u/LOOKITSADAM

Just this week, the council voted 5-2 to overhaul its affordability requirements in low-density residential areas, essentially gutting a fee in-lieu program that was intended to act as something of a check on the city's continued proliferation of large single-family homes. Previously, all new homes over 1,500 square feet were required to pay a fee that would be used to fund affordable housing, but that threshold was raised to 1,750 square feet, with the fee only applying to square footage exceeding that threshold.

A unanimous vote last month removes a policy from the city's Comprehensive Plan that would have pushed the city to pursue a designation as a regional growth center, a move that could have unlocked more infrastructure funding for the city, and likely come with requirements for more density.

~ A city of 70,000 has spent eighteen years deciding where to put housing and has landed on: somewhere else.

To date, 23 barista apprentices have completed the program, and several have become shift leads and general managers at their two current locations. For the new Central District location, all five incoming personnel completed the program, including their general manager.

The intersection at 23rd and Jackson Street has recently experienced several closures. The Walgreens closed in May, and the Amazon Fresh shuttered in February.

~ Two national chains walked off that corner this year. The outfit moving in trains kids out of foster care and shelters to run it.

While the internal timeline demonstrates a rapid tactical response, public updates were heavily delayed. Officials, including Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, did not brief the public until around 10:48 p.m., nearly five hours after the initial shooting.

Reporters at the scene were initially informed that the briefing was delayed while awaiting the arrival of dignitaries. Mayor Katie Wilson and state officials have denied requesting any delay to the public updates. However, an internal Seattle Police Department email written by a detective at the scene indicates that someone requested a delay.

~ Eleven minutes to get SWAT, homicide and CSI moving. Four and a half more hours before anyone told the public anything. Only one of those was the hard part.

According to Donahue, 318 people utilized its services in July 2024. That number more than tripled to 944 by July 2026.

The city put those restrictions in place in 2006, then expanded them in 2018, to encourage a cluster of retail and dining businesses downtown.

~ Everett zoned a homeless services provider off its downtown to make room for restaurants. Demand tripled anyway. The rule is still on the books.

In WA there are approximately 126 data centers and related facilities with a footprint of nearly 7 million square feet, according to the research firm Baxtel. Lawmakers and residents worry the electricity demand coming from current and future data centers will strain the already stretched power grid increasing rates for everyone else.

"We did not and do not have a definition of data centers in our land use code. So what that means is they are largely unregulated at this point."

~ Nobody defined a data center in the land use code, and 126 of them got built anyway. The rate case comes later.

The Biden administration proposed protecting sunflower stars under the Endangered Species Act, but the Trump administration has not taken action on that proposal. A spokesperson with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for protecting ocean species, said the agency was prioritizing other "mission critical" work.

It is unlikely biologists will ever raise anything close to the 5 billion sunflower stars lost to wasting disease.

~ A tribe with no reservation and no fishing rights is hand-raising the species the federal government could not be bothered to list.

Currently, floor staff workers make $23.10 per hour. The union proposed the same annual increase across the three-year contract, which would raise wages to $29 an hour. That's the same amount a single adult needs to make in Seattle to support themselves and their families, according to the MIT living wage calculator.

SIFF rejected the union's proposal. Thursday, the union proposed reducing staffing levels at the SIFF Cinema Uptown and the SIFF Cinema Downtown by one person each shift to get $30 an hour by 2029.

~ The floor staff are the ones proposing cuts now, just to reach the number MIT says you need to live here.

By Sept. 2, Kalshi must implement geofencing technology to prevent anyone located in Washington from making certain wagers on its online platform, King County Superior Court Judge John McHale ordered. If Kalshi doesn't comply by Sept. 2, it will face $120,000 in daily fines to the state or has to explain why this solution isn't complete.

In December, the state's Gambling Commission issued guidance saying that "offering events-based contracts or participating in these markets is not authorized in Washington State." McHale wrote that Kalshi has "willfully ignored" this notice.

~ A judge, the Gambling Commission and the state AG all said no. The federal regulator turned around Tuesday and told them to keep taking the bets anyway.

Even in instances where an officer is convicted of a disqualifying offense, their certification can remain active until the state commission conducts its official investigation, which sometimes happens years after a conviction due to a backlog of more than 1,500 cases. SB 5051 contains few mechanisms to penalize agencies that don't report officer misconduct. The state commission can impose a discretionary fine of up to $10,000, but there are no mandatory fines, and no escalating enforcement mechanism for repeat violations.

A 2025 audit by the state found the Des Moines Police Department, located just outside Seattle, failed to report three misconduct allegations to the state, while a fourth incident wasn't reported within the timeframe required by law. But the commission has so far declined to impose fines on noncompliant agencies, saying it is focused on educating agencies about the law's requirements.

~ Five years in, the enforcement mechanism is a fine that no agency has been made to pay.

An ordinance the City Council passed last week will create a citywide "Do Not Solicit" registry for homeowners who don't want to receive calls, texts, emails or mail from prospective buyers. Solicitors who contact homeowners on the registry can face civil fines of $1,000 for a first violation and $2,000 for subsequent violations within a year.

Chukundi Salisbury Sr., executive director of Black Legacy Homeowners, told a City Council committee that many Black homeowners receive frequent lowball purchase offers, creating both anxiety and pressure to sell.

