Field Level Media

The NFL landscape has rarely been so uncertain as the season nears its halfway point, and the Tuesday afternoon trade deadline did little to help.

The injury-ravaged Buffalo Bills defense found some help in defensive back Rasul Douglas via trade with Green Bay. The Washington Commanders dealt the heart of their defense, sending Montez Sweat to the Chicago Bears and Chase Young to the San Francisco 49ers, and the Detroit Lions boosted their receiving talent by acquiring Donovan Peoples-Jones from the Cleveland Browns.

The Bears could finish the season owning the first two picks in the 2024 NFL Draft. They have their own as well as the Carolina Panthers’ first-rounder.

But Young is perhaps the biggest catch among contenders, giving San Francisco another massive boost on defense.

People are also reading…

The defending champion Kansas City Chiefs put in a pedestrian performance last Sunday in a loss to the Denver Broncos, the Philadelphia Eagles have shown vulnerabilities while winning seven of their eight games, and the 49ers have seen the wheels come off over the past three weeks in losses to Cleveland, Minnesota and Cincinnati.

Top 15 NFL teams per BetMGM

San Francisco did itself a huge favor, dealing a third-round pick for Young. This Niners’ front is going to be a problem in December and January.

In the wake of the deal, the 49ers rate as a strong value pick among the top three — that is, if quarterback Brock Purdy solves his recent troubles in a timely manner.

Speaking of a monstrous defensive presence, the Eagles figure to improve as the weather cools. A bet on Philadelphia, which holds the inside track in the race for home-field advantage, could be considered high value at the current number.

The NFC is not overly strong, and the Eagles are a proven postseason commodity.

The Chiefs’ betting attractiveness would be more secure if sports-betting fans knew whether Taylor Swift will be in attendance during the last weeks of the season. (Check Travis Kelce’s “with Tay-Tay” and “without Tay-Tay” stats if you think we’re joking.)

The Bills have to remain under consideration for a play at +1200, if only for their ability to outscore opponents.

Buffalo dumped Miami 48-20 earlier this season.

Douglas, 28, heads to an AFC contender that lacked cornerback depth after Tre’Davious White sustained a torn Achilles and was lost for the season.

Douglas had one interception, one fumble recovery and 32 tackles in seven starts for the Packers (2-5) this season.

The Lions, a similar value to Buffalo at +1300, appear to have a nice path toward winning the NFC North title and picked up offensive depth by acquiring Peoples-Jones.

With Amon-Ra St. Brown and rookie standout tight end Sam LaPorta, Lions quarterback Jared Goff has a wealth of targets — not to mention the tough one-two punch from running backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

Peoples-Jones, 24, has eight catches for 97 yards in seven games this season for the Browns, who selected him in the sixth round of the 2020 draft. He hails from Detroit and played his college football at Michigan.

“We feel like he fits our style,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “He’s smart and he can play multiple positions. … We just felt like he’d be a good fit for the team and the room.”

In four seasons with Cleveland, Peoples-Jones amassed 117 catches for 1,837 yards and eight touchdowns. His best season was 2022, when he finished with 61 catches for 839 yards and three touchdowns.

The Cincinnati Bengals, now +1600, showed last Sunday that they might be ready to announce their presence once again. A convincing win at San Francisco was more in line with the dangerous team that dominated last season’s second half and reached the AFC title game.

Get the Bengals while they’re still at a high-value number.

The Seahawks are in first place in the NFC West, a half-game ahead of the 49ers. And they’re still +3000 to win it all.

Seattle is tucked away in the Northwest, away from a ton of national scrutiny, but is certainly a stealth contender.

The Seahawks stated their intention by acquiring New York Giants defensive lineman Leonard Williams, a real boost for the run-stopping prowess needed to win as the season winds down.

So, +3000? That’s quite a gap between the Seahawks and the +600 49ers.

Jump on the Bengals and Bills as a nice counter to heavy AFC favorite Kansas City. Catch the price while it still carries value.

The post NFL odds after commerce deadline: Bengals, Payments provide worth appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

There’s a mismatch between job openings and seekers, with about 121,000 open jobs and 106,000 unemployed people in Colorado. The new Education to Employment Alliance thinks they might have the solution. 

The group, made up of business and education-oriented organizations such as the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Succeeds and Colorado Thrives, released a report last month with five recommendations to better match workers with open positions, including adjusting the skills taught in school to better match the needs of employers. The idea being: Companies tell educators what skills are lacking, educators teach those skills to students and everyone goes home happy. 

For many businesses and lawmakers, this isn’t new. Federal and state governments have provided funding for vocational programs through the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act from 2014. The SyncUp Colorado competition in 2021 asked organizations to develop programs for this purpose, with support from the state government, Colorado Succeeds and Colorado Thrives. 

“There have been a ton of them, but they’re very siloed,” said Ed Sealover, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. He believes these programs are already getting more students interested, and coordinating to scale them up will help meet job demand.

Take construction, one of the industries with a consistently high demand for middle-skills workers — which require certification beyond a high school diploma, but not a four-year degree — according to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s 2022 and 2023 surveys. 

The Colorado River Board of Cooperative Educational Services won $350,000 from the SyncUp competition to fund high school classes where students build 200-square-foot houses. That includes framing, windows and doors, flooring, siding, plumbing, electricity, roofing, installing cabinets and more. 

It’s the kind of career-connecting program that the alliance will work to implement more consistently across Colorado, Sealover said. He believes giving students a clear idea of how to pursue those jobs and what their salaries will look like will get them interested.

