15th Avenue NE Reconstruction Open House scheduled

November 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment

We all survived the NE 45th Street Viaduct Reconstruction Project. But there’s another BIG road project coming in early 2011 that we should all get informed about.

From an SDOT email:

Beginning in January 2011 the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) will reconstruct most of 15th Avenue NE in the University District between NE Pacific Street and NE 55th Street. The roadway needs to be reconstructed to maintain an efficient and safe travel corridor for vehicles, pedestrians, and transit.

An open house to help neighbors learn more about the 15th Avenue NE Reconstruction Project is now on the calendar for Wednesday, December 8, at the University Heights Community Center (5031 University Ave NE), from 4-7 pm.

This project will be completed in phases, a block or so at a time (from NE Pacific St up to NE 55th St), and is projected to wrap up in October of 2011.  That is at least 10 months of construction on 15th Ave NE. You now have your motivation for attending the open house.

15th Avenue NE Reconstruction homepage

For more information on this project, visit the 15th Avenue NE Reconstruction Project site here.

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In related news, the contractor for the project has been selected (from same SDOT email):

SDOT recently awarded the construction contract for the 15th Avenue NE Reconstruction Project to Gary Merlino Construction, the lowest bidder. This contractor is experienced with the kind of work required for this project and has recently completed similar reconstruction projects in downtown Seattle.

And, because you can never start a project like this soon enough, some utility relocation work along 15th Ave NE will occur in December. Some southbound lanes south of NE 43rd Street will be affected.  Puget Sound Energy will be notifying property owners of service impacts before work begins.

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Various and sundry updates, and other news Ravenna can use

November 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

SEO be darned. Sometimes, you just gotta cram a lot of different stuff in one post.

Crime update:

Meeting updates:

Miscellaneous tidbits:

On November 20th, Eckstein will launch Saturday School, a new intervention program for students who have four or more missing assignments and a grade of D or E in a class. Teachers will refer students to Saturday School and counselors will call the student’s home to let families know that the student is expected to attend from 8:30 – 11:30 am.  Students who successfully turn in all missing work by Thursday afternoon after being referred to Saturday School will be excused from attending. The purpose of this intervention is to encourage students to take responsibility for their work and to give them additional time and support if they are stuggling to complete it.

There’s also a request for volunteer tutors during those same dates and times (November 20, and December 4 and 18). To volunteer or ask questions about Saturday School, contact Eckstein Volunteer Coordinator LauraLeigh Young at llyoung@seattleschools.org.

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Will Bake For Food: The Ravenna connection to next week’s event for Northwest Harvest

November 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

By my count, about half of the neighbors I follow on twitter are also into food. WAY into food: The eating of GOOD food, certainly, but also the blogging of it — describing the ingredients, preparing them, detailing the flavors…and the PICTURES! Don’t get me started on how great the pictures of all this food looks.

Ravenna resident Jenny Richards has been blogging about food on her website, Purple House Dirt, since 2007.  She and fellow food blogger Jenny Miller (Rainy Day Gal*) are co-hosting an event for Northwest Harvest next Saturday, for which over 60 food bloggers have donated their time and tasty talents.

I talked with Jenny Richards about how the event works, and the role that social media (specifically, twitter) had in bringing the event to life.

Ravenna Blog:  How did the idea to gather local bakers to trade their creations for food bank donations come about?

Jenny Richards: Jenny Miller (Rainy Day Gal) had the idea that we could swap baked goods for donations to Northwest Harvest. Food is what we do, and it’s how we take care of people, and we had a feeling that others would feel the same way.

In April 2010, Keren Brown (Frantic Foodie) organized Seattle’s response to the National Food Blogger Bake Sale (which benefited Share our Strength), and the turnout was terrific. This time of year, we’re all baking like mad anyway, and we knew that if we caught the wave at the right time, we’d be able to host a single event that everyone could contribute. We knew that together the community could make a much bigger impact than smaller splinter events.

On November 21st, when we have the final counts of how much we baked and how much we collected, we’ll know if it was a success for Northwest Harvest. For us, it’s already a success.

Will Bake For Food sign, designed by CakeSpy (www.cakespy.com)

RB: Now, how does Will Bake For Food work? I show up with canned goods donations and/or money to donate, and then what happens?

