Seattle’s Public Forum: LIVE! (Two Days Ago)
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On Tuesday, I reported that Seattle’s city council was holding a town meeting regarding a proposed expanded ban on Styrofoam and 20-cent tariff on disposable grocery bags. This morning I came across Seattle’s The Stranger, where SLOG blog correspondent Erica Barnett was on the scene to microblog play-by-plays of the hearing, observing it all so that you didn’t have to.
I’ll be live-Slogging the public-comment meeting on the proposed 20-cent fee for disposable plastic and paper bags (and proposed ban on Styrofoam food containers). Read along with me as enraged citizens yell at the council about their God-given right to free plastic bags, and environmentalists dressed up in silly costumes wave their hands and sing songs out in favor of the measure.
Silly costumes? The Bag Monster must have shown up again.
It is definitely an informative article, and Barnett is charmingly snide with her comments as she relays back highlights of the more preposterous arguments given at the meeting.
Cherie Myers, director of government affairs for Safeway, just made the case all the other grocery retailers (with the notable exception of Madison Market and PCC, whose representatives have both argued ) have made: That asking poor people to pay for bags (or remember to bring their own) is an onerous financial burden. She also argued that charging for bags would lead people to ration bags—in other words, to (horrors!) use less.
It’s a fun article, though no ultimate conclusions are met. (Though, really, how could they be? It was just a forum, not a trial.) If you wanted to make it to the forum but were constrained by time or geography, this is the next best thing. In fact, judging by the article’s mention of time passage (an “extremely looooong hearing,” we are told), if you hadn’t planned to make a speech, then this version may even be superior.
Photo via Flickr!
Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
