Time to submit your ideas for park and street improvements

If you have an idea for park and street improvements in Ballard, it’s time to submit them to the City’s Your Voice, Your Choice program.

Each year, the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods asks for community members to propose citywide neighborhood improvement ideas, which will then be democratically chosen. The City has a budget of $2 million for the winning projects.

Improvement projects could include park benches, trail improvements, marked crosswalks, and sidewalk repairs; the City says the only criteria are the project ideas must focus on physical improvements to Seattle’s parks or streets, benefit the public, and cost $150,000 or less.

Previous projects in Ballard include crosswalk improvements at Shilshole Ave NW and 46th St, and the 6th Ave NW Neighborhood Greenway.

After the Department of Neighborhoods receives the submissions, a group of volunteers will turn the ideas into 8-10 proposals per council district. This summer, the ideas will be listed online and voting will begin. The City says that of the $2 million budget, approximately $185,000 is allocated to each district; the remaining funds will go to projects in underrepresented communities of Equity and Environment Initiative (EEI) Focus Areas.

Project ideas will be accepted through March 18, and can be submitted by anyone age 11 and up who live, work, go to school, receive services, or participate in activities in Seattle. Submissions can be made online or in-person at any Seattle Public Library branch.

10 thoughts to “Time to submit your ideas for park and street improvements”

      1. she won’t respond to polite yet pointed emails…heart is probably in the right place but she ignores the impact on the neighborhood since junkies = more important than law, order, a decent neighborhood.

        1. Agreed. I’ve gone there to see the program in action, talked to her about mitigating impact personally at various community meetings. I believe the food program is driven (at least in part?) by Quest Church, over by Trader Joe’s in the Ballard Blocks. They have a big parking lot…would seem to be a good place to do the feeding program.

          Anyway, there has to be a way to feed the hungry without also facilitating a third-world tent and car camping scenario in a public park. She doesn’t seem too interested in figuring that out (though, in her defense, she’s far from alone in that. Dan Strauss and his-predecessor-who-must-not-be-named aren’t/weren’t exactly solution factories on that score).

  1. less vagrants in parks, less tent on public right of ways. more law enforcement in parks – seriously, just basic stuff like “no shooting up” “no disturbing the peace” “no living in the park” “no drug dealing in the park” “no freaking out on a meth binge in the park”. you know, stuff like that.

  2. More marked crosswalks are always appreciated since the policing of drivers is extremely lax and people can’t be compelled to obey the laws on their own.

  3. Why not give this $$ back to the people paying property taxes, sugar taxes, more for gas (highest gas tax in the USA) because we live here, and on and on. Rebate this $$ back to the owners of it. Government produces nothing, but dependence.

      1. Won’t somebody please think of the poor yuppies and their daily trauma of having to witness the homeless? Their PTSD is the real tragedy here.

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