“I don’t know that there’s one main barrier (to entering middle-skills jobs), but I definitely think social perception is one of them,” Sealover said. “Lack of knowledge as well. We need to remind people that these are good, sustainable careers that the students can get into with far less debt.”

John Fisher agrees. He’s both a general contractor and the teacher for Aspen High School’s tiny homes program, which is a subset of Fisher’s larger woodworking class. 

In his 55 years of teaching, he’s seen a decline in the construction, architecture and engineering classes that show students what career paths are available, Fisher said. To cut costs, schools did away with them altogether or moved them to vocational schools.

Aspen High School sophomore Ryley Benson constructs a tiny home during woodworking class on the school campus. The school’s tiny homes woodworking program is the kind of career-connecting class that the Education to Employment Alliance wants to implement more consistently across the state. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

“Once the kids get exposed to it, just like the ones that I have that are working, they’re highly motivated, and they’re very much interested,” Fisher said. 

But he may be overestimating that interest. Last year’s project involved just eight students, and of the ones he says are most likely to go into construction, some now say they’ve never considered it — which suggests there are other factors, beyond lack of exposure, that are discouraging them. 

Junior Max Sherman said he’s always wanted to go into real estate. He plans to follow in his dad’s footsteps, going into a real estate internship after graduating high school. Eventually, he wants to open a hotel business in a big city, somewhere like Los Angeles or San Francisco. 

Sherman likes the stability of that path. “I feel like real estate will always be more or less a safe job,” he said. “There’s a lot of industries popping up right now which could either blow up or they could go away. So I’d rather do a safer choice than gamble it all.”

He’s never really considered other career paths and took woodworking not as a career interest, but because he thought being able to make things like desks and chairs would be a useful life skill. He feels like he got what he wanted out of the class, and he enjoyed it. But he pointed to the physical exertion as a reason he wouldn’t go into construction. “I don’t know if it’s something I want to do five days a week for, you know, 20 years consecutively,” he said.

It seems like great preparation for a construction career, and if he was interested, he could get guidance from Fisher on how to pursue that, Sherman said. He’s just not.

Fisher doesn’t see the physical toll or the pay as drawbacks for the right worker. “They’ll start out at, you know, maybe 25, 30 bucks an hour. Right now, most all laborers are getting 25 bucks an hour,” he said. “They see the potential to make more money by working up to that.”

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce represents business interests, and Sealover said he doesn’t track information on the employee side: what jobs currently unemployed people are looking for, and what’s worked for getting current middle-skills workers into their jobs. 

The alliance isn’t concerned with getting a specific number of students into open jobs, and they’re not expecting big changes anytime soon. But classes like Fisher’s will at least show students their options in middle-skills career paths, where the cost of education is much lower, Sealovers said. From there, he expects more and more of them to pursue those jobs.

“You just have to make students aware of the opportunities and figure that some of them are going to choose their own path,” Sealover said.

The post Colorado enterprise teams provide concepts to fulfill middle-skills job demand appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The ground shook. The city burned. Hundreds died.

The anniversary of the great quake of 1906 provides a time to reflect on the unfathomable devastation and the rebirth of a metropolis. This year, a trip to The Chronicle’s archive led to the rediscovery of photos taken amid ruins as flames still burned in the city, with many of the images never published and unseen for decades.

At 5:12 a.m. Pacific time 112 years ago, the 7.9-magnitude temblor shook San Francisco for less than a minute, but the rumbling was felt as far north as Oregon, as far south as Los Angeles and as far east as central Nevada.

There remains much uncertainty about the death toll. At least 700 are thought to have perished, with some estimates at more than 3,000. San Francisco had a population of about 450,000 at the time of the quake, and 490 city blocks were leveled, with 28,188 buildings destroyed. More than 200,000 people were left homeless.

Most of the photos pulled from the depths of the archive had little or no caption information. Locations were determined through comparisons to similar photos published in The Chronicle and elsewhere throughout the years, but, in many, the neighborhood is unclear, as the burned carcasses of buildings and piles of ash look the same in North Beach as they do South of Market.

Chronicle scribe Harre Demoro was tasked with writing about the quake for the 80th anniversary, on April 18, 1986: “In San Francisco, a loud, pounding roar announced the earthquake’s arrival. An astonished Jesse Cook, who later would be a police commissioner, watched the temblor shiver up Washington Street. ‘The whole street was undulating. It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, and billowing as they came,’ he recalled years later.

“For a few minutes at dawn on April 18, 1906, it seemed that San Francisco had survived the tremor and that the worst was over. But, the fires were beginning, and they became a firestorm that raged for almost four days.

“There were dozens of fires throughout the city, but the ‘Ham and Eggs Fire’ burned more of the city than any other. A Hayes Valley woman started to cook breakfast but didn’t realize the chimney was damaged. Within minutes the entire neighborhood was on fire.”

Will Irwin, a noted San Francisco writer, composed a famous piece in the New York Sun newspaper amid the disaster. He called it “The City That Was,” and it began: “The old San Francisco is dead.”

In 2006, in an article marking the temblor’s 100th anniversary, Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte stated his case that the city bounced back, better than ever.

“What emerged was a much different San Francisco. The old city was gray, the buildings darkened with coal smoke, a grimy city like turn-of-the-century London. Its cable cars were powered by horses, clattering down Market Street at 9 mph.

“The new San Francisco’s big buildings were white and sparkling. Modern electric streetcars ran on Market Street, as they still do.

“The old city burned coal and dumped raw sewage into the bay. The new San Francisco was lit by electricity and heated by gas. It was as if the Victorian age had been swept away in less than a week.

