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Looking for something to do on this gorgeous Friday? They've got a huge music stage, booths, and food set up at Judkins Park for the Pacific Northwest Black Community Festival.

Right now the band Carmel Latte is on the stage with a good MJ tribute of Rock With You. See the festival's website for more info on the music lineup.

Food includes General's BBQ, short cakes, burgers, and more.

The festival continues today, Saturday, and Sunday from 10:00am till 10:00pm.

Come sit in the grass and check it out!

The new thai joint we first mentioned last month is all set to open tomorrow in Madrona. They'll be open daily from 11am to 9pm, serving lunch and dinner.

They're taking over the vacant storefront on 34th just two doors north of Union and a few doors south of the Hi Spot (who have some really tasty lattes and baked goods).

We won't be able to make it for the opening tomorrow, so if you do, make sure to leave your review and let people know how it is.

The saga continues for the classic Madrona homes displaced by the expansion of Epiphany School. Four homes were affected by the expansion, and one of more recent construction was not movable and was destroyed two weeks ago.

The deal fell through on this one, will be demolished Thursday

Old windows salvaged from the soon-to-be demolished house

One of the two houses in limbo, temp. placed on the schools basketball court

A second house, the brown one in the middle of the three along Denny Way, had a tentative buyer who planned to move the house to a spot in Leschi. But that deal has fallen through and it is now scheduled to be demolished on Thursday of this week. Today crews from Second Use Building Materials were working on that house, trying to salvage useable components such as the divided glass windows and old trim.

The other two houses are in a state of limbo, having been temporarily moved from their original sites to the school's basketball courts on another part of the property. The plan to move them later in July is at risk due to opposition from several property owners along E. Howell, the narrow residential street that runs behind the Epiphany property. The width of the homes would require the temporary removal of several small trees in the city right-of-way and the pruning of much larger trees that hang over the street from a hillside greenbelt. 

The original plan to move the homes on Denny Way, a much larger arterial, wasn't feasible due to the high cost of dealing with all of the bus trolley wires and other overhead communication and power transmission wiring that runs along that street.

Matt Neely, Epiphany's Head of School, tells me that the prospective home buyers and Nickels Brothers House Movers has until the end of July to find a way to move the remaining two houses. If that can't be done, the houses will be demolished.

The whole episode here raises an interesting question about the definition of environmentalism. The residents on Howell define it a very localized, personal way, not wanting to see a change to the leafy, shaded nature of their street. Others point to the hundreds of tons of materials will go to the landfill if the homes are destroyed, and the scores of trees in real forests that will be cut down to build new construction houses on the vacant lots that these homes would otherwise occupy if they could be moved.

Personally, I'm hoping they can work out a deal.

We've got an ever-growing list of potential neighborhood blog features over at Neighborlogs , our little software product that runs CDNews and a bunch of otherneighborhood blogs . But we need more hard data to help us decide what to work on next. 

More mobile tools is an obvious place that could use some focus. But we're not sure how deeply some of the fancy new phones have penetrated into the neighborhood.

Do you have an iPhone? Plan on getting one? No interest in ever getting one? Let us know in this poll:

We've had several pedestrian improvements finish up around the neighborhood in the last couple of months. Think they made a huge improvement?  Or maybe a big waste of money? Check out each one below and give us your vote on how you feel about them:

These rubber speed bumps have been installed on 31st near Day Ave on the border between Leschi and Mount Baker (basically right above the I-90 tunnel):

 

This raised concrete crosswalk was placed at MLK & Alder on the southwest corner of Powell Barnett Park:

 

 

A new concrete median has been added to MLK & Jefferson at the northwest corner of Powell Barnett Park to give pedestrians a place to wait for traffic to clear in the other lane: 

 

 

Other opinions or nominations?  Leave a comment below

It was a super-gorgeous Saturday, and the Newshound and I took a long four hour walk around the neighborhood to see what was going on.

