declined in Seattle, Washington state, and the USA for many years now. There are a few numbers around all this, depending on who you ask. They all add up to a similar story.
- Folks in Washington state who claim "none" as their religion on surveys outnumber those who check the boxes for Evangelical, Catholic, or Protestant. As of 2019, about 61% of Washingtonians said they affiliated with a Christian denomination.
- When Gallup began surveying for church membership in the United States back in 1937, about 73% of Americans were members of a church. It stayed that way for decades. But by 2020, only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque.
- A total of 66% of adults born before 1946 went to church; 58% of baby boomers; 50% of Gen X, and 36% of millennials.
I'd personally argue that folks have kept the religious fervor, they just place it elsewhere, like Twitter, sports, politics, diets, pop culture obsessions, bronies, the gym, or Elon Musk — places where interests, causes, and community meet. That reminds me, "American Gods" is a great book, if you haven't read it yet. Where was I? Oh yeah ...
Churches are supported by members. For congregations, fewer members means less money coming in, but the bills remain. This dynamic is largely behind the Seattle Archdiocese's current plan to consolidate parishes, an effort it calls "Partners in the Gospel." It's driven by lower attendance and fewer priests. Seattle's churches have also started reacting to this shifting religious landscape in ways unique to their communities.
The faith-based Nehemiah Initiative is addressing issues that have been mounting in Seattle's historically Black neighborhoods. Black churches have property, but congregations have shrunk. Much of that is due to gentrification and members being pushed out of the city, away from the churches. The Initiative aims to help religious organizations update their properties to serve as housing for this community, or places for Black-owned businesses to set up.
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Dockworkers slow down at West Coast ports amid ongoing labor dispute
Dockworkers up and down the West Coast are slowing operations amid an ongoing labor dispute, according to a trade group that represents the ports. The Pacific Maritime Association says work stoppages are disrupting trade in Washington state and beyond.
Contract negotiations between the International Longshore & Warehouse Union and the industry group representing their employers have dragged on for more than a year.
Both groups declined to comment on the status of those talks.
The Pacific Maritime Association, however, has published statements accusing the union of effectively shutting down operations at some terminals in Southern California over the past few days.
In a statement issued last Friday, the Association said: "The ILWU is staging concerted and disruptive work actions that have effectively shut down operations at some marine terminals at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The Union is also staging similar work actions that have shut down or severely impacted terminal operations at the Ports of Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle, and Hueneme."
The Maritime Association followed up with a second statement Monday saying that "disruptive work actions" are ongoing: "Union leaders are implementing many familiar disruption tactics from their job action playbook, including refusing to dispatch workers to marine terminals, slowing operations, and making unfounded health and safety claims. The ILWU’s coast-wide work actions since June 2 are forcing retailers, manufacturers and other shippers to shift cargo away from the West Coast in favor of ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Much of the diverted cargo may never return to the West Coast."
Some companies that rely on those ports say delays have been ongoing as the longshoremen fight for a new contract. Those shippers say they’ve had to reroute cargo to places like Houston and truck it the rest of the way.
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The Northwest is approaching 'peak dryness' much sooner than expected this year
Things are drying out in the Northwest sooner than normal. Both Washington state and Oregon are approaching what's called "peak dryness."
Oregon mostly recovered from severe droughts this year. Heavy rain and snow hit many areas, and snowpack built up in the mountains.
But everything’s been on a low bake since May. All the sunny days last month have added up to warmer soils and plants drying out more quickly. The driest part of the year usually hits in mid- or late-summer.
“We all know that fire season, you know every week we can delay it, is a good thing," said Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist. "That’s why we’re so concerned with how warm it’s getting and how little precipitation we’re getting.”
Washington is starting to feel the parch, too. In the Yakima River Basin, some junior-water-rights farmers will be restricted on their irrigation water this year.
The National Interagency Coordination Center says the chance for significant wildfires in central and eastern Washington is now above normal. It also says that above-normal outlook will extend to nearly the entire state next month.
Most of Western Washington is currently dealing with an elevated fire risk. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning Tuesday for the western slopes of the Cascades, because of the breezy conditions, low humidity levels, and warming temperatures.
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Bellevue 7th grader wins national Doodle for Google competition
If you log into Google this week, you'll notice the banner at the top of the page features a drawing of three sisters sipping hot chocolate in a field of flowers. The feel-good illustration is the product of a Bellevue seventh grader who won the national Doodle for Google competition.
Rebecca Wu beat out tens of thousands of submissions with her artwork depicting her sipping hot chocolate with her two sisters. Rebecca's Doodle went live on Google's homepage at 9 p.m. Monday, June 5.
As part of the prize, she's receiving a $30,000 college scholarship, and $50,000 worth of technology for the International School of Bellevue, which she attends.
In a statement that accompanied the entry, Rebecca said she made the drawing to honor her connection to her sisters.
