(Alex Pedersen, publisher of 4toExplore, and a Wallyhood sponsor, recently ran a survey on local issues. Here are the results.)
We heard your voice and the results are HERE. Nearly 400 subscribers from Wallingford to Wedgwood completed our 14-question survey about local issues May 8-10, 2018.
We believe our city government should “conduct official surveys and release results to the public,” as we urged in our Crosscut column entitled, “4 Ideas to Make City Hall Listen.” While our annual survey is not “official,” we hope it advances and clarifies important issues impacting our communities in Wallingford & throughout Northeast Seattle. We published our survey results in Wallyhood last year but a lot has changed since then: we elected a new Mayor, our Councilmember is steamrolling ahead with upzones, and the Mariners are winning baseball games. Here are our 2018 survey results. For a notoriously subjective summary of the new survey, keep reading:
MYSTERIOUS Result: After 6 months of her leadership at City Hall, residents are still unsure of Mayor Jenny Durkan. When asked “Are you happy with the new Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan” an unusually high 50% said “Don’t Know.”
IMPORTANT Result: Most respondents agreed that City Hall should free Wallingford and “The Ave” in the U District from the dramatic upzones City Hall is trying to impose on 27 neighborhoods. For an article on the upzones proposed in Wallingford, see Susanna Lin’s column from January 2018.
URGENT Result: One of the most pressing issues is City Hall’s proposal to spend $8 million to repave 35th Avenue NE. Only 12% support the project, yet City Hall is plowing ahead. This is important to other neighborhoods like Wallingford for several reasons:
- Money save by scaling back the 35th Avenue project could be redeployed for sidewalks and crosswalks elsewhere.
- If City Hall doesn’t listen to Wedgwood, they won’t listen to you either.
- If City Hall refuses to first test the effectiveness of the Roosevelt re-paving before spending millions to re-do 35th Ave, then SDOT’s not likely to test the effectiveness of 35th Ave before reconfiguring NE 40th Street, NE 50th Street, etc.
- If neighborhoods don’t join together, City Hall will continue its divide and conquer/ignore strategy.
In our view, Mayor Durkan should revamp this expensive project by completing only the crosswalk improvements. This would free up some of these tax dollars to address other urgent crosswalk and sidewalk needs throughout Northeast Seattle (65th Street, View Ridge, Lake City, Wallingford, etc) — and throughout the rest of our city. While Mayor Durkan might have been hoping 35th Avenue would be “too local” of an issue to impact her, a trifecta of forces changes the political calculus. Residents are still forming an opinion about Durkan’s leadership, the media has recently published several reports of SDOT over-spending, and there is major opposition to the project. 35th Ave could be a memorable litmus test for the new Mayor in an area of the city that turns out the vote.
LOPSIDED Result: A whopping 88% of respondents said “real estate developers should be required to provide some parking spaces at their new buildings.” This flies in the face of City Council’s recent 8 to 1 vote to loosen the requirement again.
You might remember the most lopsided result in our previous surveys: 85% of residents agreed that “real estate developers should be required to pay Impact Fees to help defray the costs of building new schools, fire stations, and sidewalks as the city’s population grows” (Click HERE and HERE). Because it is so clear Seattleites would like to see their Mayor and City Council impose Impact Fees, we decided to ask the parking question instead this year. It’s important to clear up a false premise repeated by some to confuse the public: if the cost to build housing increases, do those rents or home prices increase? No. Prices are set by the maximum the market will bear. In other words, developers do not voluntarily charge lower rent or lower home prices. Instead, when the cost to build increases, developers and investors make less “profit” (their return on equity decreases).
INTRIGUING Result: Among the qualities people want in their local government leaders, “Accountable” and “Fiscally Responsible” scored by far the highest.
Look here for our other 9 survey questions. Our survey includes Northeast Seattle’s view on the controversial “Head Tax” on businesses with the most revenue as well as answers to the following:
- Do you support Environmental Initiative 1631?
- Should the City Council put Mayor Durkan’s Families and Education Levy on the ballot?
- Do you need more police officers to handle crime in your neighborhood?
Thanks to the hundreds who completed the survey. We know it takes time and we are deeply grateful — especially for your thoughtful written comments that added context and passion to your choices.
