In comparison, McGinn needs to focus on litter
Mayor Mike McGinn wasted the City Council’s time delivering a state-of-the-city address full of ideology but short on ideas and plans [“Seattle Mayor McGinn says … whatever,” Opinion, Feb. 18].
The topics that McGinn did take time to get specific on were his opposition to the tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct and his desire to delay and redesign the new 520 bridge. All this to turn Seattle into the largest pedestrian and bicycle park in the country to placate his green and bicycle club cronies.
Rather than worrying about this, McGinn should be looking in his own backyard and try cleaning up all of the personal pollution generated by the fine citizens of Seattle.
I recently returned to working in Seattle after many years of working from a home office. My office is in the Capitol Hill area — off Pine Street — and I’m appalled at the personal pollution that the people of Seattle create. It seems that the majority of the people in the city, on a daily basis, use the streets and sidewalks as their personal ashtrays, garbage cans and spittoons. It’s a crime and it should be addressed.
Now, before people write me off as a person not used to the city and it’s environment, I’d like to point out that I was raised in and around Manhattan and that I have lived and worked in many cities besides Seattle. The difference was that the leaders and citizens of these other cities weren’t hypocrites, proclaiming their greenness while ignoring their own backyards.
To McGinn and his cronies: Once you’ve taken care of the garbage inside the city, then you can begin to address all of the evils — automobiles — that lurk outside of the city limits.
— Robert Oberlander, Issaquah