Although the official Earth day is April 22, Mother Earth will appreciate whatever you decide to do on whichever day works for you; Leschi has the luxury of 3 options in April. 1. Swimming and lake-lounging season approaches: Volunteer to improve a small patch for all on April 8, 9-noon. On Saturday April 8, Daniel Collins-Beacon Hill and the Friends of Seattle Street ends (FOSE) invite you to Massachusetts street end (immediately off of Lakeshore Drive, near 7600 Lake Shore Dr) 1 block south of Atlantic, to help us restore the small landscape we have been working on through the Covid months. We have a JobBox of tools, so all we ask is that volunteers have up-to-date vaccinations and closed toe shoes. The effort will include some weeding, mulching, and planting of PNW native plants. I will give a quick tour of the grounds and explain our mission. You can arrive at any time; simply visit if you like. We are also collaborating with community stewards on the restoration of Atlantic Street end so opportunities to participate on this shoreline are looming in the near future. We recognize that various public street ends were poorly managed in the past or have had a confusion of private owner management of their resources. We want to establish a clear and robust landscape on the water for native habitat and public enjoyment—a pocket park if you will. These events are great ways to build community on public Rights of Way with the support of Seattle SDOT staff and improve shoreline habitat values. Please RSVP with Daniel, local arborist, at dmcollins1962@gmail.com. 2. Not a gardener? You can still help to improve your community by joining a litter brigade! Chris Tremonte has formed a volunteer group that tackles litter issues once a month. Chris provides both tools and treats foe his workers. The April group will meet at Powell Barnett Park on the 3rd Sunday, April 16 from 10-12pm. For more information, check the website http://tinyurl.com/JaxlerCleanup 3. Frink Park work party April 29 from 10-12pm. Meet at end of Yesler (east of the Dreamcatcher). Bring water and dress for weather. Gloves and tools provided. There is actually a last minute 4th option on Earth Day at 1pm. This is not a work party but a walk-through of the Natural Area. So if you want to celebrate Earth Day but not get your fingers dirty, consider walking through this gem of a park led by our Greenspace chair: John Barber. Just show up at 1pm on April 22!

Our community was deeply saddened when long-time community member, Steve Shulman, passed away in March 2020. Former mayor Jenny Durkin captured his spirit well when she remembered him as the "heartbeat of Leschi." The Shulman family, friends of the family and the community have been coming together to discuss a memorial in Leschi Park to honor Steve and his role in our community. We invite all community members to join the next memorial planning meeting. It will be held Thursday, March 16th at 7pm at the Central Area Senior Center, in the solarium. The address for the CASC is 500 30th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144. The meeting structure and agenda are as follows: Meeting Purpose: Discuss with the community the ongoing developments regarding the Shulman Memorial in Leschi Park. This is the 2nd community meeting regarding the memorial. Topics: · Shulman family vision for the memorial · Seattle Parks approval process & steps taken thus far · Possible locations for the structure · Next steps in the process Rules of Engagement: for each topic, the presenter will give a short update. After the update, the floor will be opened for questions, discussion and community input. Good civil discussion is encouraged! Please send questions to leschicouncil@gmail.com.

February 1, 2023 at 7pm We believe public safety is integral to a healthy and welcoming community. This is why we regularly dedicate a community meeting to this topic. Our February 1st meeting will let us review current issues of public safety in Leschi and surrounding neighborhoods, allow you to share your concerns, and discuss how we as a neighborhood can work with each other, the police and lawmakers to make Leschi a great place to live. This is also your opportunity to talk to and hear from people who can help us address public safety. We will be joined by Girmay Zahilay, King County Council member (District 2); Lt. Trinh, Acting Captain of the SPD East Precinct; and Joseph Elenbaas, Crime Prevention Coordinator for the SPD East Precinct. We will meet in person at Grace United Methodist Church at 722 30th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144 on February 1st. The meeting will start at 7 pm and end by 8:30 pm. Masks are optional but encouraged. If you have questions about or for the meeting, please send them to leschicouncil@gmail.com.