Validity of the Survey (a.k.a. no good deed goes unpunished):
- Significant? The good news is that the survey is statistically significant among the universe of our readership (~7,000 subscribers) for www.4toExplore.org. According to statistical tools, such as calculator.net, creative research systems, and surveymonkey.com, we exceed the magic number to achieve statistically significant results. The 387 respondents produce a 95% confidence level, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 basis points. In other words (subject to the caveats below), we are 95% confident that between 83% and 93% of the 7,000 subscribers (5 below and 5 above 88%) believe developers should provide off-street parking. In fact, most citywide polls survey only 400 people.
- “Self-Selection”? While 100% of our subscribers are above average and good-looking, we acknowledge that they do not represent every adult resident of Northeast Seattle. Those who continue to subscribe to 4toExplore are “self-selected” in that they probably share our newsletter’s overarching concerns about the direction City Hall has been taking. Certainly my sense of humor is not sufficient to keep them reading. Moreover, this is not a pure “random sample” of our readership because only people with the time or interest completed the survey. Of course, even sophisticated live telephone polls have this problem when many respondents interrupted from their dinner of salmon and coffee slam down their phones on the hapless surveyor.
- Objective? We acknowledge that it’s difficult to craft surveys with pure objectivity. Opinions of the designer (me, in this case) surely seep into how questions are phrased. I tried to avoid loaded questions liked, “Come on, do you really want this stupid project to proceed?” But even deciding which questions to ask is subjective. We believe, however, that it’s better to try to ask reasonable questions and to listen to your responses, than not to ask at all.
The limitations of community surveys reinforce the point we made in our Crosscut column: City Hall — with its financial means and public mission — should be the one to conduct and publish surveys for everyone’s benefit. As we said in our previous issue of 4 to Explore, “a sustainable city is where elected officials listen to their constituents. ‘Listening’ does not mean public hearings and blog posts to state concerns — listening means materially changing / re-crafting government policies and budgets to address the concerns of residents….”
If you were not able to take this most recent survey, share your thoughts by e-mailing [email protected]. We love hearing from you! Engage and have fun with www.4toExplore.org.
To explore more of Wallingford, subscribe to Wallyhood and attend meetings of the Wallingford Community Council and Wallingford Chamber of Commerce. In previous issues of “4 to Explore,” we highlighted other gems of Wallingford including the Wallingford Wurst Festival (September), Wide World Travel Store (now closed), Chutney’s Bistro (Indian cuisine), the Archie McPhee toy store, and Ro Ro’s barbecue. If the vanilla ice cream at Blue Star Café/Pub is not enough, walk a few blocks East on NE 45th Street for ice cream at Molly Moon’s or gelato at Fainting Goat. Also, be sure to visit the Wallingford Farmer’s Market this summer.
Hi Alex, thanks for sharing the results of your survey. Outreach like this really is important, and hopefully city leaders take note of the results.
Summary:
* 80-something % of people who read Alex Pedersen’s blog agree with him, according to a survey he ran.
* He sponsors Wallyhood and they published the results of the survey.
I requested to be removed from Alex’s survey email list about a year ago, because of his terrible, leading questions and lack of transparency. I know I’m not the only one. This is a survey for people who mostly agree with Alex.
It’s kind of hilarious that things he wants don’t get a price tag in poll questions, but things he doesn’t want does. The poll is done so horribly.
It’s kind of hilarious that things he wants don’t get a price tag in poll questions, but things he doesn’t want does. The poll is done so horribly.
I’ve never seen you post here, Andres. Do you live in Wallingford?
Someone who post anomalously here is in no position to question the credentials of some who posts using their real name.
Many people who post here, including some regulars, don’t live in Wallingford.
Well I think it’s funny that Andres bellyaches about the validity of the study When Alex himself freely acknowledges throughout his post that it’s hardly objective.
The survey and this article are a mess. Publishing opinion, calling it a survey and then putting in a load of caveats because he knows it not a valid survey.
OK, so you feel like the survey was not an objective one, deliberately slanted to get a desired outcome. Perhaps you should ask the people who live near the proposed 35th Ave NE bike lane what they think about Rob Johnson’s “objectivity.” At least Alex Pedersen doesn’t lie about his.
You will support any flawed argument if you think it is agrees with your believe that you should be able to drive your car as fast as you want through neighbourhoods and then store it anywhere you want for free.
No, I will support the argument that people who actually LIVE in the neighborhoods that will be negatively impacted by the policies of outside agitators know what’s best for their neighborhood and the people who live and work there. You, on the other hand, believe that a minority of bike activists should have sway over the concerns of the overwhelming majority of citizens and businesses there. And if that means a city council member lies to push your agenda, the bike activists are fine with that.
I don’t advocate for bicycles and I don’t oppose cars. I advocate for people, whether they are in cars, bicycles or walking, or in there homes, business or the park.
