A conversation with Seattle
“One sore spot,” admitted Richard Conlin recently, “has been the way that developers have used their ‘unit count’ in different ways depending on what City regulation they are working with.” Land use code counts units, as mentioned earlier, by kitchens. But “some developers,” Conlin says, also applied for a Multi-Family Property Tax Exemption (MFTE). Continue reading City Council Looks into Micro-Housing’s Free Lunch
On March 18, 2013, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to approve increasing the cap on car2go’s Seattle fleet, from 330 to 500 cars. The 500 leaves room to grow on — the fleet will likely add another 100 cars, to 430 total, as part of the concomitant expansion of car2go’s home area footprint to Southeast and West Seattle on April 1. Continue reading car2go Expands to Keep Up with Demand in Seattle
Rasmussen, who recently rode on a crowded bus, thinks there’s nothing pressing about an Eastlake line, despite Amazon having just offered the city $5.5 million to pay, in part, for additional streetcar service in South Lake Union. The Seattle Streetcar carried 700,000 passengers in 2011–beating its forecasted ridership for that year by about 170,000. Continue reading City Council’s Transportation Chair Wants to Slow Down Rapid Transit
City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen is pushing for Seattle to join nine other Washington cities–Tacoma, Shoreline, Sammamish, Puyallup, Auburn, Marysville, Burien, Airway Heights, and Union Gap– in participating in the National League of Cities Prescription Discount Card program. In other cities, the average discount has worked out to about 23 percent off the regular retail price for medication. Continue reading Seattle Looks at Joining a Prescription Discount Card Program