In January, we published a tribute to Thurston Muskelly as he had returned home from the Parkshore retirement community. We were to learn later that Thurston died on Christmas Eve while our paper was at the printer. John Barber adds a farewell to fond memories of Thurston: I actually knew Thurston long before he became President of the Leschi Community Council, a post he held for 9 years. In the 1970s, I became union steward for the Seattle HUD office's newly formed branch of the American Federation of Government Employees. Thurston was the regional representative of the AFGE, Thurston's assignment was to ground us new union officers in the rules and best practices of union leadership. He was a knowledgeable, straight ahead guy who quickly had us on a strong path. For many years, I didn't know how instrumental he had been in advocating for the public health community, like saving the building at the north tip Beacon Hill that served was discontinued as veterans’ hospital, for use (instead of sold on the real estate market) as a public community health clinic. During that time, he was mentored by Senator Warren G. Magnuson in the nuances and skills of political influence. Increasingly, I saw his experience in political influence put into play with his leadership of the Central Area Development Association. He would give the Mayor and City Council members annual walks in the Central Area to raise awareness for fighting crime and for addressing the development aspirations of the local business community. When he became President of the Leschi Community Council, he already had established his reputation among the elected city officials, who were just a phone call away. He was seen by many in City Hall as “Mayor” of the Central Area. I was already Chair of LCC’s Parks and Greenspace Committee when he became President. When he told me, “John, you've got to do something about Flo Ware Park,” I knew it must have some problems, and I got right on it, through a process of planning, grant writing, and fundraising that led to the total renovation of the park and active community policing. We made much other progress during his Presidency like renovating the King Street Shoreline Street End and a section of Lake Washington Boulevard leading to Leschi Park, trail-building in Frink Park, acquisition of wooded areas for the Leschi Natural Area, and major renovation at Powell Barnett Park. His support helped us throughout. He also fended off plans by Scientology to locate a drug treatment center in Leschi, because of how he saw as doubtful the credentials and goals of the sponsor. His strong affiliation and influence at the Central Area Senior Center were assets for our community. He was a warm and steady friend, and I will miss him dearly. ~John Barber

I recently discovered that the paper archives of the Leschi Community Council (originally known as the Leschi Improvement Council, LIC) are lodged in the Special Collections of the University of Washington Library. One can arrange to inspect them over a video conference call, so I selected one of the four boxes to browse through, with a librarian turning the pages for me. It was pretty routine stuff until I came upon some pages about Powell S. Barnett (1883–1971), who in 1959 was the founding president of the LIC. What first caught my eye in the files was a 1967 letter from the then-president of the council to the city’s Board of Public Works. In this document, the council requests that Lake Dell Avenue, which runs down the hill from Leschi School until it becomes East Alder Street, be renamed Powell Barnett Way. The Board of Public Works agreed that Barnett deserved recognition for his “long and unselfish service,” but pointed to a longstanding city policy against naming streets for living persons. I knew of Powell Barnett’s role as an original organizer and president of the LIC, but there was little documentation on his activities that I was able to find. I got one anecdote from the eldest son of Herb Schneider, Barnett’s successor as president. Herb had related that he accompanied Barnett walking along Jackson Street, hitting up the shopkeepers for contributions to the council. They coughed it up, but there were comments like “How much this time?” Just when I was despairing of finding more about what Barnett had done in Leschi, I got lucky. Searching through the Barnett papers on location at UW Special Collections, I found two tape-recorded interviews