“Sometimes I love them, and sometimes I dislike them very much, but I can't imagine my life without my sisters," she said. "I have learned to be a little bit more patient with them, and they have had an enormous impact on me. We help to inspire each other and to help each other grow like the vines and flowers in my picture. I am never lonely with them, and they can cheer me up. I am grateful for them and all that they have done for me. In this drawing, we are having a fun time drinking hot chocolate, which is one of my fondest memories. The rainbow in the background symbolizes one of the first things I helped one of my sisters draw…My drawing is composed of all our happiest memories to show just how grateful I am for them.”
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Washington state GOP chair Caleb Heimlich is stepping down
The head of the Washington State Republican Party is stepping down. Caleb Heimlich announced this week that he is leaving the role after five years, and a total of 12 years working for the state party.
He plans to officially step down on Aug. 12, when the GOP committee will meet to elect a new chair.
“Serving as the Chairman of the WSRP has been one of the highest honors of my life," Heimlich said in a statement. "Traveling this great state, meeting thousands of committed people, working tirelessly with them to help elect great candidates, each moment has been both challenging and rewarding. However, for the purpose of being more present in my family’s life, it’s time for a change.”
Read Heimlich's full statement below.
The change Heimlich refers to will include working for an unnamed national grassroots organization, according to The Seattle Times. He said the new job will provide a better quality of life for his family — he lives in Pierce County with his wife Mackenzie and three kids. Heimlich also told the Center Square that poor, sluggish traffic between his Puyallup home and the state GOP's office in Bellevue contributed to the decision.
At 37, Heimlich has been one of the youngest state party chairs in the United States. Washington's GOP notes that he has also been the longest-serving state party chair since Jennifer Dunn in the 1980s. Heimlich took over as state chair in 2018, after former TV broadcaster Susan Hutchison left the job. Before that, Heimlich became its political director in 2011, and its executive director in 2013.
It's been a difficult slog for Washington's Republican Party for at least the last three election cycles. Washington's GOP is in the minority in both the state House and the state Senate. In 2022, Republicans lost their hold on the 3rd Congressional District in southwest Washington. Republicans also do not hold any statewide offices.
In a statement about his exit, Heimlich said:
Serving as the Chairman of the WSRP has been one of the highest honors of my life. Traveling this great state, meeting thousands of committed people, working tirelessly with them to help elect great candidates, each moment has been both challenging and rewarding. However, for the purpose of being more present in my family’s life, it’s time for a change.
While I will be working for a different organization and engaged in a different capacity, I will continue to advocate for common-sense solutions, constitutionally limited government, and more freedom. I am committed to restoring balance to Washington state government and believe our citizens would be better served by more representation of diverse views than we currently see from the majority party in Olympia.
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Microsoft will pay $20M to settle U.S. charges of illegally collecting children’s data
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console.
The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and that it also illegally held onto the data. Those actions violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the FTC stated.
In a blog post, Microsoft corporate vice president for Xbox Dave McCarthy outlined additional steps the company is now taking to improve its age verification systems and to ensure that parents are involved in the creation of child accounts for the service. These mostly concern efforts to improve age verification technology and to educate children and parents about privacy issues.
McCarthy also said the company had identified and fixed a technical glitch that failed to delete child accounts in cases where the account creation process never finished. Microsoft policy was to hold that data no longer than 14 days in order to allow players to pick up account creation where they left off if they were interrupted.
The settlement must be approved by a federal court before it can go into effect, the FTC said.
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Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison says she's not leading a new 'war on drugs'
Seattle’s addiction crisis takes center stage at City Hall on Tuesday, as council members debate how to enforce a new state-level law that includes harsher penalties for public drug use and possession.
City Attorney Ann Davison wants her office to prosecute people arrested for drugs in Seattle under this law.
"For the past two years, it's been de-facto decriminalization here," she told KUOW's Morning Edition host Angela King. "So, what we're doing is acknowledging that that is not the way to go forward."
The City Council is considering an ordinance to align Seattle's municipal code with a new state law, which makes possessing small amounts of substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine a gross misdemeanor.
This law is the latest step in Washington's effort to regulate simple drug possession. Two years ago, the state Supreme Court struck down felony drug possession, and the state Legislature passed a stopgap measure making simple possession a misdemeanor. That temporary law, which expires this summer, was never aggressively enforced.
The state's new law, which carriers more jail time and larger fees than the stopgap measure, also encourages authorities to send more people into programs, like drug treatment or other diversion measures that are designed to keep people out of the criminal justice system.
But Davison's critics say Seattle does not yet have capacity to divert people into those services.
Davison's request — for the city to conform with the new state law and to give her office the authority to prosecute drug crimes — has been compared to the nation's so-called "war on drugs" policy. That policy prioritized jailing drug users, often people of color, and failing to solve underlying issues that lead to drug addiction.
Councilmember Tammy Morales says the new law will have "deadly consequences" for people struggling with addiction and that it will send a disproportionate number of Black, brown and unhouse people into the criminal justice system.