“Visiting President William Howard Taft was so impressed with the rebuilding after the quake that, in 1911 while lunching at the Cliff House, he toasted San Francisco as ‘the City that Knows How.’”

Bill Van Niekerken is the library director of The San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. In his weekly column, From the Archive, he explores the depths of The Chronicle’s vast photography archive in search of interesting historical tales related to the city by the bay.

The post Previous pictures supply new glimpses of devastation appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Earlier this year, when Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson named Lynn McBee as his workforce czar, he said that boosting workforce development efforts in the city was a “top mayoral priority.” On Monday, a partnership was announced to help with that.

Dallas startup UpSmith and American Residential Services are leading efforts to create “high-purpose, high-pay, high-dignity career opportunities” across Texas for aspiring HVAC technicians through a paid training program that leads to real jobs.

“Our mission is to combat the U.S. skill crisis,” said UpSmith’s CEO and founder, Wyatt Smith, adding that they have a big challenge with more than 1 million job openings in Texas. “To take on those roles and expand, we need a new way of working.”

Through UpSmith’s technology platform — UpSmith.com — which connects talent with employers seeking to identify, qualify, staff and retain skilled tradespeople, ARS, the nation’s largest provider of residential heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning services, is sponsoring candidates to earn credentials as HVAC technicians via paid 8-week training boot camps.

According to Smith, those who complete the program will be offered jobs paying $20-$25 per hour.

“Texas is a proving ground for how to create fast, affordable pathways to jobs of the future,” he said. “Our platforms are open for business.”

“We are excited to announce our partnership with UpSmith in addressing the skilled worker shortage across Dallas and Houston,” said Chris Snow, ARS’ chief human resource officer. “With their support, we will be able to provide enhanced services to our valued customers and communities. The ARS network is proud to pioneer these paid on-ramps to welcome new, hard-working talent into our industry. In addition to creating home services careers, we are inviting bright, ambitious young men and women to build fulfilling careers in a rapidly advancing market.”

McBee said she and Mayor Johnson are “hyper-focused” and working hard to help more Dallas residents move out of poverty. Solutions include providing opportunities for upward mobility and investing in people reaching their fullest potential.

“Workforce Dallas is committed to helping up to 10,000 residents a year upskill for jobs of the future. UpSmith’s tech platform provides a needed link to employers,” she said. “I am pleased UpSmith is launching its workforce training endeavor in North Texas to create pathways for Metroplex residents to gain high-demand credentials in the skilled professions.”

CitySquare Chief Programs Officer Nadia Salibi underscored the value of the partnership.

“At CitySquare, our programs address inequality in access to housing, food, health care, legal services, and employment opportunities,” she said. “As we strive to remove obstacles for so many of our neighbors, we are excited to partner with UpSmith and empower our neighbors through training that can secure better pay and a rewarding, sustainable career.”

Darren Green shared his experience with the training. The former Marine said he went through an identity crisis and needed to find a niche to direct his drive and sense of purpose.

Because he enjoyed working with his hands, and he saw an opportunity for growth, he signed up, graduated from HVAC school and is gainfully employed, doing something that is providing him with many opportunities.

Candidates interested in careers as HVAC technicians should visit UpSmith.com to learn more and apply. Smith, the Upsmith CEO, said the process is simple. Candidates just have to upload a video and pass background and drug tests to be eligible to start in the next two and a half weeks.

“You’ll be a technician by the middle of the fall,” Smith said.

Marva J. Sneed contributed to this report.

This article, originally published in Texas Metro News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and TMN. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.

The post Partnership to supply paid HVAC coaching to Dallas employees to assist fill scarcity appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

How digital twins have evolved, with the help of geospatial data, to capture more complex environments than ever.

Contributed by Greg Milner

Weary travelers lost in San Francisco International Airport (SFO) can access a map of the facility on their cell phones. The map, built with geographic information system (GIS) technology, provides the information to get them where they need to go. But there’s much more to the map—it guides operations.

These additional layers, accessible to the people who run and maintain the airport, reveal the airport’s dazzling complexity. All 1.8 million square feet of the International Terminal are included. Every individual component—from the 15,000 doors to the 2,000 trees—is present and accounted for.

Peel back those layers and peek underground. You’ll find the 400 miles of labeled subsurface utilities, including water, electrical, and wastewater. The airport’s exteriors are pictured, gathered through lidar and other methods, seamlessly integrated into the GIS.

For operations detail, building information models (BIM) find their place on the map. Closets, walkways, plumbing—it’s all there, ready to aid in repairs or long-term projects. Informative GIS layers, such as the location of wireless access points, augment the detailed BIM information.

And this is just the static map information. Indoor tracking shows the position of critical equipment. Outside, the current locations of maintenance vehicles are revealed.

From the public version to the sensitive high-security layers, it’s all the same GIS-supported map. But it’s more than that. This is SFO in its entirety: the permanent parts, the semi-permanent, and those items are always on the move.

So let’s not call it a map. What SFO has built is a geospatial digital twin.

SFO’s digital twin includes a 3D viewer that gives personnel the details they need to perform maintenance and safeguard travelers, as well as an app to guide travelers through interior spaces.

The Evolution of Digital Twins

The concept of the digital twin is not new, although it has undergone radical alterations. The earliest digital twins appeared in the manufacturing world, as far back as the 1980s. They were a way to measure the performance of factory machinery and processes, down to the level of individual components.

Although helpful for understanding plant operations, the utilities of these early digital twins were limited. An analyst could note strengths and weaknesses in the system, and detect problems and bottlenecks, but would struggle to apprehend its totality.