with him from the 1960s. One was done in 1968 by Larry Gossett, who provided me with a copy. Gossett was a friend of mine from our activist days at the UW in the late ‘60s, when he was a leader of the Black Student Union and I was in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). When he interviewed Barnett, Gossett was working at the university’s Suzzallo Library, where the head of the Manuscripts and Archives Division, Richard Berner, had hired him as a student research assistant to gather historical information on African American pioneers in Washington State. Berner himself had interviewed Barnett the year before. Gossett is, of course, well known as the former King County Council member representing Leschi and beyond. Among his other accomplishments, he was a prime mover in changing the name of King County, which was originally named after President Franklin Pierce’s vice president-elect, William King, a slave owner. Now, as is well known, we live in Martin Luther King County. Since the interview has not been published, I will quote extensively from Barnett’s remarks about the LIC. “The Leschi Improvement Council was formed out of the needs of the PTA in the Leschi School. The PTA called a meeting to resolve some questions, and out of that, the need for a club in the district, to represent the people’s interest in the district, developed, and the Leschi Improvement Council was developed as a result of that meeting there. And it’s been going ever since. [Barnett struggles to recall the founding date, and he comes up with 1952, but it was 1958, according to Wade Vaughn’s “Seattle Leschi Diary.” “The Leschi Improvement Council is one of the most effective neighborhood councils in the entire Northwest. It was one of the first councils to ask for a rezoning of their area from multiple use to single-family residence. The reason was that we became interested in the welfare of the entire community, and we made a study of what we considered the conditions in the community, with the idea of establishing a remedial course of action. “We found that in the Leschi area, which is an older part of the city, there were a number of older, larger houses that didn’t lend themselves readily to modern-day living. They were too large for the average family of today, and we didn’t want those houses turned into duplexes and triplexes, which would mean the concentration of a large number of people in small areas. In our opinion, that’s where ghettos would start. So in order to protect the homeowner, we thought it desirable to ask the city council to rezone the whole area from multiple use to single-family residence. In 1963, we presented such a resolution to the city council, and it was passed by the council. This meant that the Leschi area, from that time on, is zoned for single-family residence, with the exception of occasional spot zoning. At the present time, we are engaged in a preliminary study as to what areas in Leschi would lend themselves to apartment houses, with the exception of high-rise. “We feel that the people who live in the Leschi area should have a breathing space around their homes, and not succumb to the lack of housing that we would be expected to let down our guards. I don’t think the council would take very readily to that, because that is not the answer. Many people believe, and we’re inclined to believe too, that open housing is the answer because it gives people an opportunity to spread over a larger area. Absolutely we favor open housing.” “Open housing” referred to ending racial discrimination in real estate. The transcript of the Berner interview with Powell Barnett is available in digital form on request from the University of Washington Library’s Special Collection. Next month: Open housing; Powell Barnett Park. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over 46 years in the neighborhood.

