The Weekend Wrap: Bank Fold, Warm Streak, 520 Fuss

520: Can't live with it, can't get a redesign consensus.

In our thirteenth year of 520 replacement design talks, the City Council has found none of the designs acceptable, and has asked, in a letter [pdf] to Gov. Gregoire, Sen. Mary Haugen, and Rep. Judy Clibborn, for four months to make tweaks. They're looking for dedicated transit lanes, a smaller profile, and better transit connectivity. In fairness, no one loves the new 6-lane designs, not Mike McGinn, Frank Chopp, Jamie Pedersen, nor the residents of Montlake--it's just what the people who wanted four and the people who wanted eight lanes can grudgingly agree on.

It seems like every Friday is bank seizure day, doesn't it? Yesterday regulators seized Bainbridge's American Marine Bank and sold it to Tacoma's Columbia State Bank. The Puget Sound Business Journal story notes that American Marine is the sixth Washington bank to fail since 2009, that Columbia Bank also recently bought Columbia River Bank, in Oregon, and that as of Q4 2009, Columbia Bank had almost $130 million in nonperforming loans itself.

On the bright side, "we are now experiencing the warmest January in Seattle recorded history!" according to Cliff Mass, who is a scientist and should know. He adds that: "Not a single day has had a mean temperature below normal." Our monthly mean temperature should come out to about 47 degrees, and for the foreseeable future, all our winter weather is headed California's way, thanks to El Niño.

Youth crime continues to rattle people: a 15-year-old beat a Metro bus driver into unconsciousness, and a student assaulted a teacher at Cleveland High. State Sen. Pam Roach made the news twice, first for browbeating Bellevue Police Chief Linda Pillo, on behalf of assault weapons, and second for being banned from the GOP caucus and being urged to get anger management counseling. Roach says she's being "persecuted" by Republican leadership. (God, I know that feeling, Pam.)

Earlier in the week, Sightline's Clark Williams-Derry wrote a post called "The Six Americas of Climate Change," in which he commented on the eponymous research [pdf] that finds 51 percent of Americans in the "alarmed" or "concerned" category regarding climate change. Seven percent are "dismissive"--are certain it's not a problem or not happening--but when questioned about the basis for that belief prove themselves remarkably ill-informed.