By Ken Robinson

Everybody wants to be mayor
Expect a fight from some patrons of the Highline School District if the board chooses to switch from the traditional semester plan to a trimester day. See Lindsay Peyton’s story on page 5. The issue has a lot of moving parts and you may not care unless you have kids in high school. Still, it is an important story.

Also important is the challenge by former mayor Mike McGinn to unseat beleaguered Mayor Ed Murray. It could be a tough fight as two Irishmen slug it out. Read Shane Harms on the subject on page 4. So far, seven other hopefuls have signed up to beat Murray. Cary Moon, who you may remember as an opponent of a waterfront highway once the viaduct is removed, also is gunning for the job.

Foamers on the loose again

Avid sports fans might be foaming again at the prospect that two organizations are interested in remodeling the Coliseum/Key Arena for basketball and hockey teams to do their thing. The part of this that prickles the skin is the idea that everything has to go downtown. This is an old story for Seattle following the backroom politics that put the Kingdom where it was, redolent of cigar smoke from an Olympia cloakroom. The pattern was set for the football and baseball stadiums to fill the hole after the Kingdome was imploded (and we can hardly wait until those stadiums are finished, with a good looking cover instead of the Erector Set work-in-progress they are now).

After tassel-toed hedge fund guy Chris Hansen got rebuffed by the city council for his dream of putting a stadium along Stadium Row, he unknotted the tennis sweater from his shoulders and regrouped.

For us, jamming another stadium into the core of Seattle is a little irksome. Now, driving into Seattle from the westside is an action makes your neck muscles tighten because you know you will have a hard time finding parking anywhere. The group that wants to spend their own money to remodel the city-owned Key Arena have suggested the people will Uber to events there because they know parking is hard to find and even expensive. This sort of social engineering seems to be following a pattern the city council is promoting. You must be aware of the development with no parking that is popping up around town. The current council has the misguided notion that they can get us to stop using our cars.

From the citadel of 601 Cherry Street, our leader’s peripheral vision stops at the boundaries of the city.

Tukwila and Kent have the land for a stadium. Why don’t we put one there? All the good farm land has already been paved.