It could have been much worse

This was the scene at about 9:00 am today at the intersection of E. Madison Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way E., half an hour or so following an accident that left two cars totalled and sent one driver to the hospital with minor injuries. A dump truck hauling rock was headed east down Madison when, according to its driver, the brakes failed. After hitting the two cars, the driver swerved off the street and stopped his vehicle by raming into the brick wall of Madison Cleaners. Neither the driver nor the wall was seriously damaged in the accident, though the truck sure was.

My neighbor Jim Waltz, who covered the story as a cameraman for KIRO-TV, told me that the police administered the mandatory sobriety test to the truck driver, who in an on-camera interview with the station said that he swerved to avoid hitting additional cars and thought the brick wall should do the job of stopping the truck. It did.

Another of my neighbors was a witness to accident. He was sitting at the counter of Essential Bakery looking out the window when he saw the truck coming down the hill at a very very fast rate, he told me. The truck hit a parked car sitting at the curb (with the driver in it), careened through the intersection, hit a car turning into the Madison Cleaners parking lot, and then smashed into the wall. From his vantage point it did not seem to be a controlled crash. More of an out-of-control smashup.

Thanks to Barbie Hull of Barbie Hull Photography for the great shots:

Mystery of the missing pavers solved

Anyone who purchased a granite paver in support of the Friends of Madison Park but has yet to see the engraved paver placed in the Park will be happy to learn that installation should happen within the next week to ten days. That’s the word, at least, from FMP volunteer Matt Bridge.

In my role as investigative journalist (“Ask Bryan”) I was called last week by someone who wondered if there might be something questionable going on with the non-profit Friends of the Park. She said that she and others had paid their money months ago but had yet to see any results. Where are their pavers?

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, the Park recently underwent a significant upgrade as a result of the efforts of FMP, which raised about $1 million for park improvements. This was matched by around $115,000 from the City. The upgrade included reconfiguration of the play areas, creation of a sitting area, the addition of playground equipment and benches, and new landscaping.

Bridge told me that he hopes everyone will be patient as the finishing touches on the Park are completed. These include installation of several engraved pavers, repair of some of the playground equipment, and placement of some additional park benches. He said that what began as an FMP group of 12 parents has now dwindled to just three parent volunteers, “and we’re working hard.”

The engraved pavers became a fund-raising method for FMP rather late in the game, according to Bridge. Donors willing to contribute $500 were entitled to placement of a 6” by 8” paver engraved with their name or the name of their business. Those donating $800 would get an 8” by 12” paver. Bridge told me that as he remembered it, the initial deadline for donors to get in on the opportunity was probably sometime around June 1.

At any rate, some donors didn’t submit their forms until much later, he said. (In their defense, the form does not list a deadline). These later donors are the ones who have yet to see their names displayed in the Park. To save on costs, installation was delayed until all of the pavers of this later group were engraved. According to Bridge engraving is now complete and the pavers are sitting securely in the warehouse of the Seattle Parks & Recreation Department awaiting placement. Bridge says he understands the frustration of those who are still waiting to see the results of their contribution, but their wait is almost over. “We realize we’re late, and we do apologize.”

Friends of Madison Park (which is a section 501.c.3 nonprofit) will continue to operate as long as there are funds in the FMP account, Bridge says. Right now there’s between $25,000 and $30,000 available, he estimates, which will be used principally for maintenance of the playground equipment.

When the Friends of Madison Park announced plans to make improvements to the Park, some longtime residents were wary if not downright hostile. They liked the Park the way it was. But I’ve been by the Park a lot since it was dramatically transformed, and my sense is that the users are plenty happy with what FMP has accomplished there.

Why the police won’t come running

This is a story about home security systems and what you can and can’t expect in terms of Seattle Police response if the alarm is triggered. Don’t get me wrong. Assuming that your alarm works correctly and that your home security company does its job properly, you should expect that in most instances the police will quickly be on their way. But if you think that any time your alarm is triggered you will get an automatic and immediate police response, don’t.

