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Opt out of phone books

Seattle recently enacted a couple of ordinances which will make it easier to opt out of yellow page phone book deliveries. These ordinances provide for stiff penalties for companies delivering unwanted directories to your home if you have opted out. Seattle has contracted with Catalog Choice, an outside agency for this service. Catalog Choice handles junk mail as well. They do require creating an account to manage which phone books (if any) you wish to receive. More information is available at Seattle Public Utilities.  SPU maintains a Frequently Asked Question page as well with the answers to a lot of potential concerns.

You have to take the initiative to opt out of the delivery. Many folk already just drop their phone books in the recycle bin the day they are received. Opting out solves not only the immediate problem of unwanted yellow pages, but also the overloading of the recycling operation, and reduces the waste of forest resources. Your opt-out selections must be made 30 days in advance of the scheduled delivery for them to be honored. The Dex deadline for opt-out is May 16th.

The web site for Catalog Choice is slow today (May 5th) due to the extremely high percentage of Seattle residents who wish to opt out or otherwise manage their yellow pages deliveries. The ordinances are not popular with the phone book companies, and some are mounting a First Amendment challenge to them as noted in this article on the PI. Update: As of May 10th, 105,000 Seattle households have opted out per this article.

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Crown Hill Cleanup, a success! Thanks to all!

Candy Igou, who organized the Spring Clean Crown Hill event for April 30, reports:

Spring Clean SUCCESS!!!  THANKS!!!
Crown Hill is a Great Place to Live and Work!

Last Saturday, April 30th, both YOUR residential and YOUR business neighbors cleaned up the streets of Crown Hill. The success was felt as we piled the 30 – 40 bags for city pick-up. That much trash was removed from the streets piece by piece.   And numerous graffiti tags were painted over by the wipe out team.

Comments were heard like:

  • “I pick up all year in the areas that I walk.”
  • “It makes me mad to see someone throw down the garbage, but I better not say anything lest they take offense, so I just pick it up!”
  • “Businesses should not have to pick up garbage but most of them do, we should thank them for how nice their business looks. Maybe tell others we will help with pick-up when we see the need. Or push a grocery cart back when we see it.”
  • “We should have a bus-stop weekend cleaning crew all year!”

“Are there prizes for children?” was a question from a precious little girl who had worked so hard. Great idea for next year! She gets two prizes in 2012!

It was hard work with rewarding good feelings at the end. Thanks to everyone! Let’s try to keep Crown Hill clean ALL YEAR!

We had about 30 participants this year, including many participants from Crown Hill businesses and residents, and from Labateyah Youth Home.  We cleaned the public rights of way along Holman Rd, 15th Ave, 14th Ave, 13th Ave, 85th St, 90th St. And the Crown Hill Business Association’s graffiti rangers painted out the work of numerous vandals.

graffiti rangers
Graffiti Rangers Dean Loken, Sharon Giampietro, and Jack Siefert. (Photo courtesy of Sharon Giampietro)
2011 Crown Hill Cleanup
Simon from Chase with an hour's cleanup. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Weatbrook)
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New: Crime Log for Crown Hill

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Rather than publish a new article here for each week’s log of crimes in Crown Hill, we created a new page which will be updated from time to time with crime reports from around the neighborhood. Information is retrieved from the online map provided by the Seattle Police Department. Most reports get no notice by the news media. However, if a media outlet has reported a crime, we will attempt to link to that. The link on the description (following the date) links to the actual police report.

We will update the page from time to time with the new reports, and a map of the incidents. You can view the page here: http://crownhillneighbors.org/wp/neighborhood-information/crown-hill-crime-log/

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Walk Score® Now Includes Transit Score

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A couple of years ago, we wrote an article on Walk Score® from walkscore.com.  The Walk Score® for an address is a measure of the walkability for that address, in other words how easy it is to walk to most destinations such as grocery stores, libraries, bookstores, etc. Scores at the high end (90-100) indicate an environment where “Daily errands do not require a car.” Scores at the low end (0-24) mean “Almost all errands require a car.”

The programmers at Walk Score® have recently implemented a similar index:  Transit Score(tm) to indicate the transit friendliness of an address.

Try it yourself!
Go to WalkScore.com, enter your address, and see how you fare on these two measures of reduced automobile dependence.
walkscore
Scores for 9250 14th Ave NW (click for full size)

Continue reading Walk Score® Now Includes Transit Score →

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Bernie Matsuno Appointed Director of Dept. of Neighborhoods

Mayor McGinn appointed Bernie Matsuno as the Director of the Department of Neighborhoods on April 20th. From the news release:

Mayor Mike McGinn announced this morning the appointment of Bernie Matsuno as permanent director of the Department of Neighborhoods. Matsuno had been serving as interim director since February 1. McGinn also announced two additional personnel decisions, including a new permanent director of the Personnel Department.

Matsuno had served as interim director in 2006 under Mayor Greg Nickels before Stella Chao was hired. She also was deputy director of the Department of Neighborhoods in 2007, director of the department’s Community Building Division from 2004 to 2006, and participated in the creation of the Department of Neighborhoods and the Neighborhood Matching Fund in 1988. Most of Matsuno’s public service career has been with Neighborhoods.

“Bernie has great experience in the Department of Neighborhoods from its inception,” said McGinn. “Her experience will help all city departments engage and partner with the public in improving our communities.”

Bernie was appointed interim director in February.  Matsuno replaces Stella Chao who ran the DON for four years under the Nickels and McGinn administrations.