Thornton Creek covered in a thin layer of snow. December 20, 2013
Monica (in the center) leads the carolers at a neighbor’s house on 17th Avenue NE
At one house, the carolers were rewarded with cookies (see left). At another, a neighbor was so impressed he grabbed his coat and hat and joined in as the carolers moved up the street. At every house the reaction was tremendous, it was hard to tell who was enjoying themselves more, the carolers or the folks being serenaded on their doorsteps.
Here are the highlights from last night’s meeting of the Victory Heights Community Council, where attendees got to munch on delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies:
Read the full minutes of the meeting here.
For the second year running, Monica is organizing a caroling party, which will get started at 6:30 PM Thursday (tomorrow) at her house, 10512 17th Avenue NE (use the gate on the north side). After 15 minutes or so of practicing, the carolers will fan out around the neighborhood for about an hour. If you are interested in participating, come on over and join in! The temperatures will be in the 30s but it will be dry, the forecast says. Leave your porch lights on and you might get some musical callers tomorrow night!
We’re getting our traffic circle! It’s official, on December 4th, the city notified Eileen Canola that the funding had been approved and that sometime next year the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) will construct a traffic circle at the intersection of 23rd Avenue NE and NE 105th Street. Read the ongoing saga of this here and here.
The city is holding a Neighbor Appreciation Day on Saturday February 8th, 2014. There’s little time to get a grant application in before the January 8th deadline, but perhaps something on a small scale could be organized. Ideas?
Other topics included the missing vacuum cleaner at the preschool, bike trail proposals in Thornton Creek, and paying for the new Little Free Libraries that have been built.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday, January 21st at 7 PM.
Please take a moment to “Like” the Victory Heights Blog Facebook page.
Shelby from the Victory Heights Co-Operative Preschool reports:
Our upright vacuum cleaner and a bag of replacement bags has gone missing from Victory Heights Cooperative Preschool.
We think it may have been inadvertently left outside near the trash cans in front of our preschool in Victory Heights Park. Perhaps someone thought it was being thrown out and decided to take it for themselves. This vacuum was donated to our preschool and will be quite expensive to replace, as it was a high-quality vacuum. As you can imagine, we need a good vacuum cleaner to clean up after our 80 preschoolers! Before this really nice one was donated, we actually replaced our vacuum cleaners often, as the cheaper ones just can’t stand up to the dirt out kids make! 🙂
Could you please ask the Victory Heights community, via your blog, if anyone has our vacuum cleaner and would be willing to return it, no questions asked?
E-mail the blog if you have any information on the vacuum’s whereabouts.
An open letter from Ruth Williams, President of the Thornton Creek Alliance:
Dear Victory Heights Community Council:
We would like to be sure you are aware that Seattle Parks and Recreation is drafting trail standards for mountain biking in some of Seattle’s natural areas. This is in response to the request of some of the forest stewards at Cheasty/Mountain View Greenspace on Beacon Hill. They view it as a way to reduce crime in the natural area and to pick up the pace of restoration, since there is a great deal of support from the mountain biking community. Their conceptual trail plan is here. Additionally, now that the news is out in the community, BMX cyclists have also expressed an interest in asking for courses.
This change would require amending existing city policy with regard to allowed uses of our natural areas. In Seattle Parks’ Best Management Practices guidelines here it now states in Paragraph 5.1, “Natural areas are characterized as being largely undeveloped landscapes, thickly vegetated with native plant communities, and used primarily for passive recreation. Natural areas are considered to have limited or minimal human disturbance and provide habitat for plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, amphibians and sometimes fish in an urban setting.”
In Paragraph 5.5, Goals, the document further states, “Our goal is to develop a sustainable resource that protects, optimizes, enhances, and increases our natural environments. These environments will provide opportunities for observing and enjoying urban wildlife, engaging in environmental education, and participating in restoration and stewardship activities.” As you see, the goals also would have to be changed, and one wonders, to what?
We would like to ask for your support in asking the Seattle City Council not to allow this change in use of our natural areas.
As you noted in the paragraph above, currently bicycles are not allowed in natural areas. However, at the Seattle Parks Board meeting on Thursday evening, November 14th, 2013, Acting Superintendent Christopher Williams stated that as community interests evolve, so too must regulations and allowed park uses. When one of the commissioners cited the code and pointed out that mountain bike trials would be in conflict, Acting Supt. Williams said Parks will seek to amend the policy for Seattle’s natural areas in order to allow active uses such as mountain biking. Generally, this would open the door to a much more anthropocentric treatment of our natural areas going forward.
Presumably Seattle’s mountain bike trails would be similar to Portland, Oregon’s standards, which are here, on page 31. This would mean ripping out plantings, removing natural vegetation, regrading the soil, and providing drainage to prevent erosion, in order to create a minimum 40’ line of sight and trail widths of six to twelve feet when you factor in the one foot margin on either side.
Wildlife that was absent for decades is starting to return to many of our natural areas as the impacts of logging and invasive plants are mitigated. We are aware that there is research supporting the idea that mountain biking does not harm wildlife, but that research was all carried out in mature forests in multi-square-mile national or state parks, not in the smaller, fragile and developing ecosystems of our urban forests.
In Seattle’s quest for urban density, forested land is at a premium and valued for increasing habitat and the tree canopy. Natural areas should not be degraded with additional compressed and dead soils. Forest restoration should be the priority. Mountain biking does not require a forest, and adding this new use to the natural areas does not make them available to a new group of users (since bicyclists are able-bodied) as the newly required ADA standard trails will do. As yet there has been NO discussion about how to have these two user groups work together.
