Conscious Choice Seattle: The Time for ‘No’ is Now

Paying Taxes to Save the Earth

While voting no to some ballot initiatives is the right call (see previous page), there are times when we all need to say yes to tax increases for the common good.

In the case of two ballot measures on tap for Election Day—one for city of Seattle voters and the other for King County residents—voting yes will benefit both citizens and our planet.

The Seattle ballot measure calls for a nine-year, $365 million property tax increase that will fund transportation, improvements ranging from better sidewalks and walking trails, a doubling of bike lanes (more about that in GreenLines, page 14) and a more streamlined system for moving freight through the city limits. Mayor Greg Nickels, who is widely credited with inspiring 306 other U.S. mayors to follow Seattle’s lead in adhering to the Kyoto Protocol global plan to help reduce the effects of climate change, issued a 34-page plan about a month back that is heavily reliant on the measure passing.

The King County measure proposes to up sales tax by one-tenth of one percent to bankroll an improved bus service with more frequent buses and the use of alternative fuel in the entire fleet. One by-product is downtown will smell much less of exhaust and, as one city official half-joked, more like the french fry oil used in some biodiesels.

Earth Day founder, Bullitt Foundation director and long-time Seattle resident, Denis Hayes, co-chaired a committee to help devise the Nickels plan.

“Seattle, having sort of organized these 307 cities, has to show in very concrete ways how we’re going to do it,” Hayes told the Post-Intelligencer. “We’re saying we’re going to do more than we’re asking anyone else to do.”
—B.C.

November 2006 | Mindful Living

The Time for ‘No’ is Now

There are important times in life to say no.

This is one of them.

On.Nov.7, Election Day, voters in our state will make decisions about senators and representatives, assessors and sheriffs. Somewhere down the ballot will list the various initiatives put before Washington citizens. Make it a point to look for Initiative 933 or I-933.
In short, I-933 will require governments to either pay people who have been financially limited by land use measures—you know, things like protecting wildlife or zoning neighborhoods as non-commercial to keep the peace and quiet—or to allow those people to build on their properties as they wish.

Can you say ‘strip mall’ or ‘box store?’

“The core of I-933 is a simple and clever legal scheme called “pay and waive,” wrote Joseph W. Tovar in a recent opinion piece in the Seattle Times. Tovar is an Edmonds resident and long-time city planner who has worked in private, public and academic sectors. “Such schemes dramatically lower the threshold for when compensation must be paid for restrictions or limitations on property use and value—regardless of how small the limitation or how important the public protection served by the restriction.”

Tovar and other opponents of I-933 make a strong and urgent case for voting No—and making sure you tell friends and loved ones to attend to the same detail on Election Day. Tovar’s most direct point is that the “poorly written and overreaching initiative” will threaten rather than retain property values. Plus, he says the whole thing could end up costing every taxpayer $3,000 or more to help defray the costs of compensating people who feel hamstrung by land use measures.

There is plenty of support for both sides of the issue. By late September, the pro and con campaigns had garnered some $2.3 million in funding. The top vote-yes contributions came from Americans for Limited Government (you know those code words) and the Washington State Farm Bureau. On the no side, The Nature Conservancy is concerned enough to offer up $93,000 while conscious citizens such as George Russell Jr., Mary Tagney-Jones, Paul Brainerd and James Roush contributed $100,000 each. William Gates III, Harriet Bullitt, Douglas Walker, Nancy Nordhoff and Peter Goldman each chipped in $50,000.
Lots of admired names there. We’re with them.
—Bob Condor

Getting Their Goats

Last we checked in with the goat species (April 2005), there was a herd of brown-eyed goats about to do some work for the city of Seattle. Their job? Clear the ivy and blackberry bushes overrunning a Seattle City Light substation in the Maple Leaf neighborhood.

Consider it done and, uh, well-eaten. The 280 goats from Healing Hooves LLC in Spokane literally mowed down a steep one-acre hillside, chowing down on what the city categorizes as a fire hazard. They ate, they laid down on the job, they slept but only for naps. The goats worked round the clock.

“It’s appropriate that we use goats to control weeds, to help be environmental stewards,” says Jean Godden, chairwoman of the city council’s energy and technology committee.

But still surprising, environmental steward or not.

”Never did I think I would one day be standing and watching goats,” says Godden.

Healing Hooves was paid $2,500 for the job, a bargain if you consider the labor involved for human workers, along with the unsafe grade of the hillside. City officials rejected removing the pest brush mechanically or with pesticides.

The goats work body-to-body when necessary, happy to nosh on high-protein leaves yet careful to pass on the thorny blackberry canes. Each goat can eat about five to six pounds of greenery per day, which kept them on hand for four days of feasting.
—Andrew Mulholland

Women of Wisdom Connects

Community building is an art form, no doubt. The Women of Wisdom Foundation (WOW) is intent on helping encourage the art with its new “Community Connection Workshop” series.
The first of these bimonthly all-day events is Nov. 19, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the BodySong Healing & Arts Center in Seattle. Lunch and breaks will offer a time to meet new people and build community through sharing food and stories. The theme is gratitude and abundance, fittingly, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Check out www.womenofwisdom.org or call 206-782-3363 for more details.

Joanie Vogel, sound healer, will lead participants through a freestyle meditation to open an understanding of gratitude, the first step on the journey of drawing abundance into our lives.
Victoria Castle, author of “The Trance of Scarcity,” will share practices for embodying abundance and wholeness. It helps us feel free to express, create, share, and contribute.

Susan Tate will lead workshoppers in learning how to access the body’s innate wisdom, plus take part in a class designed to dance those concepts into the body.

On Nov. 4, WOW is co-sponsoring an event with East West Bookshop titled “Legacy of the Heart.” Gloria Burgess, internationally acclaimed speaker and author, invites you to “shed your busyness” and step across the threshold into the extraordinary realm of sanctuary. She visualizes sanctuary as a place to celebrate your magnificence and give voice to your deepest longings. Contact East West Bookshop for tickets at 206-523-3726 .
—A.M.

The Greening of Media

We won’t say we told you so, but we here at Seattle Conscious Choice do admit to a measure of satisfaction about both local and national magazines going green on their covers.

Vanity Fair is a prominent example, devoting its May issue to everything environment. Elle—that’s Elle—did the same in the same month.

Vanity Fair plans another green issue for 2007, and recently featured Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Al Gore on its cover. Elle’s issue was guest-edited by Laurie David, an eco-activist profiled previously in our magazine and wife of Larry David, the star of cable TV’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Green apparently makes for some surprising alliances. A new magazine, Verdant, will begin publishing in early 2007. Its preview issue is on stands now and includes a lengthy profile on singer Bette Midler, who is leading the New York Restoration Project to clean up neglected parks. What’s more, the strident Christopher Buckley pitched in with an essay on his increasing eco-consciousness.

Simon &Schuster has announced a series of green living books that will be edited by Deidre Imus, who is married to the popular and caustic radio host Don Imus. Danny Seo, who has a huge following as a Country Living magazine columnist, is promoting his HarperCollins book “Simply Green Living” this fall.

One more thing: None other than former president Bill Clinton recently announced the formation of a new investment fund, the Green Fund, which is expected to raise more than a billion dollars to support the end of dependence on fossil fuels.
Let the greening continue.
—A.M.

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