Modern digital twins provide this totality, without compromising granularity. Just as the human body relies on the interconnection of systems such as the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system, complex systems in organizations function through constantly flowing interactions. A modern digital twin recognizes that interactions among systems are just as important as the individual systems themselves.

The Complex World As It Is

How does a geospatial digital twin create the conditions for this nuanced view?

First, by offering clarity of vision. From the time GIS first debuted over a half-century ago, the technology has pioneered the concept of digital twins.

The visual language of GIS is the map. Just as a paper map is, to varying degrees, “an analog twin,” many GIS-derived maps can be thought of as digital twins. GIS maps contain details about attributes, data can be traced to its source, and they transcend the static maps of the past.

GIS can produce realistic digital twins because the technology can now seamlessly integrate immersive 3D environments, including details obtained via drones and reality capture techniques.

Geospatial digital twins go further than 3D models by adding the dimension of time. Like the systems they mirror, digital twins evolve. By compiling information regarding the past and present, digital twins can be used to query what happened when and even what’s likely to happen based on past patterns. Advanced analytic techniques reveal trends and hotspots.

Prague, one of Europe’s fastest-growing cities, is using a digital twin to restore the connectivity of Florenc, a historic neighborhood, with the surrounding area and preserve its world heritage status.

No Two Twins Alike

As more people have grasped the potential power of geospatial digital twins, use cases have multiplied. It is now possible to speak of many categories of digital twin:

• Design and construction digital twins help manage complex infrastructure problems, while providing a through-line that connects the present with the future. In Brisbane, Australia, a digital twin aids in the construction of a new subway. The same twin also depicts areas above ground, so that the rail authority can track how the underground project impacts economic development above it. When the project is complete, the same twin will guide daily operations.
• Digital twins have become an indispensable tool for architects and urban planners. The technology helps them imagine and experiment with alternative scenarios without any disruptions to the real world. What would a proposed promenade look like, given current walking and pedestrian traffic in the region? How high should a bridge be, based on various climate change flooding scenarios?
• Digital twins of utilities networks provide a detailed physical view of systems that are often concealed from view. In the United Kingdom, the wireless provider Vodafone now uses a digital twin that covers 245,000 square kilometers of its network.
• Environmental digital twins have recently emerged as a way to understand ecosystems and how they function. Perhaps their most valuable attribute is the way they link natural systems with human-made systems, revealing how each affects the other.

The Common Denominators

The most exciting digital twin model to emerge in recent years attempts to combine all of the above into something that mirrors the complexity of entire cities, or even nations. Grenada, for example, has built an impressive country-level digital twin that helps the Caribbean nation understand and prepare for climate change.

The mirroring ability of digital twins can obscure qualities that are more prosaic, but no less powerful, than the ability to mirror dynamic systems.

Digital twins foster collaboration and communication. They provide a common view for stakeholders to understand how systems may evolve. And their visual intuitiveness is a way explain progress to communities, regulatory agencies, or anyone else who may be affected by evolving systems.

Finally, there is the power that has long made GIS an optimal way to organize spatial information.

The many data flows that comprise complex systems may originate from disparate sources. Oftentimes, the only thing these groups of data share is that they have a spatial component, a shared location. GIS-based digital twins honor this similarity while visually emphasizing it.

Geospatial digital twins offer something that approaches complete contextual awareness. By helping us visualize the cross-pollination of data flows, these digital twins connect abstract data with concrete experience. By answering the constantly shifting question of “where?”, geospatial digital twins offer the ultimate contextual understanding.

Learn more about how GIS creates digital twins of the natural and built environments.

This article originally appeared in the Esri Blog.

Greg Milner is a writer in the strategic content group at Esri, where he tells stories about how location intelligence is transforming our world and how we perceive it. A former magazine editor and political speechwriter, he is the author of the books “Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music” (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and “Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds.”. 

The post Geospatial Digital Twins Supply Unmatched Readability for Complicated Methods | Geo Week Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

As the summer season approaches, guests traveling to the mid-coast will have two new restaurants available to indulge their inner Francophile, each showcasing a different style of cuisine from the European country.

La Cave in Camden opened in May and focuses on French bistro fare like snail and duck fat fries with garlic aioli. Alsace in Union will open this summer and will have a stronger meat and potato approach from the North East region of France.

Both are new to the Mid Coast.

Jennifer Roux, co-owner of the new Alsace, said the restaurant’s menu will reflect Alsace’s unique cuisine, which has strong German influences. Dishes may include sauerkraut, red cabbage, potatoes, sausages, spaetzle, and more.

“I think people think of French food as very fancy, difficult to understand and inaccessible. It’s going to be very inviting,” said Roux.

Alsace will also serve tarte flambee, a regional specialty consisting of very thinly rolled bread dough covered with crème fraîche, thinly sliced ​​onions and bacon, Roux said. The restaurant has experimented with several possible toppings, including Maine blueberries and one with leeks, mushrooms, onions, and bacon. Traditionally, the dish was also used to test how quickly the dough crisped up and how the wood-fired oven heated up.

“They ate this tarte flambee as a treat with whatever they got from the garden,” Roux said. “It’s a really nice tradition from rural Alsace.”

At La Cave in Camden, bistro cuisine represents a different style of French cuisine. The menu features dishes like salmon tartare with avocado and citrus on crunchy green plantain chips, and a rocket salad with goat cheese, Morse’s beet relish, roasted pine nuts and avocado, and snails dressed with garlic, butter and parsley.

“I spoke to every customer and everyone said the food was amazing. And we’re now known around town for probably the best mussels in Camden, which is incredible,” said Ben Toussaint, who owns the restaurant with Will Statz and Devon Morris.