JR:  We’re really encouraging folks to bring non-perishable items, and we’ll swap those items for tickets. You can then enter the bake sale and buy whatever you want with those tickets. There will be a higher value assigned to items Northwest Harvest is in critical need of – diapers, formula, gluten-free foods – which gives you more tickets to spend on goodies.

The bakers are ‘pricing’ their goods in tickets, so that you might pick up a cookie with a ticket or a pie with a few more.
We’ll also be taking monetary donations, and we’ll hand out tickets for those as well.

[For a list of food that Northwest Harvest could use the most, click here.]

RB: Social media (specifically twitter) had a hand in getting you guys your coffee and cider donations for the event. (I had just started following you when I saw it happen.) Can you tell us about it?

JR: Twitter really did change the game for this event. Jenny [Miller] and I had our first conversation about ‘a possible food drive in the fall’ the last week of September, but we didn’t actually meet about it until October 19th. A week later, we’d done our groundwork – found locations and contacted Northwest Harvest, and then started to contact folks via Twitter. One night we sent about 60 messages in Twitter to food bloggers we knew, just trying to gauge their interest. At that point, we weren’t sure if we would have enough to really pull this off, so that was our litmus test. By midnight that same evening, we had nearly 40 confirmed bakers. Responses came fast and furious, and because those folks are used to talking in 140 character snippets, the speed at which the event came together was frightening, actually. The website and e-mails started a few days later, and we’re hitting a few hundred messages (e-mail and Twitter) a day from participants.

By doing this publicly, we actually got some offers to help that we hadn’t expected – and that’s where coffee, cider, and a raffle came in. We asked online about coffee service – neither Jenny nor I could see ourselves making drinks that day with this much already going on – and that’s where Brett and Curtis from @drippr came in. They’ve done coffee benefits for the American Heart Association and offered to do the service, as well as ask for coffee donations from local shops. It was an enormous weight off our shoulders.

And one of the folks I contacted early was Lisa Kennelly, who works with Whole Foods. She contacted me because Whole Foods was willing to donate Skagit Valley cider to the event. That’s some terrific stuff, I use it when I bake and brew every fall, and we couldn’t have been happier. Brett stepped in to coordinate that with Lisa directly, and suddenly we have hot drinks, all because we had our conversations online.

And finally, the raffle idea started because Lisa Nakamura of Allium on Orcas donated a gift certificate because she couldn’t bake for the event or be present. At first we were unsure of what we would do with it, but thought about a small raffle – just in case other businesses wanted to donate in that way. Since then, we’ve gotten donations from Red Mill, Sur La Table, and we’re crossing our fingers about a response from Tom Douglas. All had heard about the event by following someone on Twitter.

On the day of the sale, folks can put in 3 tickets to enter the raffle, and they don’t even have to be present to win.

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Will Bake For Food takes place next Saturday, November 20th, from 10am-2pm.  Bring some donations for Northwest Harvest and your hungry self to University Congregational Church’s Ostrander Hall (4515 16th Ave NE) if you’d like to participate.

To see a selection of the over 60 food bloggers who are donating to the event, click here.

Four the official press release for Will Bake For Food, click here.

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*Jenny Miller’s site has the BEST INDEX PAGE for a food blog that I have ever seen. I SWEAR she’s got a smell-o-vision plugin for WordPress.

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Arrests made, yet local burglaries continue (plus Crime Prevention meeting info)

November 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Just two days ago, I relayed the good news that six burglars were caught in two separate acts of burglary in an area of Maple Leaf (“Three burglars caught breaking into North Seattle home this afternoon“). Great news. Perhaps the recent rash of burglaries would finally come to an end.

It seems as though any celebrating may have been premature.

A home at approximately 25th Ave NE and NE 60th St was broken into just yesterday, Thursday, November 11. A resident reported being gone from the house for only an hour and a half that morning, returning to find the back door broken into and items missing.

After the burglary was called in, police made their way through the area, alerting neighbors to the burglary and to the Crime Prevention meeting being held next Tuesday.

UPDATE (6:37 pm): Seattle Crime has a post up with more information about the arrests made in Maple Leaf on Wednesday.

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Roosiehood and I are in close contact with Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center’s Coordinator, Trevor Gregg.  We have let him know that our Crime Prevention meeting on Tuesday has the potential to get far more people wanting to attend than we originally anticipated.

We will update you tomorrow on the status of the meeting space and how many more people we will be able to accommodate. We certainly don’t want to turn anyone away, if possible.