This is how I know. A couple weeks ago, my wife and I were out walking our dogs when we got a cell phone call from our security-alarm company telling us that the motion detector in our basement had detected a possible intruder. Should they notify the police, they asked? Yes, I said. We were about three blocks from our house, so we rushed back to the general vicinity; and, along with several of our neighbors, we awaited the arrival of the police. After about a half an hour I decided to check out the situation for myself. I walked around the house to see if there was any evidence of a break in. There was none. I opened the front door and heard the interior alarm on, but it appeared there was no one in the house. Perhaps an animal? An upstairs window was open, so a bird or rodent could have entered. But after checking the house thoroughly, we found nothing. False alarm.

About an hour later, a good 90 minutes from the time that they had first been called, the police arrived. I had already called both the police and the alarm company to tell them that it had been a false alarm. But there they were. The two officers confirmed my identity and said that they had not been told that it had been a false alarm. Not that it would have made any difference, they said. They would have still come to check, since anyone could have called the police to say it was a mistake—even someone who had broken into our house.

Since I happened to have a couple of police officers standing in my front yard, I naturally took the opportunity to quiz them on why, exactly, they had not rushed to the scene of this possible crime. Their explanation provides an object lesson from which my neighbors with home security systems can benefit. Here’s the short answer on why they didn’t rush to my house: lack of police resources and a resulting need to prioritize their responses to potential crimes.

They told me that in their estimation, the East Precinct probably deals on average with 20 or more false alarms a month. With regard to motion detectors, they said, it is much more likely that there will be a false alarm than a real one. This is especially true in the summer, when windows are more likely to be open and false alarms can be caused by things blowing around in the house, such as curtains. Animals moving around the premises and system malfunctions (as in our case) are other causes. So in the end, responding to home-security alarms is just a low-priority police dispatch. In fact, they said, even if they had been rushing to my house but had received a call about any other police need, they would have been diverted to handle that issue before responding to my alarm.

And here’s another point they made that applies to Madison Park in particular. There are no longer any regular police patrols through Madison Park. Relative to the rest of the East Precinct, there is just not enough crime here to justify having police resources tied up driving around the Park when they are probably needed in the rest of the Precinct, which includes Capitol Hill and parts of the Central District. Therefore, it would be an unusual situation for there to be a patrol car nearby when a Madison Park home alarm goes off, they told me.

Well, that’s good to know (I guess), but what value is my home security system if the police are hardly ever going to be arriving in time to catch a burglar? The audible alarm is certainly a deterrent to some housebreakers, they said, but it is more likely to be effective if it is audible to the neighbors than just audible inside the house (as ours is). Someone who breaks into a house is going to be concerned about being seen in the act, so home security systems can be effective in causing a burglar to leave or at least leave more quickly than otherwise. Make no mistake, they said, if it is clear that a break-in really has occurred (as when a neighbor calls 911 and confirms seeing the crime taking place) the police are immediately dispatched. My neighbor was able to confirm the truth of that statement earlier this month.

A home security system can be an excellent way to get automatic police or fire response in most circumstances (for example, if a smoke or heat detector is activated or if you press one of the emergency buttons), but it is by no mean automatic in all circumstances. Now you know.

Short takes

One of the glories of summer in Madison Park

Blog reader Alice Lanczos tells me that I ought to rave about the lovely Crape Myrtles that line the north side of E. Madison Street in the area between Bing’s and McGilvra’s. I’m happy to do so. Though in past years I barely noticed these splendiferous beauties, they are certainly not to be missed this year. The blooms are expected to last at least until the end of the month; so if you haven’t done so already, get down there, look up, and enjoy the show (if driving, please pull over first).

Do New Multi-Lot Houses Have Consequences?

I’ve done some additional digging since my story earlier this week on the census numbers; and I’ve discovered that there is, in fact, an official government estimate of the current population of Madison Park. The Washington State Office of Financial Management (OFM) estimates that our neighborhood has actually lost population since the 2000 census.

