Cascadia today: WA ballots due tomorrow + AK funds education + Hot Rat Summer! 🐀
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WA primary ballots due tomorrow!
It's primary election time in Washington state, and ballots are due back at drop boxes tomorrow, August 5. Seattle will narrow the field for mayor, city council positions two, eight, nine and city attorney. If you're in Tacoma, you're in luck: I wrote feature for The Urbanist profiling the contenders for Grit City's mayor and city council. King County will select top-two candidates for county executive. RANGE media has a guide to the three candidate facing off for Spokane city council in district three. And two candidates are challenging Vancouver, WA city council member Kim Harless. Washington State Standard looks at four key legislative seats to keep an eye on.
Alaska overrides veto, funds education
According to the Alaska Beacon, the Alaska legislature, meeting in a special session, passed an override of GOP governor Mike Dunleavy's veto of $50 million in public school funding. The vote was 45-15, just meeting the 45-vote minimum to reject the veto. The bill will slightly boost education funding and avoid a 5 percent cut under the previous budget. The bill, which funds schools through a tax on oil revenue, will help address a crisis facing rural education in Alaska, which ProPublica reported is severely impacting Indigenous communities.
WA governor knew about concerns with top aide
Washington governor Bob Ferguson didn't have much of a honeymoon in office. Ferguson's approval rating in the latest polls show the Democrat is at the lowest point for a governor since 1993, with only 32 percent saying he's doing an "excellent" or "good" job, Cascade PBS reports. Note to Bob: trying to be a "moderate" on taxes and austerity isn't going to win you Republican votes, so maybe do more to make our state resilient in the face of Trump's cuts? Meanwhile, Axios obtained a recording of Ferguson sharing concerns in 2019 that a top advisor, Mike Webb, had bullied and intimidated female employees. Webb resigned in March over concerns he created a toxic work environment.
Researchers find culprit in sea-star deaths
KUOW reports that researchers in British Columbia and Washington have discovered the source of a wasting disease that is devastating populations of sunflower stars in the Salish Sea and off the coast of Cascadia. The huge sea-stars have been hard-hit by a disease that causes them to melt away – nearly 90 percent of sunflowers stars have died. The cause of one of the worst ocean pandemics ever recorded is Vibrio pectenicida, a type of bacteria. Researchers in 2014 thought they'd found the cause, but later that research was found flawed. The death of sunflower stars has overturned kelp forest ecology: sea urchins, with fewer predators, have decimated kelp. To help assist sunflower star recovery, visit Sunflower Star Laboratory.
Hot Rat Summer forever!
KNKX reports that the rogue mosaic mural in Seattle's Cal Anderson Park, "Hot Rat Summer," will remain, after the city of Seattle finally decided to stop painting it over. The mosaic, whose creator remains anonymous, has become an icon for the transgender and queer community of Capitol Hill, and now an integral part of the neighborhood. In its infinite wisdom, the conservative city council recently passed legislation criminalizing graffiti– clearly a top concern in a city dealing with homelessness, high housing costs, buses that a crowd of folk dancers can outrun, and drug overdoses. --Andrew Engelson