Councilmember Kshama Sawant also criticized the new law, saying, in part, that "half a century of the failed 'war on drugs' has proven one thing; criminalization of addiction will absolutely not address the nation's raging opioid crisis."
The Seattle Times published an op-ed this week that asked, "If we can agree the war on drugs was a destructive failure, why would we think a redux would yield a better result?"
Davison rejects these comparisons.
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How Seattle plans to ditch disposable coffee cups: Today So Far
- Would you take a free travel mug from your local coffee shop ... if you promised to return it?
- KUOW has a new podcast to help catch you up on the day's news.
- Our region is experiencing the lowest tides of the year right now.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 5, 2023.
Would you take a free travel mug from your local coffee shop ... if you promised to return it?
Keep in mind, the mug is stainless steel, so it will keep your drink hot longer. Also, you wouldn't be using a paper to-go cup, which, as I see it, has two benefits: less trash, and you won't have that issue where coffee slowly drips on you from that plastic lid ... no matter how tight it is. This is the main idea behind an emerging effort in Seattle to nix disposable coffee cups, and replace them with reusable travel mugs.
This is how it works. Participants put their card on file. At a coffee shop, they take their coffee order in a genuine, fully functional, stainless steel travel mug (that hopefully doesn't drip from the lid). They return the mug to any participating coffee shop, pick up another mug with a new order, and repeat. If they don't return the mug within two weeks, they get charged $15 and essentially have purchased it (though they can still get a refund if they return it within 45 days). The main idea is to just keep exchanging the mugs for free. The effort is the product of Seattle Public Utilities.
Seattle already has similar programs in place. When Nina and I saw Sunny Day Real Estate at The Moore back in March, her beer came in a hard plastic cup with a lid. Folks then returned the cups to a cart. The coffee mug proposal takes this notion to a whole new level, where customers take the mugs to work, home, the bus, the bathroom, wrestling matches, the ferry, fishing, barroom brawls, bingo, gardening, to dinner with parents while they criticize your life choices, and all the other usual places you find yourself.
KUOW's Amy Radil caught up with customers giving this system a try at Tailwind Café on Capitol Hill. Read that story here.
I have some close-to-home news for you. KUOW has a new podcast to help catch you up on the day's news. If you haven't yet, look up "KUOW Newsroom" in your podcast app. That's where KUOW has historically been dumping its news briefs for a while now. I probably shouldn't say this, and some folks are going to get irate with me, but this hasn't been the best presentation of the good work that folks at KUOW have been doing. That's why, starting today, KUOW's newsroom podcast feed will look a lot different.
A daily recap of the news, including all the reporting from throughout the day, will be posted around 5 p.m., all in one episode. Now that's what I call a podcast. This is totally a nerdy, podcaster perspective, but I'm personally pretty stoked about this development and folks in our newsroom deserve a nice pat on the back for this. Here's the thing: You're still going to get all of KUOW's reporting on the radio, but that signal only goes so far. KUOW.org reaches people around the globe. I get feedback from folks across the USA for simple blog posts (yes, KUOW has a blog and it's pretty awesome). TSF readers know that we have our own little newsletter community here. I've heard from readers spanning Seattle to Trinidad and Tobago, all reading for different reasons. A daily podcast rounding up KUOW's news is another great way for folks far and wide to hear us.
I know, I know. I'm the journalist who likes to talk about science, the future, Star Trek, etc. So when KUOW takes a step toward the future (aka podcasts), I get excited. It's one of a few steps the station has been taking recently. So go find "KUOW Newsroom" in your podcast app, and take this step with us.
If you have a chance today and tomorrow, go down to the shoreline. Our region is experiencing the lowest tides of the year right now.
“These low tides are a great opportunity to go out and see environments, habitats, places that are typically covered with water, that we don't typically get to visit unless we are willing to snorkel or scuba dive,” Washington Sea Grant oceanographer Ian Miller recently told KUOW's John Ryan.
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If property values go down in King County, will taxes follow? Not necessarily
In some parts of King County, property values are dropping. But that doesn't mean property taxes will fall.
The King County real estate market has cooled off.
Countywide, property owners may see a reduction in values anywhere from about 8% on Queen Anne to more than 20% in some areas, like the Sammamish Plateau. Those are areas that were red hot just a year ago.
King County Assessor John Wilson said "after record increases last year, what we're seeing is a natural course correction of the real estate market."
In an interview with KUOW, Wilson said roughly 40% of property taxes go toward voter-approved measures.
Assessors set the values, but not the taxes.
When it comes to setting property values, the process is quite complicated.
"Well, we have a whole series of things that are best practices in the industry," Wilson said.
King County is broken down into 85 separate "residential inspection" areas.
"We don't compare Medina or Bellevue to, you know, Skykomish," Wilson said. "It's within each neighborhood context."
Wilson said county assessors do extensive modeling and cross-linking to those models.
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