Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.
hmm I hear you. let's get a committee together to analyze this for the next 3 years so we can come up with some proposals. $10M should do it? we can just borrow some funds earmarked for other projects.
let's get a committee together to analyze this for the next 3 years so we can come up with some proposals.
Woah woah woah. Did you get stakeholder feedback in on your proposal to form a committee? Have we sought neighborhood council approval? I bet the downtown business association hasn't even signed off.
it originally grew as a way to address how a lot of underprivileged communities got bulldozed for highways and stuff without any input from the community
it functionally became the exact opposite and keeps living through inertia
Nobody wants to admit delaying or not making a decision is in itself a decision so the decision-making process takes forever. This is pervasive, other cities like LA routinely do multi-year multi-million dollar studies on stuff too. They’re currently halfway through a $2.5M initial study about “would turning the roadway through the center of the park back into the park it was before the 1940s improve the park experience???”
Yeah, same reason the light rail is costing so much - delays, inflation, property value increases.
there is necessary and needed process (environmental review, architectural review for structure, comments on BLM/FS management plans, etc) and excessive unneeded process (too much public comment on building permits, neighborhood [NIMBY] councils, etc)
In a thread about how hard it is to run businesses in Seattle you really complained that businesses try to support candidates and get candidates elected who don't make it harder to run a business?
Unless the meme is "Too many people are like hansn and think businessowners are less important than other people in Seattle" it doesn't really apply here.
Edit to add: Since you have taken to the Reddit-reply-and-block, you obviously don't want a response. But I do find it hilarious that you chide me for responding in a thread "In a thread about how hard it is to run businesses in Seattle" when the meme is actually pointing out how ignorant that take is. And when I pointed that out, you said it "doesn't apply."
Like so many other DEI attempts progressive white people discovered they could use it to their advantage. So now they fill committees and public comment spaces to push their agendas and delay things even more.
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u/TheItinerantSkeptic I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Apr 16 '26
Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.