~ The registry does not switch on until June. That is ten more months of open season on exactly the homeowners this is written to protect.

Six children died and five more nearly died from April through June, according to new data from the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which runs the child welfare system. In this period last year, the total of the two types of incidents was 14.

Of the 18 incidents so far this year, four were related to fentanyl. Last year, 27 of the 57 were tied to the synthetic opioid.

~ The numbers moved when the state paid for caseworkers, nurse visits and overdose treatment. Worth remembering in September when the agency budget requests land against another shortfall.

Joy Kim, owner of Kyoto Teriyaki, 803 E Pike St, has been waiting since November 2025 for Uber Eats to disburse approximately $40,000 generated from nearly 1,500 orders. She documented dozens of email exchanges with support representatives and updated her bank information through the platform, but the money was never transferred.

A Capitol Hill restaurant owner is set to receive tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid sales after months of payment delays from Uber Eats, following inquiries into the missing funds.

~ Nine months of support tickets did nothing. One reporter's phone call got it expedited overnight. That's the real escalation path for a small business.

The latest grant comes as global health funding falls sharply. IHME's own tracking found that development assistance for health dropped 21% between 2024 and 2025, driven by a 67% decline in U.S. spending.

KUOW reported in April that NIH award money promised to UW dropped 50% from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026, with funds in hand down 74% because of slow federal grant processing.

~ NIH money in hand at UW is down 74 percent. A private foundation just wrote the biggest check in school history. Only one of those two answers to voters.

As many as 20,000 whales worldwide are killed by vessel strikes every year, according to data from the International Marine Mammal Project. A new partnership with a cruise line that stops in Seattle aims to change that.

"There's currently a very big knowledge gap about how whales actually respond and behave in close proximity to a vessel. So if we learn anything about what the whales do, I would say that would be a success," she said.

~ The ships have been running this route for decades. One person with binoculars and a laptop is finally writing down what it does to the whales.

Before the joint venture went into effect, staff were expected to take on about 13 to 15 visits per week, said April Frazier, a chaplain with Providence at Home with Compassus in Everett. Now, Compassus is expecting staff to complete 20 to 25 visits per week.

On Friday, the Washington Department of Labor and Industries confirmed with The Herald that it has started investigating 47 workers' rights complaints from 38 workers in the Snohomish County and Lacey locations.

~ The state put $450 million into the fund behind this deal. Now its own labor department is investigating the result.

The calendar SPD originally provided to PubliCola was not taken directly from Barnes' schedule. Instead, it was altered by someone at SPD in ways that make it appear Barnes was in town more often than he was.

Public agencies are supposed to provide existing documents, like Outlook calendars, in their original format; they aren't allowed to alter public records except when information is exempt from public disclosure under the Public Records Act. If an agency is going to redact or alter documents, they have to identify what specific exemption applies for each redaction in an exemption log. SPD did not do any of those things.

~ The chief is gone. The records office that handed over an edited calendar is still there.

If approved by the full board later this month, Sound Transit will spend $6 million next year developing the full scope of implementation work for fare gates, with a future board vote allocating actual construction dollars. The total cost of implementing gates across these 14 stations is expected to be $87 million. Thursday's motion also directs staff to redesign Sound Transit 3 stations to accommodate gates, an undertaking with unspecified costs given that many of those stations have been in planning for many years.

"What are the baseline rates of compliance at these stations and at all the stations, not just the ones where we are implementing pilot fare gates? What do we expect in terms of improvements, both with fare compliance and maybe other types of issues?" For now, however, there's very little skepticism on the board about moving forward with some type of fare gate program.

~ Unanimous approval first, performance metrics later. One board member had to ask out loud what the baseline even is.

At the Marysville facility, located at 4010 156th St. NE, the notice lists 55 employees whose positions are being eliminated. The company wrote it expects position reductions will occur from Monday to Aug. 17.

The company was negotiating a potential acquisition that would provide the funding needed to continue operations, 80 Acres Farms wrote in the notice. On Sunday evening, the prospective acquirer reportedly withdrew from the transaction.

~ Fifty-five people planned their year around a job that ended because someone else's deal fell apart over a weekend.

More than 600 aspiring lawyers showed up in Yakima on July 28 to take the grueling two-day exam. But after several attempts, the exam was cancelled due to technical problems at the Yakima Convention and Event Center.

"These students have told me they have taken out loans. They have postponed surgeries. They have postponed weddings. They have pulled out of work," said Anthony Varano, a law professor and dean at Seattle University Law School. "I cannot overstate how disastrous this was for them."

~ The testing system failed, and the only people being asked to absorb it are the ones who already paid to sit for it.

This is the first time in more than 50 years that Washington state ordered new ferries from an out-of-state shipyard. Only two shipyards nationwide competed for this ferry construction contract. Eastern Shipbuilding's bid was more than 30% cheaper than a competing bid from Nichols Brothers Boat Builders of Whidbey Island.

The anticipated delivery date for the first new plug-in ferry, to be named the Wishkah, remains four years away in summer 2030.

~ Two shipyards in the entire country bid, and one of them was on Whidbey Island. The savings land in Olympia. The lost work lands in Puget Sound.