La Cave mussels are served with a creamy white wine sauce, aromatic herbs and spices.

Also of note is the French onion soup — the restaurant calls it Wood Fired Onion Soup Au Gratin. The beef broth cooks in their wood-fired oven for 48 hours, developing so much flavor, Toussaint said. The soup is topped with traditional Gruyere cheese.

“The flavors are just original and really, really bold and incredible,” said Toussaint.

The bistro serves what Toissaint calls “French portions,” which are smaller than typical American portions. The dishes are meant for sharing.

Alsace cuisine is overseen by Jennifer Roux’s husband, Fabrice Roux, a French Champagne chef who trained in Paris before working in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Together they owned three restaurants in California before moving to Maine. This will be their first restaurant in Maine.

Jennifer Roux said she sees similarities between Maine and the Alsace region, both located in the northeast of their respective countries.

“We like the food that isn’t fancy, even though he comes from a very ritzy professional background,” said Jennifer Roux. “The food we like is often classified as farm food, like the food your grandmother makes for you.”

Alsace will open sometime this summer once a staff is in place. The restaurant is currently hiring kitchen staff. They hope to offer an al fresco lunch service with daily specials in the meantime.

La Cave is open seven days a week and often features live jazz music, which the restaurant hopes to continue into the summer season. On Wednesdays they serve a limited menu – until the staff is fully trained. The other six days there is a full menu from 5pm to 10pm and a smaller bar menu from 10pm to 12:30pm.

Chef Elizabeth Toussaint, Ben Toussaint’s ex-wife, is at the helm of the kitchen.

“She attended one of the best cooking schools in Colombia, where she’s from, and has since worked at several restaurants in Colombia and New Jersey, including a few years at Primo in Rockland,” said Ben Toussaint.

More articles from the BDN

The post These two new midcoast eating places provide completely different takes on French delicacies appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Westside Seattle reached out to the District 1 candidates for Seattle City Council and those we could reach were asked to prepare one minute answers to four questions and send their responses back on video. The goal was to allow voters to quickly be able to contrast and compare the candidates on important issues. By no means is this set of comparisons a full picture of who the candidates are or an example of how they might perform in the role. They are presented here and in the video below in alphabetical order

Question One

The issue of homelessness is especially acute in Seattle. In June 2021, the City Council approved a plan to use $49 million of the $128 million from federal COVID-19 relief funds to support the city’s homeless population. In fact Seattle tripled its spending on homelessness over the past eight years, yet tents still line our freeways, and the population remains stubbornly high. 

What concrete measures will you advocate for and what if any legislation will you work to pass to reduce the number of homeless, remedy the urban blight and demonstrate humanity in the process?

Preston Anderson 

I worked with the VA healthcare system and have worked extensively in the homes programs over the course of my 12 year career as a clinical social worker housing veterans, the VA has cut veteran homelessness by over 50% over the last 10 years. They achieved this not just by funding homeless programs. But by also implementing programmatic standards that are guided by evidence based practices and are clinically appropriate for the population, the VA homeless programs are held to these standards by an outside accrediting agency, ensuring that our work is done efficiently and effectively, and ultimately introducing an element of accountability. This ensures that people do not continue to cycle in and out of homelessness. I currently manage transitional housing programs for homeless veterans. This represents just one piece of the suite of housing options available for our homeless. It’s important that we build out transitional housing programs quickly and throughout the region to supplement our efforts at building out permanent supportive housing, reducing veteran homelessness and homelessness in general is a priority of mine on the Council. 

Maren Costa 

Our leadership has known for 10 plus years that Seattle is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. But our housing policy has looked like it’s from the 1970s. We may have tripled spending on homelessness over the past eight years, but much of that money was used for sweeps, which are consistently proven to be ineffective. In 2022, the city spent $5.8 million on permanent housing, but $15 million on sweeps. Those numbers should at the very least, be reversed. It’s observed that we continue these failed policies year after year and continue to criminalize homelessness instead of bringing people inside, which has been most evidenced effective and practical solution, the unsheltered population isn’t stubbornly high. Rather, the failings of our Band-Aid policies are stubbornly ineffective. I propose a vacancy tax. We have 30,000 vacant units in this city. With our crisis, we can’t afford to allow these units to remain vacant. Unless the funds raised through that tax would directly contribute to permanent housing solutions for those experiencing homelessness. 

Jean Ianelli Craciun 

As a council member, I will work tirelessly to make government accountable, transparent and efficient. This is what I have done in a 30 year owner of a market research company. What have we done with this homeless problem and how can it be a more humane process? I understand we’ve spent a billion dollars on this problem and I’m wondering on what exactly, and doing what I supported the five crisis centers. And I would continue to grow the mental health workforce, including support for the mental health technology transfer center network and all their training. I think we need to calculate mandatory wage increases for workers and contracts offered through the Seattle Human Services Department for the homeless service providers. The people on the ground that are solving the homeless should not be a step away from homelessness themselves, and I support the frontline DCR’s designated crisis responders. Who know first hand and lived experiences of those currently on the streets of Seattle. 

Rob Saka 

The homelessness crisis in our city has devolved into a homelessness catastrophe of epic humanitarian proportions. People are demanding better accountability for outcomes. As a former foster kid, I know what it’s like to feel uprooted and swept away. I also know we must do better for our unhoused neighbors. That’s why I plan to strengthen clean up and removal of unauthorized encampments that connect people with services and shelter. We also need to expand and invest in our mental health resources and capacity. 3rd I plan to increase the supply of affordable housing at all levels, particularly for low and middle income folks. And finally, we need to partner with local, state and federal governments to figure out the best funding solutions for all this. We need to not only address the root causes, but also the symptoms. 