Some of the most festive action was taking place at Flo Ware park, where the dedicated members of the Leschi Community Council had organized an event with live music, spoken word, food, and face painting:

Some talented musicians from Washington Middle School

Ebony & Geneva Arunga deliver a spoken word performance

 

The Bandavagos, a 14 piece band, performed their polka-beat music from Mazatlan

 

The mountain was definitely out

"The Dreamcatcher" art at 32nd & Yesler

A big crowd was enjoying the cool waters of Lake Washington at Madrona Beach

A view of the city on the way back home

Here's the weekend events from our community calendar:

Friday at 8pm: The Bottleneck Lounge (a CDNews sponsor) kicks off Gay Pride Weekend with their Third Annual Hot Dog Blessing, starting a weekend of free weenies and drink specials

Saturday at 9am: The Clean Greens team needs a big turnout tomorrow to finish planting the field before it gets too late in the season. Pitch in, meet some neighbors, and be a part of a community service that will soon be bringing fresh, organic produce back into the neighborhood.

Saturday at 11am: More Gay Pride festival fun on Broadway until 4pm, with live performances, a pet parade, speakers, and more

Saturday at 1pm: Enjoy music with your Leschi-area neighbors at the Flo Ware Park Celebration, one of a series of community events at the park this summer.

Weekend Movie is Beetlejuice at Central Cinema (a CDNews sponsor), playing a 7:00 and 9:30 each night.

Want to see your event here? Post it to our calendar for free.

Police and prosecutors say they've seen it over and over again: low-level drug dealers are picked up, sent through a year of legal process, and are released back out onto the street where they quickly get back into their old routine. And like a tube of toothpaste, police enforcement and focus on one area only temporarily pushes the problem and the players over to a different part of the neighborhood.

Last night SPD Capt. Paul McDonagh and Deputy Prosecutor Tienney Milnor started to collect community feedback on a different approach that has seen success in a few other cities around the country. It would take people picked up for low-level drug dealing and give them a choice: stop dealing and work with the community to clean up your act, or else have the book thrown at you for your offences.

A key feature of the new program is the "call-in", an initial meeting between the offender, the offender's family, law enforcement, and community members. Law enforcement would let the offender know that they have a solid case against them if they choose to prosecute, family members would face the truth about the offender's behavior, and community members would have an opportunity to explain how the offender's actions have damaged the neighborhood.

If the offender chooses to accept the offer, they're given community support and access to a whole range of existing social services to help in whatever ways they need to adjust to a non-criminal life. The offender only has to agree to not reoffend, and know that if they do the community will be watching and prosecutors will go for the maximum and put them in jail for a long time.

The participation of the community is key. They are there to both provide a new support structure to the offender and to hold them accountable for their improvement. Law enforcement officials say that their long-term goal is to hand the program off to the community and allow them to control, define, and shape it.

A key failure point in the current system is at the time of sentencing. Offenders either cop a plea or get convicted, and at the time of sentencing it's only prosecutors vs. a contrite defendant who tells the judge about their bad situation and how they're trying to turn their life around. A reduced sentence is often given, but that's the end of the process and there's no way to follow up on the defendant's claims of personal improvement. This new program would give the offenders a monitored way to try for that improvement, and give the judge hard evidence to avoid leniency if they fail to live up to their promises.

It's important to note that only low-level players would qualify for the new program. It would target the dealers who work out on the street, often as a way to support their own addictions. People involved in violence or at higher levels of the drug trade would not be eligible. 

The scope of the program will be limited to a single open-air drug market within the East Precinct. The ongoing issues at 23rd & Union would be a good example, possibly taking in the area from Union to Cherry and 20th to MLK. It could then be replicated to other markets and other parts of the city if the initial program shows evidence of success.

Right now city law enforcement officials are just starting the outreach to seek community support for the new program. They'll be talking to a number of different community groups and social service providers to collect feedback and make sure that the community is behind the effort and ready to do their part to make it happen. They've also targeted 2000 households with a survey to gauge neighborhood perception of crime and will use that to help design the program's details.