The current population estimate for our census tract shows a decline in population from 5,006 in 2000 to 4,937, a loss of 69 Madison Parkers. If true, this would mean a decrease in population of 1.39% over the eight- year period, the kind of thing that happens in the rust belt.

The State’s population estimates are “derived from the current housing stock using decennial census-based occupancy rates and household size that have been adjusted based on other estimation information,” according to OFM. I guess we can hardly argue with that methodology, can we?

Private profit using public resources?

Some Madison Park residents (and probably a few merchants) are miffed that the City’s Parks and Recreation Department issued a permit to the concessionaire who sets up a tent near the Bath House on sunny days and sells ice cream and pop to beach goers. Part of the irritation stems from safety concerns about the electrical cord which snakes its way across the grass, over a dirt path and cement walkway and into the women’s room (where I am told it sometimes sits in water that ponds on the floor).

A bigger concern for many, however, is that allowing a vendor to operate on Park property—using taxpayer space and electricity—creates unfair competition for Madison Park merchants, such as Scoop du Jour, that make most of their revenue during the summer months. Topping it all off is the fact that the City acted—as usual—without apparent notification to anyone in Madison Park. This is something guaranteed to drive the Madison Park establishment (Community Council and Business Association) crazy. Apparently it has.

If you believe that the City acted unwisely in granting the concession, you may sign a petition to that effect which is available at Madison Park Hardware.

Crime is down in the ‘hood

Madison Park is not experiencing an uptick in crime, as some might think. In fact, according to new year-to-date crime statistics released by the Seattle Police today, major crimes in our area are actually down 9% for the first six months of this year as compared to the same period last year.

This good news does not apply to the East Precinct as a whole, however, which—like the City itself—is experiencing a higher level of crime in 2009. So we can consider ourselves a bit of a crime backwater, though not all of the numbers are good. Unfortunately, multi-year crime comparisons are not possible for Madison Park because the police department changed its reporting districts in 2008. Neighborhood crime had previously been reported on the basis of census districts, one of which includes all of Madison Park. Now, however, our neighborhood is reported as part of a larger police beat known as Charlie 3:

So, in addition to Madison Park, these crime statistics also cover Montlake, Madison Valley south to Union Street, Denny Blaine, and part of Madrona. In this reporting area we’ve had no homicides this year or last, and there’s been only one reported rape in each year. While burglaries significantly increased in 2009 (from 5 to 11), assaults were down (from 13 to 7). This is the month-by-month picture for violent crimes on the beat for both years:

The non-violent crime picture is better. These crimes include larceny and theft, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, and as you can see (at least if you click on the graph to maximize it), we are tracking below last year’s crime levels in every month this year, with a particularly big fall off in June:

Looking at the City crime map, you can see how relatively crime-free we really are (the lighter-green areas are the low-crime beats and the darker-green areas fit into the lock-the-doors-and-bar-the-windows category):

Madison Park had 34 crimes per 1,000 residents last year, according to Seattle Magazine, placing us in the top ten low-crime Seattle neighborhoods.

.

[The crime density map above is a feature of the City of Seattle's My Neighborhood Map webpage.]

Madison Park makes top-20 ranking

I’m not sure that this can be considered a particularly noteworthy honor, but Madison Park is ranked Number 20 on Seattle Magazine’s recent list of Seattle’s 60 best neighborhoods. “Madison Park enclave Broadmoor,” however, makes the list at Number 8, just behind Madison Valley, at Number 7. The list is highly subjective, and there appears to be no obvious method to the magazine’s madness in creating its rankings. There are multiple paragraphs detailing the source of information for the various categories used in creating the list, but there is no explanation of how these categories were weighted.

Given the magazine’s stated criteria concerning housing affordability as the “key to continued dynamic growth in our area,” it is interesting that Broadmoor (with its supposed $2,009,000 median house price) ranked so high, while Madison Park as a whole (with its stated $792,500 median house price) was so far down the list. I guess it’s just that Broadmoor is eminently affordable for the wealthy, while the rest of the Park is considered pricey for the less wealthy.