Phil Tavel 

Look, Seattle has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to tackle our homelessness crisis, and it just keeps getting worse. What that tells me is that there are two things. That we seriously need to do right away, and this is where I’m going to start. One, we need to put into place clear metrics. What that means is if you’re a homeless service provider you are going to state what you intend to accomplish, when, and how much money it will take, and if you’re not getting people off the street into housing if you’re not getting people tied to wrap around services to deal with mental health issues and substance abuse issues then that’s going to be an issue and that’s going to lead to the second part, which is accountability and what that means is for those providers that are failing to accomplish their goals based on the metrics we’re going to set, you stop getting money from the city. We are only going to put money into programs that prove they can work. We’ve been throwing money down this pit for long enough. And we have to stop it if we want to truly help people, we need to put money where it works. 

Question Two

Crime rates are up with 5,784 property crimes per 100,000 people and violent crimes sharply higher at 736 per 100,000 in 2022. Yet there’s something more, and it’s obvious to even the casual observer. People driving wildly, more brazen break ins and disregard for others. Beyond measures to improve police recruiting, and retention what can you do as a City Council person to advocate for and  change the atmosphere of anarchy and lawlessness across the city?

Preston Anderson 

For the second question, it is important that we adequately staff our Police Department. Having an adequately staffed Police Department ensures that the officers on the beat are able to do their job safely and effectively. I also believe that we need to invest more in crisis responders who can, if this seems safe to do so, respond to those in crises and triage that person’s needs. I don’t view policing and the deployment of social service providers and crisis responders as an either/or equation, but rather a both/and solution. It is also critically important that we build out and staff substances disorder, treatment centers that are able to provide clinical stability to many who have turned to crime to fund their substance use or may be causing disorder and criminal activity due to them being under the influence of illicit substances. 

Maren Costa 

To improve safey In our city, first and foremost, we must drive a better bargain with Spog to provide alternative response models. The SPOG (Seattle Police Officers Guild) contract shouldn’t be a barrier for allowing police to respond to dangerous, violent situations, while a third public safety department handles calls where traditional police officers aren’t needed. Additionally, we have to address root causes of criminal behavior. We have $30,000 hiring bonuses for new officers, yet we’re netting 30 new officers per year and we want 500. We simply can’t put public safety on hold while we continue. On recruit work on recruiting police, we need alternative solutions to address root causes. Now, data backed prevention strategies like Community Court with 80% of people who enter who don’t reoffend, and familial counseling programs should be fully funded because they actually reduce recidivism. Unlike the traditional carceral system. 

Jean Ianelli Craciun 

As a sociologist with a focus in criminology, I would ask that we accurately look at some of these crime statistics. I know that we’re feeling unsafe. I had my bike stolen last weekend and I do see road rage, but these also are reactions to having lived through a pandemic. And we feel honest fear. Statistically speaking, overall crime decreased in the fourth quarter of 2022. Chief Diaz reported that so far in 2023, we are still in a downward trajectory. Something that is of concern is a report today. It’s May 30th before the judge on the consent decree adds information that Seattle police killings rose under the federal oversight before 20/12/12. People had been shot by police between 2013. In 2019, 21 people were killed. This is something we need to understand. 

Rob Saka 

As an appointed member on the mayor’s police chief search committee, I’ve fought hard to make sure we have safer streets. Everyone has a right to feel safe in their own neighborhoods and communities, and we need better response times for more police. To get there, we’re going to have to hire more police. We can also fully empower our police and our first responders to effectively carry out their public safety mandate and enforce existing laws on the books. We also need to invest in non armed responses to police for certain crisis and behavioral health situations, crisis responses that are led by mental and behavioral health specialists rather than someone showing up with the badge and a gun. Through this multi layered approach we can make sure that Seattle is truly a safe, welcoming and thriving community for all. 

Phil Tavel 

I think we’re all getting pretty frustrated and pretty fed up with the rise in property crimes and violent crimes, and especially the rise in gun violence around Seattle is utterly unacceptable. One of the things we need to do is we need to change the narrative. The narrative right now is that we don’t have enough police. They don’t make arrests, they don’t investigate it, and that to criminals, it says you can get away with this. So go out and be brazen. Well, we need to change that. That’s going to start with the Seattle City Council standing with the mayor, with the police, with the city attorney and on a frequent basis, we need to highlight the successes when the Police Department does the right things and we either stop crime or solve crime. We need to show that’s happening because right now it sounds like everybody can be lawless and nothing happens. So we need to deal with the staffing issue because we need to get police walking beats in neighborhoods and being a visible presence. That’s a deterrent, but the thing that’s going to do the most right now is a unified front among the leadership in this city, saying no more and we’re not going to take it. 

Question Three

Visitors spent $7.4 billion in the city and county in 2022 (up 37.8% from 2021) and paid $689.1 million in state and local taxes in 2021, an increase of 34.4% from the previous year. Nearly 24 million people visited Seattle and King County in 2022. San Francisco more than doubled its spending on tourism last year. Yet Seattle, San Francisco and Portland all face a decaying downtown. What would you advocate for regarding tourism spending and the revitalization of downtown Seattle?