The meeting is currently showing as “SOLD OUT” on our RSVP system, but I urge you to get on the waitlist so we can see how many more people are interested in attending.

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What to expect from the Roosevelt Land Use meeting on Monday

November 11, 2010 by 2 Comments

I posted yesterday about a meeting next Monday, November 15th, to discuss changes in zoning in the Roosevelt neighborhood.

Today, thanks to a reader’s comments yesterday, I would like to more specifically lay out the topics of discussion for this meeting.

To give you the clearest idea of the purpose of Monday’s meeting, I offer this paragraph from the November issue of the “Roosie” (the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association’s  newsletter):

The purpose of the November 15 meeting is to review the neighborhood’s zoning recommendations and [Department of Planning and Development]’s analysis. DPD’s preliminary position is quite similar to the RNA’s, but there are few areas which need further discussion. DPD wants input from the community as they prepare their final recommendation for the City Council.

I strongly urge you to give this article (“November 15 Land Use Meeting will Help Shape Roosevelt’s Future”) a read prior to next Monday’s meeting. In it, the RNA’s Land Use Committee Chair, Jim O’Halloran, provides the background of the 2006 Roosevelt Neighborhood Update, and explains this zoning’s importance to the neighborhood (and, by extension, ours).

If you would like a more detailed look at the subject of the meeting, view the Zoning Workgroup Report here.

Again, the meeting is being held at Calvary Christian Assembly (6801 Roosevelt Way NE), Room 300, on Monday, November 15th, from 7-9 pm.

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Three burglars caught breaking into North Seattle home this afternoon (updated)

November 10, 2010 by 3 Comments

Potentially great news on the burglary spree front.

From an article by Jonah at Seattle Crime:

Seattle police have arrested three teens caught breaking into a North Seattle home this afternoon, and a department source says the teens are likely connected to a string of burglaries in the neighborhood.

You can read the whole article here.

We will still be holding our Crime Prevention meeting next Tuesday, however, since those three aren’t likely to be the only burglars in town.

http://seattlecrime.com/user?username=Jonah+Spangenthal-Lee

UPDATE (4:25 pm): The Maple Leafer alerted us to an update on the burglar arrest post at Seattle Crime.

From the updated Seattle Crime North end burglars post:

We’re now hearing police arrested six suspects in total. The teens tried to run from police but were caught several blocks away from the scene.

Some details in the comments there, too. It’s a good read.

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Community meeting about rezoning Roosevelt, next Monday

November 10, 2010 by 4 Comments

One of Sislely's properties (Photo courtesy of Glenn Roberts; http://glennroberts.wordpress.com/)

Want to know just what exactly the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association’s plan would mean for our area’s future  — and the future zoning of the Sisley properties at NE 65th Street and 15th Avenue NE?

The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association’s Land Use Committee is holding a general meeting for the community to learn about the RNA’s rezoning plan and the city’s Department of Planning and Development’s analysis of it.

The meeting will be held at Calvary Christian Assembly (6801 Roosevelt Way NE), Room 300, on Monday, November 15th, from 7-9 pm.

Your participation would be GREATLY appreciated for a few reasons:

  • This is THE meeting to attend if you would like to learn about the RNA’s neighborhood rezoning plans – It is a general community meeting designed to get us Regular Joes in the neighborhood up to speed on what we could be living next to in the future;
  • The City Council is expected to act on the RNA’s neighborhood rezoning plan in the first half of 2010, and a sizeable amount of community participation is crucial for making it happen;
  • If you (or your family, or your friends) have ever driven down NE 65th Street and wondered “What gonna be done with these boarded up shacks?!” THIS meeting should address those concerns.

For more information about this meeting, contact rna@rooseveltseattle.org.

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Report cards are out, for the schools themselves

November 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Seattle Public Schools released reports on 82 of its schools this morning, and the four main schools that serve Ravenna all scored well.

This is the first time that Seattle Public Schools has issued School Reports for individual schools.

From the Seattle Public School’s School Reports page:

“You can read about your school’s academic growth, student climate, accountability, family and staff engagement, and overall school performance. We hope you also take time to read the narrative page, where each school documents the steps it’s taking to ensure every student is achieving.”

Here’s how our children’s neighborhood public schools fared (a Level of 5 being the highest ranking):

Clicking on each individual school above will take you to the full report for that school.