Or maybe the magazine places high value in its belief that the commutes to downtown Seattle and to Redmond (two of the ranking criteria) are significantly shorter for people in Broadmoor than for the rest of Madison Park. (Are are we really five minutes further away from Redmond; and if so, do very many of us care?) These are the only two categories in which Broadmoor ranked higher, unless you want to count the fact that $2+ million gets you more bedrooms and bathrooms per median house than $792,500 does. Crimes per resident, park acreage, and percentage of fourth graders passing the WASL were the other criteria for the rankings. Oh, and for some reason, the appreciation (or not) of median house values from 2007-2008 was an important element. (Madison Valley was down 1%, Broadmoor was up 1% and Madison Park was up 4%).

Personally, I suspect that Seattle Magazine’s staff voted on their favorite neighborhoods in order to create the list. The magazine certainly does not seem to be particularly aware of Madison Park. In the “Neighborhoods” section of the magazine’s website, for example, the “Madison Park/Madrona” webpage devotes 200 words to describing the pleasures of Madrona, but there’s not a single word about Madison Park. This didn’t help Madrona in the listings, however, as it was ranked Number 33. Leschi, on the other hand, barely made the list at Number 60, just below Judkins Park! Really?

Frankly, I think the list is screwy. However, for those who are interested but unwilling to actually buy the August issue of the magazine, here’s the top ten list: Queen Anne, View Ridge, Alki/Admiral, Phinney Ridge, Magnolia, Delridge, Madison Valley, Broadmoor, Capitol Hill, and Roosevelt. The Seattle and suburban Seattle neighborhood rankings are not available on the seattlemag.com website.

[Sour-Grapes Disclosure: My impression of Seattle Magazine’s neighborhood rankings is in no way influenced by the fact that a story on best neighborhood blogs in the same issue of the magazine did not list Madison Park Blogger as among “the cream of the crop.” Actually, this blog was not mentioned in any context, but neither was the Central District News, which certainly deserved comment.]

Who are we and what are we doing here?

In advance of the 2010 U.S. Census, now only a few months away, I thought it might be kind of fun to take a look at what the last census said about us. (If you don’t think it would be kind of fun, stop reading now and see the note below). I’m guessing that where we were at the time of the last census is pretty much where we are today, since Madison Park is not a particularly dynamic community. But I could be wrong; so it will be interesting to make a comparison of these statistics to the new numbers when they come out next year.

Madison Park (including Broadmoor and Washington Park) comprises King County’s Census Tract 63, which in 2000 was populated by 5,006 residents living in 2,822 separate housing units (houses, condos or apartments). We were and clearly still are a pretty homogenous group of people: 2% Asian, 1% Hispanic, 1% African-American, 1% multi-race, and the rest (94%) Caucasian.

And we’re a pretty old bunch, as well, given that the median age for the community is 45. The distribution around the median would make for a pretty nice bell curve if I hadn’t decided to present it as a horizontal bar chart:

Consistent with an older population is the fact that women significantly outnumber men in Madison Park:

This difference becomes more pronounced at the upper end of the age range (the ratio of 65-and-older women to men, for example, is 1.75 to 1.00).

A much higher percentage of us live in rental units than I would have supposed:

Meanwhile, very few Madison Park households include children 18 years of age or younger, unless things have changed dramatically since the last census:

This is consistent with the fact that most of us either live alone or have only one other person in our household:

Although the City has generated some updated census estimates for Seattle as a whole, I have been unable to discover any new estimates for our neighborhood in particular. So until some better information comes along, I think we have to conclude that Madison Park is still the same aging, white beach community that we’ve been for some time. The details may have changed somewhat around the edges, but basically, that’s who we are.

Oh, and with regard to the “What are we doing here?” in the headline above, that’s what this blog is about.

[Note below: For those of you who get bored with statistics, here’s a story from The Seattle Weekly about the nude beach in Madrona (actually Denny Blaine), which you might find more interesting: No Swimsuit Required.]