In this week's roundtable to discuss under-reported stories, host Gabriel Spitzer was joined by Peter Robison, Seattle bureau chief for Bloomberg News, Phyllis Fletcher, managing editor for Northwest News Network and Justin Carter, publisher of the Capitol Hill Seattle blog.
For Robison, the story that deserved more attention last week was the uprooting of a small, longtime community of RV campers and auto-homeless who lived on Northlake Way near Lake Union. The city dismantled the community last week.
"It was families. It was people with children," Robison said. The larger issue speaks to income inequality and Seattle's growing and persistent problem with affordable housing for low-income residents, he added.
The Wallingford near-lake area, over time, grew expensive around the encampment.
"Across the street (from the former encampment) is Westward, which is one of Bon Appetite's top new restaurants," he said.
Fletcher saw privacy as the week's issue that lacked enough coverage. In the Central District, residents discovered that the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had discretely put up two surveillance cameras on light poles.
"I'm not clear yet on how long they've been there," Fletcher said. The neighborhood, she said, wasn't necessarily opposed to additional security but there had been discussions with city and federal officials about increased transparency when the public was being watched by authorities.
That transparency wasn't provided here, she said.
"And now that we know it is there, how is (the gathered information) going to be used?" she wondered.
Carter said radical changes to crowd control in the Pike and Pine business district in Capitol Hill lacked enough widespread coverage. The city is starting this weekend to test closing East Pike between Broadway and 12th Avenue between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. to vehicle traffic.
The business community in the mostly nightlife corridor tentatively supports the move in the pedestrian-heavy zone.
And how does Cater think it will look? "I think it's going to look like a zoo," he said, laughing. "Maybe like the plains of the Serengeti."
There is some concern, he said, that what is intended as a crowd-and-traffic management solution will turn into a weekly freelance street fair. "It's a nighttime trial," he said. "Most of the businesses that really care the most are nightlife and they're into it."