Explanations for the various measurements taken are here.

And a Frequently Asked Questions page is here.

There are meetings planned throughout the city to discuss these new reports.  The first is being held at our very own Roosevelt High School (1410 NE 66th St.) on November 29th, from 7-8:30 pm.

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Is crime really up? YES, but numbers are hard to come by.

November 6, 2010 by 2 Comments

[A summary, and a list of the good links to go follow, is included at the end of this post.]

Yes, there have been a lot of burglary-related posts on the Ravenna Blog lately. Enough that it prompted the following comment from a reader (via email):

A thought – how about a post comparing crime stats in Ravenna versus neighbouring areas? Me wife gets freaked out when she reads your posts on crimes so I’m looking for a little context.

A fair question.  Is crime really up? Or is it just that crime reporting is up?

Certainly, crime reporting is up here at the Ravenna Blog.  And, I’m here to tell you, this is in direct response to the increase in crime in the neighborhood over the past month.

I’m hoping to get some more specific historical data for our neighborhood, but here’s what North Precinct Crime Prevention Coordinator Diane Horswill had to say about the statistics about Ravenna for October (via email; emphasis mine):

I have attached a recap of burglaries and car prowls and would say that the Ravenna burglaries in particular [compared to Roosevelt’s] are somewhat higher than is average for the neighborhood especially since many areas are experiencing lower than average rates right now.

In the recap she mentioned, there were 12 burglaries in Ravenna in October. (Of the four car prowls mentioned, two of them occurred on Roosevelt Way, which I would not consider to be in Ravenna.) What the count was in October 2009, I do not know at this time. But Diane says that it is up, and that works for me, for now.

Mike at Maple Leaf Life made a valiant effort at trying to decode the statistics for his neighborhood at the city’s My Neighborhood – Crime Statistics site. I read the post (“The problem(s) with trying to track crime in Maple Leaf“), tried my hand at looking up old crime statistics myself, and had even worse luck than he did. Read his post (we share a police beat with Maple Leaf, so the post is rather pertinent to our crime cause as well) and have a go a finding the data yourself.

Failing finding actual numbers, another Seattle news site, with an emphasis on crime reporting, has mentioned the increase in burglaries as well.

Just yesterday, Seattle Crime posted a story about the rise in property crime in our area (“North end neighborhoods hit hard by burglars“), mentioning specifically “Roosevelt, Ravenna, and Maple Leaf neighborhoods.” Also mentioned in this post are a few more details as to who might be responsible for these burglaries in the first place.

Now, to sum up for emailer Matt and his wife, and everyone else:

  • Crime is definitely higher than normal in the neighborhood right now;
  • Other people see the uptick, too, (Seattle Crime “North end…” post);
  • It’s hard to find the hard data yourself (Maple Leaf Life “The problem(s)” post;
  • And having crime prevention coordinators around to help with this stuff is really fantastic…but they’re probably going away (“Crime Prevention Coordinators face the budget axe“).

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Was this helpful?  Have more questions? Email me, or leave a comment below.

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Burglary streak continuing in November

November 5, 2010 by 5 Comments

Just received an updated residential burglary list for Ravenna from Crime Prevention Coordinator Diane Horswill at the North Precinct of the Seattle Police Department.

I wish I could report some improvement.

This first one was reported to the Ravenna Blog on the day it happened (Burglaries take a holiday, then get right back to work):

11/01  7300blk 20th NE  the victim says that the suspect(s) there a brick through the glass in his back door and rifled his wife’s jewelry box and smashed a child’s piggy bank and stole the contents (about $30)

These next three (THREE?!) are new:

11/03  6800blk Ravenna Ave NE  the victim was away all day, when he returned he found that the air conditioner was removed from a back window allowing the suspect(s) to enter, an X-Box, games, a laptop and jewelry were stolen

11/04  8000blk 19th NE  the victim was gone for a few hours during the day, when she returned she found her kitchen door kicked in, the only item taken was a digital camera

11/04  1700blk NE 75th the victim came home to find that the suspect(s) had used a brick to break out her kitchen door window and then reached inside to unlock the door, a jewelry box with some jewelry in it was stolen

Seems like a good time to plug our Crime Prevention meeting on Tuesday, November 16th again.  Go back to this post to RSVP: You’re Invited: Crime Prevention Meeting on November 16.

I wish I had better news, Ravenna, I really do.

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