Because I had the luck and privilege of having been raised on the Seattle shores of Lake Washington, I recall the last runs of the Madison-Kirkland and the Leschi ferries. Several of our waterfront parks, especially Madison Park, Madrona Park and Leschi Park emerge from that era. I can remember taverns and restaurants replacing those abandoned sites. In our time I have visited friends at apartments and condominiums overlooking water-logged, lonely pilings and street-ends, evidence of a once-busy commotion of travelers. The individual histories of these unique parks have been described by others, but the rich history of Seattle would have been a relatively modest story without these watery links to the second largest lake in Washington State. With a burgeoning population, and a simultaneous rise in the popularity of bicycles, motor bikes and other strange modes of city street travel, some observers are asking themselves if the old Mosquito Fleet of small boats might be updated and re-introduced? Do the local names Brewster, Brighten Beach, Calverts, Barnaby or Belt Line mean anything to Seattle-area residents today? Those tiny lakeside stations were among the 50-plus stops the old Lake Washington steamboats–or Mosquito Fleet–made in the early 1900s. Although the term “Mosquito Fleet” is also correctly attached to Puget Sound routes (and occasionally coastal waters) it can also be used in connection with Lake Washington water transport. Captain Adolph J. Anderson, with his brother Captain John L. Anderson, operated much of the Puget Sound and Lake Washington steamboat trade at the turn of the 20th century. On the lake, Anderson Steamboat Company boats ran north to Juanita and southward to Rainier Beach, with dozens of intermediate stops—some of them for the convenience of a friend or a waving hand on the end of a dock. There were occasional accidents and miscalculations by passengers and freight-handlers, resulting in a frightened passenger struggling in the water below the passenger ramp or a load of building material or groceries sinking to the muddy bottom. Mercer Island was then a farming wilderness and a true island, sometimes called East Seattle. The Anderson boats put in at five locations on the Island’s west shore, and at eight ports-of-call along the eastern shore. Clusters of homes, schools, small businesses and country roads emerged at the Mosquito Fleet coves and wharves. On the Seattle or western shore, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition site (now the University of Washington) was a principal water landing. Other Seattle ferry stops remain: Madison Park, Leschi Park, Mt. Baker Park, Brighten Beach and Rainier Beach. Cross-lake, along the once remote shores of the eastern, or Bellevue, venue, today’s names match the original stops: Juanita, Yarrow, Kirkland, Medina and Newport. Other more-or-less forgotten ports were Cedarmere, Churches, Demotts, Curtis, Northrup, Sunnyside, Lewisville, Hazelwood and Kennydale. The Anderson boats were constructed and managed for foot passengers and freight. After 1901, the occasional internal-combustion contraption was brought aboard, pushed, and later rolled off the other end. I was told by a Seattle neighbor that an elder member of her family driving a Ford Model T attempted to come aboard after the drawbridge had been raised, resulting in a large splash, some panic, and the driver’s death by drowning. Mosquito Fleet boats lost business with the construction of roads around Lake Washington. For example, Peter Kirk’s establishment of Kirkland and C.P. Hillman platting Kennydale near the coalmines of Newcastle and Black Diamond, were better served by wheeled land transportation. With newcomers streaming across the new floating bridge, and real estate booms underway in the Bellevue area, the pokey but charming Mosquito Fleet lost business. Captain Anderson was forced to close out one of the pleasant and exciting chapters in Puget Sound history. Is it time to revive our Mosquito Fleet and return casual visitors, commuters and residents to deliberate, scenic routes serving the many bays, rivers, parks and small junctions of Lake Washington and Puget Sound? ~Junius Rochester, local author and historian

Although we usually don’t have a meeting in January, preferring to let you slowly recover from the excitement of all the Holidays, this year we must vote on our new Constitution/Bylaws to approve and send on to the state. This should be a short meeting; the document was presented in November and posted on the website. You can review it again here before the vote. Anyone with any proposed amendments should have those ready to present and send a copy to our secretary, Yun Pitre: yun.pitre@comcast.net. January 4, 2023 at 7pm Pacific Time (US and Canada) Please join us online via Zoom. If you are joining manually: Go to https://zoom.us/join Meeting ID: 821 1255 4281 Passcode: 166218 If you can only join us by phone dial +1 (253) 215 8782 and enter the meeting ID and passcode above at the prompt.