Time and again on this blog and elsewhere you have opposed all changes which would make streets safer for everyone, including people in cars. You dismiss any opinion here you don’t agree with. So don’t tell us you listen to people because you don’t. You just push your own agenda.
If you were actually an “advocate for people,” then you’d be joining the people in their fight against Johnson’s and SDOT’s deceptive exclusive bike lane project on 35th.
And I DO listen to people. That’s how I know most of them are opposed to things like your precious bike lanes or the head tax. My agenda is give voice to their concerns, since city hall has grown very comfortable in their protective bubble, which has been manufactured and maintained by bunch of noisy activists who’ve grown accustomed to being the only ones who have the city’s ear. If anyone has been dismissive of other opinions, it is city leadership.Their bubble needs to be popped, and we are starting that process. People are finally starting to rise up, because they’ve had enough of the lies and incompetence.
You only listen to people with the same agenda as yourself. You just want to drive as fast as you can through neaghbourhoods and park where ever you want for free. You come up with a lot of words to try an justify that.
You are demonstrating very well how segregation is reinforcing itself. You listen to people around you to come up with policy ideas that would make people like you more comfortable, and people not like you uncomfortable. Therefore the neighborhood becomes more and more homogeneous. The “protective bubble” is very strong for people like that. It’s obviously way worse in the suburban gated communities.
If you claim that you listen to people, do you think “noisy activists” are people also? Do you think homeless people are people? Do you think people who bike through our communities are people?
“Give voice to concerns” is yet another major ill of the society, because by far the upper middle class are the most capable of utilizing their time and resource to have the voices heard. Whenever policy discussion includes “public voice” in the US, it always provide way more power to the well-to-do. Most of the problem with public schools in the US are mostly caused by that also: where the upper middle class dictates school policies in expense of the poor.
Oh please, TJ. Like you speak for most people when you advocate for the government razing single family homes in Wallingford to replace them with apartments to create your urbanist utopia. Oh, but at least you’d allow those of us neighbors who are friends to live together on the same floor, thanks!
Of course I believe bike activists and the homeless are people. The problem is that the city council has been listening just to them and ignoring the rest of us. Like it or not, most people and businesses want to be able to drive and park a car in the city. And most people would like to see the law actually get enforced, rather than the current situation of anything goes lawlessness. Our city leadership has hamstrung SPD and despises our police, which is why their morale is suffering and they’re leaving the force in droves. Firefighters are having to double or triple up for safety now when they respond in certain parts of the city. They’re begging the city council to hire more cops because they’re being assaulted when they go give aid to people in homeless camps who are OD’ing.
And that’s just another reason why the city is getting the pushback it so richly deserves from it’s citizens.
If we just want laws enforced blindly, you get the Trump immigration mess. People really only argue for that stance when the law is what they like.
Oh, so now firefighters complaining about being assaulted by vagrants leads to the Trump immigration mess. People aren’t asking for the law to be enforced “blindly.” They’re just asking for it to actually be enforced.
I have always considered hayduke to be a little “arch,” but I cut him (presumably?) slack hoping that his (presumably?) moniker derived from Edward Abbey, who is my hero. And…I like people who stir the pot. But I do agree with him (presumably?) here because this city council has really lost sight of what its first responsibility should be: i.e., taking care of the city. Not grandstanding in preparation for some higher calling or ideology. We are a city in peril and in trouble. I am a community gardener. Whereas in the not-so-distant past, the Good Shepherd p-patch wrestled with rats, liberated pet rabbits, and tomato pilferage, in the last month it has been dealing with a public masturbater, and someone shitting on our picnic table. Something has changed, and it is not subtle.
Abbey is my hero as well! Although I liked Desert Solitaire better than TMG.
But the council hasn’t really changed. Most of them have been there for years, and their predecessors weren’t much different – the faces change, but the game is the same. I think we all really know what’s happening to Seattle, but too few are willing to admit the price we’re paying, and there’s too much money and power behind it anyway. I don’t know where Alex stands on that, but I very much appreciate his independent voice that sometimes opposes that money and power.
His voice surely isn’t more independent than mine, and he surely favors the money of local home owners than I do.
Despite what Heyduke wants you to believe, public masturbation and defecation is not caused by bicycle lanes.
What changed is that Seattle changed from a mid-sized city to a big city, so the problems change. It’s not like Seattle used to deal with housing affordability or traffic issue that much either.
