5/13/26 City Council meeting open thread

 Please use the comments to record your observations.

Seattle negligence looks suspiciously like Santa Fe Drive bike lane fiasco

 Facebook:

The city of Seattle will pay $9.25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a bicyclist who slammed into a car and suffered a traumatic brain injury while riding in a “protected bike lane” near Green Lake, according to attorneys for the injured man.

The settlement came after King County Superior Court Judge Kent Liu found the city was negligent, violated its own standard of care and breached its duty to the bicycle-riding public in designing the bicycle lane, according to court documents.

 

Supervisors try to extend their own term limits under the guise of “ethics”

 Encinitas Votes:

It is a bundled power grab.

On April 21, the Board of Supervisors pushed it forward on a 3–2 vote. On May 19, they decide whether to send it to voters as a single take-it-or-leave-it package. #UnBundle

Here’s what’s buried inside:

– Extending supervisor term limits from 8 to 12 years
– A so-called ethics commission controlled by the same supervisors, with no subpoena power and no enforcement
– New authority for supervisors to control senior county officials

4/22/26 City Council meeting open thread

 Please use the comments to record your observations.

4/15/26 City Council meeting open thread

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Don Hansen passes away

Surfer Magazine:

Sad news washed over the worldwide surf community today, as news that legendary surfer and shaper Don Hansen has passed away. He was 88 years old.

Hansen was a lifelong surfer, and the mind behind Hansen Surfboards, an iconic surfboard brand born in the sixties and enduring throughout decades. Out of the shaping room, Hansen was also a notable wave-rider, landing on the cover of this very magazine in 1962.

Blakespear: public transit über alles

Union-Tribune editorial:

[...] state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, treats the declining demand for transit as secondary to what she calls its status as a “fundamental public benefit.”

So much for the idea that public goods still have to be used to justify their cost — especially when subsidies rise even as usage falls. She does, however, acknowledge that the pandemic has made it far more common for people to work from home and says “transportation patterns must adapt” to this fact.

Uh, senator, they did! Many people happily gave up on this “fundamental public benefit,” welcoming not having to spend an hour a day or more going to and from work. The private sector has figured out that people like working from home. This is why construction of new office buildings has plunged and why CNBC reported last year that more office space is being removed than added in the U.S. for the first time in at least 25 years. CEOs have “updated their priors” and grasped the evidence that 2019 isn’t coming back.

But for many government officials who are spending taxpayer money and don’t have shareholders to worry about, their belief in public transit is unwavering. So what if it needs more than 80% in subsidies, year in and year out, and soon maybe 90%. Transit is inherently good and cars are inherently bad. And if a great majority of Californians disagree, tough luck for them.

In related news. the subsidies have become so budget-busting that NCTD wants to raise fares on the already ultra-low-ridership buses and trains: