Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

I'm responding to the article about live-aboards, and thanking you for your stance on the issue.

It's about time this topic were put to "bed" once and for all. It seems every few years, someone in office needs an issue to get re-elected on, and live-aboards get tossed around like a football in a game of political recognition, and posturing.

That being said, I'm not sure when Jennifer Belcher's term is up, but it seems high time that she found another career.

With major issues at hand like skyrocketing land values and the high cost of owning property in the City of Seattle, I'm surprised at her incredible lack of sensitivity to a, as I see it, much more important topic. After all, if the average service industry worker like waitresses, car wash employees, and general laborers can't afford Seattle rents of $900 and upward, who will fill these lower wage jobs, and where will they live? Perhaps out in the suburbs, so they can commute to work and cause even more traffic? The city can't seem to solve the affordable housing issue. Perhaps they should look toward a resource that's already in place, rather than trying to suffocate an opportunity. With I-695 on the books, perhaps they could even look toward living-aboard as an extra source of income with a small fee for the privilege?

Doug Sutherland is running for commissioner of Public Lands, which is also in control of public waterways. It might be time for a change at the top, and maybe a new stance on water issues will "trickle down" to a local level.

Eric Jackson

via e-mail

To the Editor:

Thank you for your excellent editorial and support of the Liveaboard Association of Puget Sound.

This is not just an issue for people who live aboard their boats now. How many of your readers have ever dreamt of someday, after the kids are grown, selling their house and moving aboard a boat? If Commissioner of Public Lands, Jennifer Belcher, has her way and this campaign of no live-aboards is allowed to go into effect, this may be a dream that won't be allowed to happen.

We also had such a dream and thankfully we have been living it for 10 years, first aboard a 42' sailboat, Serendipity, and for the past 4 years on the tugboat Sally S. Built in 1927 on Bainbridge Island, she is the only surviving vessel of her design.

When we purchased the Sally S in 1996, she had been sitting at the dock for many years and looked all of her 69 years and probably felt it too, if boats have a soul. Her decks leaked and she was slowly rotting from rainwater and needed help quickly or in time she would become only a shadow of what she once was.

Spending every spare moment and every spare dollar, we have replaced and waterproofed her decks and remodeled her interior. New plumbing, wiring, paints and varnish and two shipyard haul-outs have given her a new lease on life and a chance to shine.

To complete an almost overwhelming project such as this requires constant work and the only way possible to do this is to live aboard while doing it. It is a labor of love to bring back an historic vessel of the Pacific Northwest.

Come and see us race in the tugboat races at the Maritime festival, May 13 on the Seattle waterfront.

To find out more about the Liveaboard Association of Puget Sound, go to the website www.liveaboards.org

Greg and Betty Mallory

To the Editor:

For "live-aboards," an over-water penthouse is a great way to escape property taxes.  Living in a house may be a "poor second to living on a boat," (Lake Union Live-aboards Resist Eviction, Seattle Press April 19-May 2) but those of us who live in the poor houses are not very happy about paying taxes that subsidize the lucky few who are fortunate to own and live on boats.

As the rest of us second-class citizens pony up to pay increased property taxes this month perhaps a thank-you note from live-aboards is more in order than an attack on Jennifer Belcher s principled eviction actions on Lake Union.

Live-aboards pay a pittance of moorage rent to marina operators who pay a pittance to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for a lease of public owned submerged land and waters. The pennies returned to City government from a marina owner’s taxes do not go very far in paying for public amenities that marina residents, like the rest of us, enjoy free access to. Live-aboards do not have to pay property taxes on a land residence of equal value and are therefore not paying their fair share for the costs of public schools, streets, fireboats, parks, libraries, civic centers, stadiums, etc.

The editorial in the same issue of the Seattle Press (State is Wrong to Evict the Lake Union Live-aboards) is correct in stating that a marina is not analogous to a state park "because marine owners who lease the land from the state can rent slips to boat owners." At this point, however, the logic of the editorial takes a wrong turn.

Tidelands are held in the public trust for water-dependent use."The public trust doctrine provides protection of public ownership interests in certain uses of navigable waters and underlying lands, including navigation, commerce, fisheries, recreation and environmental quality." (The Public Trust Doctrine and Coastal Zone Management in Washington State, Washington Law Review, 1992) Although cooking dinner and taking a shower may be water-dependent uses, you don't have to live on a boat to do them. Jennifer Belcher is not "attacking the Lake Union live-aboards," as you say in your editorial, rather she is clearly following the letter of the law and protecting the public's interest in these lands.

Although Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles may try to introduce legislation that permits live-aboards to stay put, it is important to remember that the public trust doctrine is a law that stems from the court rather than the legislature. In the long run, Kohl-Welles futile attempts will only cost taxpayers more money.

Patricia Stambor

To the Editor:

You are absolutely wrong in supporting the over-water residences, which in no way are water-dependent, the liveaboards. The Department of Natural Resources rightly serves eviction notices to encroachers on state-owned lands and waters. You made a real Freudian slip, admitting the truth, in your editorial stating, "In fact, such uses of state land block the vast majority of the public from water-front access."

If Lake Union was not lined on shore and over water by multi-story office buildings and restaurants, marina shed roofs, garages and parking lots for private houseboats, house barges, and these boats used only as permanent residences (liveaboards), what an asset to the beauty of Seattle it would be.

There might be a site where youngsters could go fishing. There would be moorage spaces for pleasure boats, now sought in vain, with long waiting lists for the spaces that do exist. Legitimate navigational needs such as boat and ship repair yards would add to the jobs in this city.