Preston Anderson 

For the third question, part of District one includes Pioneer Square, part of downtown. It is important that we make the streets of downtown more accessible to pedestrian traffic and more appealing. We can achieve this by enhancing the cleaning crews and Park Rangers that are already deployed downtown. Further, we can ensure that public drug use and retail theft and property destruction are addressed with the right policies. There are options between prosecution, particularly for those that have the mental capacity to understand what they’re doing is a crime. And for those that lack mental capacity, Community Court with wrap around. But most importantly, we will not normalize what has become of certain areas in the city where you find places. plastered with graffiti and where businesses are now surrounded by fences with razor wire and windows with iron bars. 

Maren Costa 

Revitalizing our downtown goes back to fixing homelessness. We have to be spending every dollar we can on bringing people inside Iimmediately. A decaying downtown is one that feels dirty, has crime happening, and has human feces on the sidewalk. We have to get back to the basics and stop putting the cart before the horse. We can aggressively increase emergency permanent housing with micro housing, apartments and sanitation statement stations for safe lots. This will immediately help our businesses. I am also proposing ways, for example, partnering with Seattle. Colleges to attract the industries that will define the next decade, specifically those that will help us respond to the climate crisis as well as rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. I will be a strong advocate for sustainable tourism and local culture and arts, all things that make our beautiful city unique. 

Jean Ianelli Craciun 

People love to come to Seattle and it is a multi billion dollar industry and we cannot disappoint. I did a project through the Diversity Center of Seattle, WA with Visit Seattle and I know that they are hard at work to make our tourists happy and I would say that the Metropolitan Improvement District, (MID) this is the right way to go right now. I will be meeting with Pioneer Square businesses to talk about how District 1 now includes Pioneer Square. The MID goes clearly to the stadiums, so we are already starting to work together on how to explain, demonstrate, show our city off. We have to stay up later and so in order to do that, we will need to work together on cleaning up our entire downtown corridor into Pioneer Square. We want to show off our multicultural communities, and so we’re going to try and bring people into some of our beautiful neighborhoods.

Rob Saka 

Seattle has a vibrant arts and cultural scene. But sadly, downtown is known more recently for fentanyl overdoses than it’s thriving retail and shopping corridors. We must revitalize downtown. To do that, we must make sure people actually feel safe to come downtown. That’s why I plan to hire more police and empower them to effectively carry out their public safety mandate. We also must end the open air drug market in downtown. I also need to fund and implement the mayor’s downtown activation plan. 4th and finally p lan to incentivize small businesses to open up the many vacant storefronts that we have downtown. Through these measures, we can ensure that downtown is a truly safe, clean, and welcoming place for all. 

Phil Tavel 

Obviously tourism and the revenue that comes from that is vital to our success as a city and as a. region in order to be inviting to tourists to generate more revenue, we have to be safe and clean and welcoming. And those are things we absolutely need to work on. Now in the wake of the last few years in COVID and all the things that have happened, we have lost a lot of our iconic businesses, but you know what? Times change and so we need to provide funds from the city and support from the city to allow the businesses to get back on their feet that we haven’t lost to maybe try to lure some of those people back who had to close their doors and stop their businesses to give them an opportunity to come back and be part of a regrowth and a revitalization. But if we don’t fully fund our Police Department, and if we don’t work on homeless services to help people in crisis, we’re not going to be the safe, healthy, clean, inviting city we want to be. So I believe it is important to spend money on those things that generate more money so that we can build the programs we want.

Question Four

A 2020 audit of Seattle’s 77 bridges revealed that many of them are in fair or poor condition. According to SDOT’s Capital Projects and Roadway Structures 2018 Annual Report, the total replacement value for all bridges over 60 years old serviced by Roadway Structures is $3.4 billion. What approach would you pursue to solve this problem and fund these infrastructure repairs?

Preston Anderson 

The 4th question is on the aging infrastructure throughout the city and I’m glad that you asked this question. We have neglected our aging infrastructure for far too long and I intend to prioritize the replacement. Or the rehabilitation of our infrastructure, especially our agent bridges. We are pushing. The limits of safety for a lot of our projects and I think it’s irresponsible to have some bridges in the city that run the risk of failing. Soon and West Seattle residents know all too well how structural failures impact local communities and the economy. I’ll ensure that these projects are funded with the levy to Move Seattle. 

Maren Costa 

To solve our bridge and road infrastructure problems, we will have to revise the Move Seattle levy. The original nine year Levy passed in 2015 will take care of 350 bridge spot repairs and the seismic improvements for one bridge. But we will need to continue these improvements. Our city is still mostly. Dependent on bridges and streets for mobility. And it is. Critical that we coordinate with our regional partners to continue this necessary repair. Their work, ideally the move Seattle levy, will be placed on the wealthiest 1% and used in tandem with other progressive revenue streams that have been stood up by the city and specifically targeted towards improving roads and bridges. There hasn’t been a significant push to raise progressive revenue for transportation infrastructure in many years. And we need to do that promptly. 

Jean Ianelli Craciun 

In April 2023, the Biden Harris administration announced nearly $300,000,000 for a nine bridge project. It comes on the top of billions of dollars in other bridges and Highway funding already flowing to every US state and territory that is helping communities rebuild, repair and replace tens of thousands of bridges across the nation and restoring connections that are vital to commuters, emergency responders, truck drivers, public transit riders and more. We are in on the public transportation section of this. We received $368,000,000 to improve our transit, clean public transit and school buses. But we have to get in on the Federal Bridge project. West Seattle Bridge is a crisis. We must have a way to get to work, we do not want to be an island off the shores of Seattle and we want to keep our communities engaged in public transportation. I wish all of you a joyful Juneteenth happy pride. I would love your vote. 

