….but did the cake taste good?

I will say he was very kind and professional to me. Then I heard him yelling at my neighbor about how he hopes she prays every night because prayer is God’s gift 🤣🤣 and also go on a tangent about Mormons

(Just double checked the recording, the above quote was Zappone)

It’s like fine I just can’t believe I paid over a grand for a service only to get evangelized to 🤣

Today, when they’d finished work he left two business cards on my doorstep. One for the pest control company, and one about how Jesus is the way. What about my house told you I needed Jesus? Was it the nude art? The bisexual flag? The titles on my bookcase????

🥺🥺

Here’s to more years of covering government, and having the freedom to do it with a bit of a bite and a bias for community! 🥂

5. Honestly, most people in government, even the ones you disagree with, genuinely want to make the city a better place. I’ve never heard a council member say “actually I want to make life worse for my constituents.” There’s just so much disagreement about how to get to “better” and what better is.

4. Some electeds are much worse offenders of the above three things than others, but all of them will fall into these traps at least once

3. Everyone loves an alt-weekly/indie news outlet that’s willing to be mean and funny until that indie news outlet is being mean and funny about your choices

2. Everyone has “constituents” who just so happen to be advocating for the exact thing they already want to vote for. Conveniently, they don’t have any constituents against it, or at least none they’re willing to mention from the dais.

Agree about Ocheltree, is just unfortunate there’s no recording to watch, especially when they had the meeting in a room that was equipped for it and they typically do record and stream budget meetings so the public can see.

Zappone did try to go into executive session, but that can only be used to discuss employee performance. Since cut discussions are about budgetary layoffs and not firing employees for cause, they have to do it in the open.

Actually, no. Liberal supermajority…

Also, regardless of where you stand on staff cuts, kicking staff out of a public meeting that won’t be recorded seems dicey at best, illegal at worst.

We might disagree on this, but if we’re going to expect council members to govern the second largest city in WA as part time council members, it makes sense for them to have a staff. They made cuts in 2022 and 2024. Seems shortsighted to rely on always having a politically aligned mayor + staff.