Houseboats have become two-story structures, costing from $500,000 to $1.0 million, with basements! And there's four more on the way. (Seattle Times, April 24).

Worse, with the collusion of Seattle's mayors and city councils, these over-water residences are there in defiance of state laws, the Aquatic Lands Act and the Shoreline Management Act of 1971, and a decision of the Washington State Supreme Court in the case of Orion v. Washington, which upheld the public trust doctrine, repudiating over-water residences in Padilla Bay.

Wouldn't it be great to walk Lake Union's shore and be able to see the lake?

Benella Caminiti

To the Editor:

I am a student at Eckstein Middle School in Seattle, Washington. I am writing in response to the "Small Ideas for Seattle" article in the April 5-18, 2000 newspaper.

I think that making the Pike Place Market an auto-free zone is a good idea. The sidewalks down there are narrow and it gets pretty crowded. If there was no traffic, then it would be a lot safer for children and elderly people.

The columnist for your paper, Dick Falkenbury, did mention that the extra street space could be used for more and larger market stalls. He also mentioned that the space could be used as a place to put chairs and tables, which would be good for tired legs, and for more places to sit down and eat.

No traffic would also cut down on noise; people talking could speak without having to raise their voice.

Making the Pike Place Market an auto-free zone would be good for everyone that likes to go down there and would make it a more pleasant experience.

Mark R. Hammond

"Oyster Wars" Valuable Consumer Information

To the Editor:

Deeply appreciate the "Oyster Wars" article in your April 19 - May 2 issue. This is valuable first-hand information on seafood production--information which I feel the public needs and which is not always easily come by. Good job!

Maria Abdin

To the Editor:

(A response to Dick Falkenbury's "Small Ideas for Seattle," Seattle Press, April 19-May 2) There is a good reason why we are sacrificing the shoulders, so as to get the cars out of the way of the buses. One HOV lane, can carry more people than the rest of the freeway combined. BY GETTING CARS OFF THE ROAD it will mean less cars on the road (combined with restrictions!).

That means that with more frequent patrol of things like roving tow trucks we can get disabled cars off sooner. Plus there are side turnouts planned. It can be done safely. The problem is really more of a attitude problem on every car drivers mind, that somehow we owe you cheap gasoline, pavement, parking places. Cars are gluttons for land areas, and all of the no-car, no-oil, ideas require land area. We have to use our existing road space more wisely. I suggest the real problem here is "car bigotry," a new form of racism of drivers towards non-drivers.

With 20 percent of the world's population consuming 80 percent of the world's energy, it means the rest of world has to put up with people and environmental destruction. That is the reason for monorails, bicycle lanes, HOV lanes, bus systems, so as to put in energy efficiency into the transportation system...as we idle our engines more and more in rush hour traffic, that means we waste fuel, driving up demand, and price literally. This is a vicious circle. Some of us are fed up with this nation sending its military all over the place for OIL! Want the price of gasoline to go down...stop driving. Want safer highways...stop driving.

Martin Nix

via e-mail

An Open Letter to the City Council

To the Editor:

Let me get this straight. The voters saw a proposal they didn't like, and voted it down (twice!). Now the politicians are going to do it anyway. The Seattle Aquarium Society doesn't want the new Aquarium proposal to be decided by public vote, because they know they would lose again. Is it no wonder the public distrusts our government and tries to rein it in through initiatives like 695? You are our representatives, so represent us already, before we pass more initiatives to the point where you won't be able to tie your own shoes without a voter referendum.

Larry Powelson

via e-mail

To the Editor:

Senator Kohl-Welles' defense to my charge (Letters to the Editor, April 19 issue) that she has hurt the cause of park preservation by helping to set up the privatization of the city's most prestigious park resources, the zoo and the aquarium (and the arboretum next), doesn't refute a single argument that I made in my 4/5 letter. She doesn't even try. Instead, she just tries to sweep away my assertions by declaring that the zoo and the aquarium societies are not corporations, they're nonprofits. Well, duh! They're nonprofit corporations. Next she lists a string of nonprofit organizations that run public service programs, as if such a recitation actually constituted some kind of rebuttal.

Most of the organizations she mentioned are not examples of contracting out, the most common form of privatization, which is what we are talking about. The Seattle Art Museum did not take over a city service, nor does it provide something that the city is actually responsible for. SAM owns its own collection and has its own employees. Yes, it has received donations and grants from the government, and the use of public property (in kind contribution, if you like), but that is not contracting out.

It is true that the city has leased its golf courses to private contractors (one for-profit and one not-for-profit). That may be working--or not. It's too soon for a complete evaluation. However, privatizing the golf courses poses a relatively small risk as compared to privatizing the best showpieces of our park system, the zoo and the aquarium, which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and consist of invaluable and extremely vulnerable collections of animal and plant life.

Privatizing zoos and aquaria is a trend across the country (with disastrous results in San Francisco), and Kohl-Welles has unthinkingly (apparently) jumped on the political bandwagon. The arguments being used to justify this trend are completely untested and, in fact, have more to do with political ideology: government is bad, private sector good. This is an ideology that serves corporate interests. And, that's not just the interests of the nonprofits desirous of getting complete control of prestige projects, but the for-profits, as well. The nonprofits give the for-profits a friendly face to show the public: high profile tax-deductible donations to feel good programs--especially environmental causes--is just plain good business. In fact, I think Exxon would probably give a lot of money to buy those naming rights for the new aquarium.

Bonnie Heaven

Via e-mail

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