Mayor Condon will be giving his State of the City address tonight (Thursday, January 30) at 6pm in the North Central High School (1600 N. Howard) Skylight Room. The event is open to the public.
The mayor will be talking this evening about progress made in 2013 in priority areas such as public safety, streets and utilities He will also speak to the work that lies ahead this year and beyond.
The festivities actually start an hour earlier (at 5pm), when you’ll have the chance to meet North Central STEM science students, learn about what they’re working on and mingle during an informal reception.
There will be time following the address for citizens to offer feedback in person. If you’d prefer, you can submit comments and questions via e-mail to Vision2020@spokanecity.org.
Building Stronger Neighborhoods — a subcommittee of the Community Assembly dedicated to raising awareness about and increasing participating in neighborhood councils — will be holding its first meeting of the new year on Monday, January 27 from 5-6pm at Fire Station 4 (1515 W Riverside Ave). Please note that the meeting has been moved to a new time, as the 11:30am lunchtime meetings had limited people’s ability to attend.
The Building Stronger Neighborhoods committee had a productive 2013 and is looking to build on that foundation with a number of goals for 2014. These include alerting neighborhoods to events in the Hot Topic Training series (which has included workshops on nonprofit status, social media and community outreach) and working more closely with area schools to maintain updated neighborhood websites.
You don’t necessarily have to be involved with your neighborhood council to take part in BSN, but it does help for long-term involvement, since one of the committee’s aims is to develop a closer connection between Spokane residents and their respective neighborhood councils. But in the end all it takes to participate is a bit of neighborhood pride.
The Spokesman-Review just published a bite-sized overview of the Community Assembly’s accomplishments over the past year and its goals for 2014. It’s a good chance to see what these volunteer representatives have been doing for their respective neighborhoods when it comes to public safety, land use, pedestrian and traffic improvements, and raising neighborhood awareness.
The story also features a graphic that illustrates how the Community Assembly/neighborhood council process works alongside direct citizen engagement to ensure that our individual voices are heard with collective force at the city level. For handy reference, we’ve included it below.
First post of 2014, and we’ve got both good and bad news on previous traffic-calming applications made by the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council.
Let’s start with the good, taken straight from the e-mail we just received from the city:
The Emerson Garfield Traffic Calming Application from 2012 for infill sidewalks on the East Side of Adams from Mansfield to Alleyway and on Madison between Mansfield and Alleyway have been chosen by the City Council to be implemented.
The project is being moved to the final design phase and then into implementation. The build year for the project will depend on the complexity of the project and the design needed; some projects fall into a two year cycle for design and build.
Just to reiterate, that’s a request from 2012. The images below give a rough idea where the sidewalks are to be installed.
Madison/Mansfield
Adams/Mansfield
And the bad:
The applications from 2013 were not chosen for implementation, the crosswalk at Jackson and Maple St. and the Signage at Cora and Euclid. The crosswalk at Jackson was not chosen due to its close proximity to a school crossing one block north of this location. The Signage at Cora and Euclid did not meet the signatures that were needed to move the project forward.
That crosswalk on Maple was requested on account of the busy intersection there, which sees a lot of foot traffic (in addition to automobile traffic) from Safeway. While it’s true that there are two pedestrian crossings a few blocks to the north and south, traffic of any kind naturally tends to follow the shortest and most direct route. There’s a case to be made either way. The signage was a good idea but, as the e-mail indicates, saw no follow-through.
If you have traffic-calming or sidewalk suggestions for application in 2014, please submit them to the EGNC for consideration. But in the case of traffic-calming, also be prepared to gather the necessary signatures.
The Office of Neighborhood Services will be holding another event in its successful and informative Neighborhood Training series. This one is on succession planning: that is, how the current group of neighborhood council officers will be replaced by the newly elected group of officers following this year’s voting process (which most councils typically hold in January).
Incidentally, Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council holds its annual elections in April.
The succession planning workshop will take place on Monday, January 6 from 6 to 7:30pm at the Northeast Community Center (4001 N. Cook) [map]. It will be a great opportunity to learn how your neighborhood — or any committee, for that matter — can groom new leadership as well as plan for expected and unexpected departures of current leadership.