LIHI and project partner the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd have broken ground on a new affordable housing project on two parcels of land owned by the church at 1415 and 1419 22nd Ave. When the new seven-story building, called Good Shepard Housing, is complete it will have 86 units with 18 studio apartments for low-wage workers, 66 small efficiency dwelling units for the formerly homeless and one manager’s unit. A building manager’s office and parking for nine vehicles is also planned. The ground level of the building will house a separate three-bedroom unit, with its own private entrance, to be occupied by the church’s minister. The project is being built adjacent to the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd which has occupied its building at 2116 E. Union St. since 1951. It will also rise in an area surrounded by new developments that include Lake Union Partners’ East Union apartments, which opened in 2020, and the 432-unit Midtown Square which opened in 2021. Walsh Construction Co. is the general contractor for Good Shepard Housing. Runberg Architecture Group is the architect. The project team also includes 4EA Building Science. A single-family home, built in the 1950s, was removed from the parcel at 1415 22nd Ave. to make way for the new development this fall. This project is the result of a years-long relationship between the church and LIHI. 1419 22nd Ave. was the location of LIHI’s first tiny house village which opened there in 2015 and operated until 2020. “We value this partnership with the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. We applaud the Church for leasing their land long-term to LIHI to create permanently affordable housing for vulnerable people who are unhoused or cost burdened. We are blessed with their compassionate leadership as other churches have sold their land to for-profit developers instead,” Sharon Lee, director of LIHI, said in a press release. The project was first announced in August and is projected to be completed in spring 2024. It is made possible through an ordinance, adopted in June 2021, that provides development bonuses for affordable housing on property owned by religious organizations. The ordinance allows additional height and floor area to create a greater number of homes if all housing created on the site is affordable to households earning up to 80% of area median income for at least 50 years. The project is funded with the aid of an $8.2 million grant from the city of Seattle’s Office of Housing. Additional funders include Enterprise, Heritage Bank, State of Washington Housing Trust, Federal Home Loan Bank and Wyncote Foundation NW. ~From The Daily Journal of Commerce submitted by LIHI

Supporting people in our community... Thank you for another year of generosity and support! The Leschi Elementary Giving Garland, a charitable program, is in its 13th year of supporting families in need of help during the winter months and holidays. On behalf of the families who received help, we extend a tremendous THANK YOU to everyone who gave so generously and willingly! This year the Giving Garland supported over 60 families with more than 120 children, celebrating the holidays with toys, bikes, books, games, clothing, bedding, diapers, car seats, groceries, warm winter outerwear and more. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our school, greater Leschi and surrounding neighborhood communities, we were able to distribute more than $12,000 in gift cards for specific gifts, groceries, and clothing as well as approximately 700 gifts! THANK YOU!!!! Your generosity made a huge difference in so many lives… “Thank you so much—S is going to be so happy when he sees and gets to use his bike! Wishing everyone who helped us a very happy holiday.” “Thank you, guys, so much. We are truly thankful for all the help, you can’t really know how much it means.” “He never gets jackets that fit—my [teenage] son will be so happy, we appreciate you more than I can say.” A special thank you for making it all come together to Katie Busby, Jennifer Marquardt, the Broadmoor Golf Club (Thomas Kollasch, Sheri Henderson and Lou Peterson), Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, the Leschi Community Council, the Hotes Foundation, generous anonymous donors, and all of the GG volunteers.

I can’t recall the first time I met Thurston–or even the issue or organization that we had in common at the time–but I do recall the passion that he held for everything community-related. Thurston presided over the Leschi Community Council for many years (at least three terms as I recall) at a time when Leschi was experiencing a rebirth of some of its public spaces and a growing number of development projects. He always led with a sense of openness and purpose. He was on the leadership team of the Central Area Senior Center during its time of transition from a government-run organization to its own non-profit. And he chaired the board of the Central Area Development Association during the Central Area’s development explosion. Thurston was supported in all his endeavors by his loving wife Joyce who was also one of Leschi’s best-ever bakers! Thurston broke his hip in 2019 and has been living in Madison Park at Parkshore Retirement Community since then. During that time, several of us met Thurston weekly—via Zoom–and discussed everything from local to international news. It was a highlight for all of us. And he treasures the Leschi News ! In December, to Thurston’s great delight, he returned to his beloved home of over 50 years on 29th Avenue South where he is living today. Thurston continues to be a mentor and role model and I am honored to be his friend.