If your whole argument is that “law has to be enforced”, it’s the exactly same argument Trump administration had for the immigration policy. Argument for enforcing the law has to be better than just “because the law is there”.
How about the argument that without enforcement, laws are useless? It’s not about enforcing the law for the sake of enforcing the law. People are seeing increasing disorder and lawlessness throughout the city because they’re not enforcing the laws. Criminals know they can get away with. pretty much anything here. People see the car prowls, the tresspassing, the bike chop shops, the tent encampments, the needles and open drug use everywhere, when they weren’t seeing it just a few years ago.
And if you want to argue that’s just people’s perception and and they’re being hysterical pearl-clutchers, SFD just announced that they will be having firefighters wear bullet-proof vests and double up and even triple up their shifts for safety when they respond to emergencies in areas like Pioneer Square and illegal homeless camps. Firefighters are begging the city council to hire more patrol cops, because they can no longer count on the police to be to be there when they need them.
You are still arguing about law in general, instead of a specific law. There are tons of laws that aren’t enforced, but that only make those specific laws useless, not the whole system useless. Is the system falling apart because some sodomy laws aren’t enforced? No.
Seattle crime rate is lower than 10 years ago. What changed is that it’s now a big city not a mid-sized one, therefore the perceptions are different. Polices and firefighters are just about the worst source of info for this, because they always want more resources. Rich neighborhood cops got the most resources and the least to do, and if you ask them they’ll tell you all about how they are still under-resourced.
I was going to let you have the last word on this one and write you off as incorrigible when you said this is simply an issue of perception. Yeah, those filthy encampments we see everywhere are nothing more than our “perception.” And those firefighters are just imagining the increase in assaults on them. And last I checked, the areas where SFD is changing it’s procedures out of safety concerns are the areas that have the most illegal camps and vagrants, and for the most part those areas are hardly rich.
But then you said that they, like other government agencies, always want more money, regardless of the need. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet!
Encampments everywhere is not a result of laws not being enforced. It’s a result of the city growing too fast and not building enough. The solution is what you’ve trying to fight against.
And since you now know people all have tendencies to justify themselves, you should know that you should not just listen to people who live in Wallingford about what’s the best for Wallingford. Those who are already in have a strong tendency to maintain whatever they already got against the greater goods. An existing small business in Wallingford isn’t going to speak in terms of what’s best for business in Wallingford, but for what’s best for its own survival, which quite often is the opposite of what’s good for business in Wallingford.
“Encampments everywhere is not a result of laws not being enforced. It’s a result of the city growing too fast and not building enough. The solution is what you’ve trying to fight against.”
Let me state this as simply as I can for you: Are camping laws being enforced? YES or NO? Because I see “No Camping” signs with tents right by them all over the city. We’ve always had some homeless, but we used to tell campers “No.”
Second, you’re parroting one of the biggest lies the city and it’s HALA supporters push on the homeless issue. If only we built more affordable housing, the vagrants would give up their tents, get clean, stop their life of crime, get a job and become productive, law-abiding citizens. Bunk. You could wave your magic wand and cut the price of housing to a fraction of what it is today and you’d still have tents and derelict RV’s everywhere. It’s not an affordability problem for them, it’s an ADDICTION and lifestyle problem. Most of the campers are addicts, and like addicts anywhere, they want to be left alone. They follow the path of least resistance to Seattle That’s why we’re seeing people come here from the other side of the country to set up things like tent mansions by the Space Needle.
City leadership loves to say this is simply an affordability issue and not an enforcement or addiction issue, because it not only furthers their HALA agenda, it takes the blame away from their enabling policies and puts it on those evil “privileged” “NIMBYs” who stand in their way.
You didn’t ask if Alex Pedersen lives in Wallingford?
I would say the worst part about sampling is the same thing that poisoned the policy of most neighborhoods: collecting opinion only from people who are already here. That’s how the US got more and more segregated by wealth: nicer neighborhood residents using their own opinion as justification to create policies that blocks out poorer people from the neighborhood. Upzoning benefits the most to people who are currently not in the neighborhood because they can’t afford it. Having an Apodment next to my house surely benefits the Apodment residents that can live in there way more than it would benefit me. Why is the opinion of those people less important than mine? Because they are poorer and lessor humans?
No one is a lesser human than you, tj.
Come on, you should know that I am holier than thou by now!
Seattle Bike Blog has a great post on the 35th Ave NE controversy:
https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2018/06/29/35th-ave-ne-safety-changes-still-on-track-how-can-the-city-avoid-such-divisive-neighborhood-fights/