It's clear that the current system of enforcement costs a lot of money and provides poor long-term results. A coordinated effort to take drug dealers off the street through positive change could be the thing that provides some clear improvement in the community.

Here's the scoop from tonight's East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition meeting, the monthly confab where police, prosecutors, and citizens get together to chat about neighborhood crime.

The feature presentation tonight was from two volunteers from Big Brothers Big Sisters, the great non-profit that pairs up kids with adult role models. They've been working hard in recent years to reduce their waiting list from two years down to a few months. But they need more mentors who can commit to spending time with a kid a few times each month. They take each mentor and match them up with a compatible kid based on their shared interests. Interested in volunteering? Contact Olivia Cacchione at 206-763-9060.

Night Out Against Crime: Is August 4th, and this year the registration process is much easier with a simple online form. Sign up by July 31st and have a fun night with your neighbors.

Bank Robbery: Yesterday there was a bank robbery at the Chase Bank at Pike & Broadway. The man walked in, made threats, and was given a bag of cash. That bag also contained an exploding dye pack, which went off soon after. The East Precinct's Captain McDonagh happened to be just a block away and responded to the scene, spotted the dye-stained suspect, and made the arrest.

Burglaries: Police have arrested a couple of burglars who were working the Pike/Pine area east of Broadway. But people are still falling victim to summer property crimes due to windows and doors left open or unlocked.

Car Prowls: Are up with the nicer weather. People get complacent and leave valuables within sight, making an easy target for thieves.  Police also warn people to not leave electronic accessories in the car either - they give thieves reason to break in and look for the valuable pieces. GPS mountings are a common example to not leave out.

State Budget Impacts: Misdemeanant offenders will no longer have DOC supervision after they're release from jail

Late night noise: At Firehouse Park near 18th & Cherry. A very nice and normally quiet lady was forced to yell at them to get them to leave.

24th & Alder: A lot of drug activity reported at a house south of here.

23rd & Cherry: Drug issues continue, focused on a house near here

17th & Jackson: Graffiti and broken car windows reported by the CASA Latina staff. Got graffiti near you? Take a picture of it before you clean it up so that police can see if it's potentially dangerous gang activity or just trashy taggers.

New drug program in the planning stages... stay tuned for more

It looks like the three classic houses that are in the way of the Epiphany School's expansion in Madrona may yet be saved. Crews from Nichols Brothers House Moving are working now to prepare the houses for their trip to new properties. They've been jacked up off of their foundations and large steel beams have been slid underneath.

A construction schedule available on the school's website shows that one house will be moved on July 13th, and the other two will be moved July 20th.

A fourth home of more recent construction was not able to be moved and was torn town last week.

It's not clear yet what has changed in the project to make the moves economically feasible. We were unable to reach school officials or the prospective buyers of the homes for comment.

Email tipster R.S. tells us that there is still some minor controversy about neighbor's trees that will have to be trimmed before the move. But as our tipster points out, hopefully people will realize that keeping good homes out of the landfill is much more green than a few tree limbs.

Update: I just spoke to Alan Serebrin, one of the prospective house buyers, who said that the project is at risk again as of late yesterday. The house moving project was made economically feasible by a new plan to move the houses on Howell, which has less utilities that would have to be moved than the larger arterial on Denny Way.

But Howell is a narrow street, and the twenty-eight foot wide houses would require temporary removal of five small trees in the planting strip. But suddenly some homeowners have objected to to the project based on its impact to those trees, each of which is less than 2" in diameter. Mr. Serebrin stressed that the trees would only be temporarily taken out for three days and then put back in, and there are other discussions under way to guarantee the tree's survival afterwards or even replace them with much larger trees.

Those neighbors will reportedly be meeting tonight to decide their course of action. If they continue to put up a fight, the school may give up and order the demolition of the homes as soon as next week. We'll let you know how it turns out.

E. Howell Street, showing the small trees that are a new source of controversy