Women’s rights are front and center as Iran erupts in anger at its oppressive extremely conservative government. The protests started after Mahsa Amini died from being beaten by the so-called morality police. Two 16 year old girls Sarina Esmailzadeh and Nika Shakrami, have also died in the protests. Pakistani-born artist Humaira Abid created all of the work in “Fight like a Girl,” her most recent Seattle exhibition at Greg Kucera Gallery, before the current protests. But throughout her career she has taken a stand to speak out about issues pertaining to women that are rarely discussed. Abid points out that the term “Fight Like a Girl” has been used to denigrate girls, suggesting that they don’t fight as well as boys, but her point of view is that girls are strong, determined, and fight for everything they get. In Iran women by the thousands are leading the nation-wide protests, and they persist in the defiance of widespread violence against them by the government. Iran, as Resa Aslan points out in his essay “From Here to Mullahcracy” has a democratic constitution that clerics discarded: “ what had begun as a vibrant experiment in Islamic democracy…” turned into a “state ruled by an inept clerical oligarchy with absolute religious power.” Iran is not a theocracy, Aslan explains, because of that constitution which “enshrined fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, education, and peaceful assembly.“ It is those discarded rights that the people of Iran, both men and women, are demanding. Abid’s trajectory through art schools in Lahore included overcoming a lot of sexism. She studied two completely different techniques, woodworking, and miniature painting. The teachers there would not let her study woodworking or sculpture in art school, it was believed that only men could make sculpture, so she went to traditional wood carvers to learn. Along the first wall of Abid’s exhibition are protest posters rendered on meticulously carved pine that replicate the cardboard of protest signs. Carved on each one is a protest: “Blame Rapist not Victim,” “Enough,” “Tolerating Racism is Racism.” Abid first seduces us with aesthetics and beauty, then gives us a punch in the face with specific imagery that speaks to the “issues people are afraid to talk about” in women’s lives both with respect to Islam and with respect to the concerns facing all women. This exhibition includes works that address incestuous rape, miscarriages, breast feeding, and the fate of migrant women and children. “Woman with a Breast Pump” outrageously connects the breast pump with the faucets for ablutions outside of mosques, in a tondo shape (as in a Renaissance Mother and Child): she surrounds a detailed painting of a breastfeeding mother (based on a photograph) with a halo of faucets in gilded wood. In the series “Tempting Eyes” woman’s eyes look assertively from various Islamic head coverings on rear view mirrors (simulated in wood): the works comment on the driving ban for women in Saudi Arabia (lifted in 2017, but with other severe restrictions on women still in place). The law stands that declares that the eyes alone are dangerous and can violate the law with too much makeup. But these eyes defiantly stare right at us. In “Woman in Black,” 2022, a small oval miniature painting of a woman covered in black and holding a white rose, suggests a miscarriage. The stem of the white rose connects to a long chain (carved in wood) leading to a child’s head lying on the floor with a black bird sitting on it. In some ways this is the most frightening image in the exhibition: the long chain both restrains the woman and suggests an umbilical cord leading to the baby. The black bird suggest death. With the repeal of Roe v Wade the possibility of death from miscarriages has escalated. Abid has long addressed refugees and migration, particularly the suffering of women and children, who experience rape and kidnapping. That theme appears here in three swings titled “This world is beautiful and dangerous Too.” On the seat is a miniature painting of a child happily swinging in what appears to be a fantasy land. But underneath threatening looking cactus grow. Abid explained that this series began when the Taliban killed 140 children in a slaughter in 2014 in Peshawar, Pakistan. Finally “Honor” written in carved wood chains says it all: the prison, the misuse of language, the oppression all in the name of ‘Honor.’” Abid’s beautifully crafted wood sculptures with their direct messages have never been more timely. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Attendees: John Barber Chuck Nordhoff Tracy Bier Jeannie O’Brien Kenny Carlson Lee Olch Mary Charles Linda Spain Simon Newton Robert Stanley Tom Nielsen The meeting was opened by John Barber at 7p.m., followed by introductions. Leschi Park Picnic Shelter A memo dated April 19, 2021 from Shwu-jen Hwang was sent to Yousef Shulman, Paul Wilcox and Ken Benner was passed out to attendees. Shwu-jen Hwang is the Senior. Landscape Architect, Seattle Parks & Recreation Department. The memo referenced a follow-up to a March 22, 2021 meeting with Yousef, Paul and Ken regarding a possible picnic shelter honoring the memory of Steve Shulman in Leschi Park, to be located near the marina, south of the parking lot on the east side of Lakeside Avenue. John confirmed that the City is still receptive to this project. The memo briefly outlined the City of Seattle’s potential requirements and planning process and other information needed to facilitate the building of a picnic shelter. Highlights identified included the need for: Developing a concept plan. (With the City of Seattle and approved by the City) Identifying an architect (To be reviewed by the City of Seattle). Yousef has an architect that has volunteered. (An approximate cost of $40–50k. Again, this account must be reviewed by the City). Community Involvement and input. (Public meetings, and community groups) The City requires 3 public meetings. We should contact the Friends of Olmsted Association because the picnic shelter location is within the Olmsted Legacy context and should be taken into consideration. It was noted that we contact Native American Tribes and organizations. Fundraising: Grants and private funding Possible matching funds of $100k from the City, Seattle Parks and Recreation Department. The estimated approximate cost for the picnic shelter (as of April, 2021) could be $150,000–$200,000. Expense variables can also include Picnic shelter size and style design Site modification (grading, landscaping, irrigation, etc.) Environmental impact; shoreline management Water source ADA requirements Other associated cost: Permits. Tax, contingency, project management, public outreach, project review, inspection, MOA, record document, Operation & Management, etc. Discussion: The purpose of today’s meeting was to discuss the proposed picnic shelter. However, concerns were expressed about the viability and suitability of a picnic shelter to honor Steve Shulman. Mary Charles informed the attendees that she had talked to Steve about a gathering place that would be for everybody, possibly a picnic table that would seat 6–8 people. Personal recognition was not important to Steve, but his community was. John echoed this sentiment stating that the park has the “bones” to accommodate many events, and we should ensure that the park is of value to families, neighbors and the city to enjoy. Community Involvement It was felt that the local population should be surveyed, and that for a next meeting we be deliberate and thorough in getting the word out to garner a wider, diverse population utilizing media sources such as Nextdoor. How would a picnic shelter impact the local community? More local community involvement and knowledge generates personal commitment, wider range of suggestions and advances fundraising initiatives. Additionally, many customers have expressed the desire to help. We need to gauge how many people can actually work on a project. Timeline Comment was made that we should work fast toward a decision of how best to honor Steve, because people have short memories, and it is important that Steve’s impact on so many lives in the community and throughout the City should be honored sooner than later. Safety/Security Concerns It was expressed that a picnic shelter would be a gathering place for unwanted or illegal activity, particularly in the evening. There is currently concern about the escalation of illegal activity, homeless issues, and possible gang activity (as is happening in Madrona Park) in the area. These safety concerns must be discussed with local law enforcement, particularly since Seattle Police only respond to “shots fired” calls. One comment noted that once you have a gathering place, such as a picnic shelter, you’re going to amplify problems that already exist. Leschi Marina Comment that we should find out what are the future plans for the Leschi Marina, such as a public access pier, that would impact park usage and the local environment. Alternative Memorial Suggestions Alternative physical memorial suggestions to the picnic shelter need to be identified and presented as soon as possible. Leschi History Historical information about the Leschi area was shared. There was once a cable car turn-around, a dance pavilion and a hotel/casino located in the area. There is a deep sense of place in Leschi, and some type of depiction of this history could enhance public perception of the park and the memorial. Next Meeting: November 3, 7–8:30pm: Shulman Memorial Meeting at Central Area Senior Center, 500 300th Ave S. Inviting other stakeholders! Everyone felt that the attendance at the next meeting of Paul, Ken, and particularly Yousef is crucial. SPD East Precinct Captain Eric Sano will attend. Thank you to John Barber for organizing tonight’s meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 8:15p.m.