Last month Dr Steven Handel, director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology at Rutgers University, spoke here in Seattle. He was asked about this conflict. He said one of the main issues is the increase in compressed, dead soils that results when you add and widen trails. He also said that the only way to keep everybody on the trails and out of the plantings is to use fencing.
We at Thornton Creek Alliance have asked that the code remain unchanged. If that cannot be done, we requested that at a minimum clear and specific parameters should be set, so that mountain biking will be allowed only at a couple of the largest natural areas with considerable space, limited habitat potential, and not considered Environmentally Critical Areas. Additionally, since the vast majority of the area in the Thornton Creek natural areas is listed as Environmentally Critical, we requested that these natural areas be exempt in their entirety from active uses.
The Seattle Parks Board will be issuing their recommendation at the January 7th, 2014 meeting.
A couple of other resources are here:
Opinion piece by Denise Dahn in the Seattle Times (November 23, 2013),
http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2022315520_denisedahnopedparks23xml.html
Article by Lee Springgate (former Bellevue Parks director) for the Project for Public Places, http://www.pps.org/reference/springgate/
Communications should go to:
City Council Parks Committee – sally.bagshaw@seattle.gov; tom.rasmussen@seattle.gov; jean.godden@seattle.gov; Richard.Conlin@seattle.gov
Parks Board – Rachel.Acosta@seattle.gov
Urban Forestry Commission – Sandra.Pinto_de_Bader@Seattle.gov
Parks Trails Planner – David.Graves@seattle.gov
We would appreciate your support in this matter If we can be of any assistance as you look into it please let us know.
Sincerely,
Ruth Williams, President
Thornton Creek Alliance
[Ruth Williams is the former editor of “A Place of the Towering Firs,” the precursor to the Victory Heights Blog.]
The next meeting of the Victory Heights Community Council will be on Tuesday, December 17th at 7 PM at the Preschool building in the park. With the holidays so close, the theme is to be more festive this month than usual, perhaps treats will be available to munch on. There are also plans for caroling to return again this year around Victory Heights later in the week. Everyone is welcome to the meetings as always, we hope to see you there.
Direct bus service from Victory Heights to downtown would be eliminated unless the Washington State legislature restores funding, King County Metro Transit says. If proposed service cuts go through, Route 72 would be eliminated completely and Route 73 would be moved west to Roosevelt Way NE. To get downtown, Victory Heights residents would either have to walk over to Roosevelt, or catch a 372 on Lake City Way and then transfer to another bus in the University District. During rush hour, express service downtown would be available by walking to either NE 110th Street or NE 95th Street and Lake City Way.
You can learn more about why service must be cut and how you may be affected at a public meeting at North Seattle Community College this week. Metro Transit also is inviting you to help them understand the affects these cuts will have on you.
Public meeting in North Seattle
Thursday, Dec. 5
North Seattle Community College
9600 College Way N, Seattle – C1161 and North Star rooms (map)
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. – open house
7:00 – 7:30 p.m. – optional presentation and small group discussion
As it happens every year the week of Thanksgiving, trash collection in Victory Heights will occur on Friday this week instead of the usual Thursday pick up. Please be sure to have your containers out by 7 a.m. on Friday to ensure collection.
Customers can report a missed garbage, yard waste or recycling collection by calling (206) 684-3000 or by clicking on “Report Missed Collection” at SPU’s web site, www.seattle.gov/util
Compost Your Giblets: Seattle residents can place all of their unwanted Thanksgiving leftovers, including green bean casserole, aspic, mincemeat pie, turkey bones, celery, yams, potatoes, fruitcake and paper napkins in their food and yard waste carts. The food scraps will be made into compost for local gardens and parks.
Don’t be a Turkey: Property owners are responsible for their side sewer connections to the city’s sewer system. Sewer clogs often happen during the holiday season when disposing of leftovers. You can prevent this by pouring used dairy products, fats, oil, grease or greasy foods into a lidded container and placing it in the trash – NOT down the sink drain.
The second Little Free Library has been installed on 23rd Avenue NE in Victory Heights and ready to lend books. The first Little Free Library, located near the park, started on November 3rd, and now thanks to Robert Gordon, the second is open for lending on the corner of NE 104th Way and 23rd Avenue NE. Assisting Robert with the installation was Keith Dekker and Fred Lupton.
Left to right: Keith Dekker, Robert Gordon and Fred Lupton next to Victory Heights’ second Little Free Library.
Last night’s monthly meeting of the Victory Heights Community Council focused on emergency preparedness. Cheryl Dyer, a volunteer from the City’s Seattle Neighborhoods Actively Prepared (SNAP), gave a talk about how to prepare for a disaster that might cut off electricity, water, gas, and possibly food.
Read the full minutes of the November meeting.
If you live in Victory Heights, you might soon be visited by a block captain who can give you literature from the city about what steps to take in advance of an emergency, as well as what to do in the immediate aftermath. The city will also hold, block by block (as organized by the captains), one-hour presentations where they boil all the information into the essentials. It is emphasized over and over, in case of a catastrophic disaster (particularly an earthquake, but the recent power outage after the windstorm shows what can happen) residents would be left to fend for themselves, perhaps for days maybe a week, before outside assistance could arrive. It’s imperative for each household to have enough water, food, light sources, and a way to keep warm and dry for several days.
Other items discussed at last night’s meeting was the new Little Free Library that has been installed on NE 106th just west of the park. A second is coming soon to 23rd Avenue NE. Holiday Caroling will return in December to Victory Heights, stay tuned for details. And stolen mail from boxes on Goodwin Way prompts reminders that residents should use locked mail boxes.
The next meeting with be on Tuesday, December 17th.