Rob Saka 

I’m passionate about these issues, but I’m also passionate about the potholes and our infrastructure situation. That’s why I want to focus on the basics of what I think a well functioning city government can and should be doing for folks. We must employ a multifaceted approach to solve our infrastructure challenges. First we need to create a prioritized list of projects that need repairs based on need. To do that, we’ll want to collaborate closely with transportation agencies and community stakeholders. The work product of which should be a comprehensive plan to figure out which one of these projects we’re going to attack first. Now with respect to funding, we obviously will want to prioritize maintenance and repairs with their own city budget. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also seek strong federal and state grants as well to supplement our own funds. Third and finally, we should explore innovative financing mechanisms like public private partnerships as well. 

Phil Tavel 

As those of us in District 1 are keenly aware Seattle is not doing a particularly good job maintaining and keeping up its bridges. We’ve got billions of dollars worth of bridge infrastructure in this city, and we spend less than $20 million a year on upkeep and maintenance. Now it is an expensive thing and sometimes we don’t want to spend that money ahead of time, but we have to spend the money in a preventative way so that we know which bridges are aging, which bridges may have a problem, and which bridges need money. Now, luckily, the US Department of Transportation has set aside three separate funds that total $460 million that we can tap into to help maintain our bridges. So we need to prioritize it properly. We need to work on a proper budget within SDOT on maintenance and being able to catch these problems before they become even bigger. But we can tap into the federal money to help us maintain these bridges and get them back up to where they should be. 

The post District 1 Metropolis Council candidates provide contrasting views appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This article is part of our special design section, dedicated to making the environment a creative partner in the design of beautiful homes.

Interior design, an art form susceptible to the changing tastes of owners and the foibles of fabrics and wallpaper, is often appreciated only fleetingly or with hindsight. Several recent books capture this evanescence in the spirits of an abandoned craft community, the inspirations of a 20th-century maverick, the rocking decks of floating homes, and the ever-evolving ambience of plant-filled spaces.

Viking ship prows and Scandinavian wildlife were among the favorite subjects of a short-lived artisan cooperative called Elverhoj (pronounced el-ver-hoy), founded in 1912 on the west bank of the Hudson River north of Newburgh, NY “Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson” (Black Dome Press$35, 218 p.), by scholars William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin, is the first in-depth study of this ambitious, long-forgotten endeavor. Led by Anders H. Andersen, a Danish immigrant, the residents of Elverhoj built ramshackle cottages and offered copperwork, silverware, opal jewellery, leather book bindings and textiles, among other things. They decorated chandeliers with dragon heads, sculpted oak leaves and plump flower petals on metal teapots and inkwells, and wove portraits of polar bears into tapestries. Ruins of the colony’s buildings can be found in the woods, and among the poignant surviving archival materials is Mr. Andersen’s sketch from the 1930s, when bankruptcy threatened, of a trio of dagger-wielding creditor rolls.

“Frances Elkins: Visionary American Designer” (Rizzoli$65, 304 p.), by historian Scott Powell, examines some 60 commissions made by the Milwaukee-born heiress to the manufacture between the 1920s and 1950s. For commercial, institutional and residential clients, she clad walls in goatskin and framed fireplaces with mirrors and lapis slabs. She collaborated with luminaries such as Syrie Maugham, Marion Dorn, Dorothy Liebes, Alberto Giacometti and Jean-Michel Frank to specify teal and tangerine upholstery, mermaid murals and creamy fluted rugs. She turned glass pillars into gossamer balustrades and spiraled up a red-carpeted staircase around a stack of clear plastic spheres. Plaster hands served as mounts on her fringed, plaid curtains. Male colleagues did not dare to contradict the resourceful, intimidating businesswoman. “She’d run you over in nowhere,” one architect told an interviewer years after he and Ms. Elkins filled a boxy San Francisco home with red carpets and black-and-white leafy textiles.

In “Making Waves: Floating Houses and Life on the Water” (Thames & Hudson$40, 224 p.), British stylist Portland Mitchell reveals the benefits and horrors of occupying offshore flats. In their 20 case studies from 10 countries, homeowners describe how they avoid waves from ferry traffic and survive typhoons “when the sea flies around you”. Basic tasks, like cleaning hull rivets, can cause splashing leaks and doom and gloom. About a third of the dwellings in the book were built for living, and the remainder were converted from barges and other seagoing craft. Compact rooms are clad in blond plywood, recycled teak, metal panels, or psychedelic textiles. Respondents share a preference for catchy house names like Soggybottom Shanty. They are also united in their fondness of pipe-hanging lights and wraparound decks for wildlife viewing. “Once we saw a gray heron surfing on a magpie,” recalls a resident of a former speedboat in Germany.

Plant and interior designer, artist and author Hilton Carter wittily explains parallel patterns found in nature and in home furnishings “Living Wild: How to Decorate Your Home with Plants and Cultivate Happiness” (Cico books$45, 224 p.). Mottled begonias and leathery philodendrons play with bouclé and cowhide upholstery in his family’s home in Baltimore and his projects for private and commercial clients. Stripy monstera are perched on marble mantels and plinths, and wheeled planters make it easy to move plants to where they can soak up sunlight. Amidst his step-by-step green-fingered tutorials — like sprinkling sharp pebbles on soil to scare off curious cats — he points out his visual puns and shares the joy of his job. At a restaurant famous for fish tacos, he hung a herringbone cactus resembling a fish vertebra in a terra-cotta pot from the ceiling, “drawing its jagged, zigzagging foliage downward.” Installing a coffee plant on a kitchen counter, he writes, “Yes, I took it literally… But wait, I’m not done yet. I also made sure the planter was cream colored. Oh yes, watch me work!”

The post 4 Books That Supply a Bouquet of Design Inspiration appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.