Categories

Archives

Skills Mob

SkillsMobWhat: Skills Mob*

Time: Saturday, June 4, 2016 from 10am to 1pm

Location: Hunter Tree Farm Gathering Place,  on 35th Ave NE, at NE 80th St

Event Description:
Join Sustainable NE Seattle (SusNE) for the very first Skills Mob, at Hunter Gathering Place. They will be restoring the site’s benches, clearing some of the overgrowth, and repainting. They’ll be teaching a quick skills class on basic carpentry at the beginning, to prepare everyone for the bench repair. More seasoned workers can skip the classes and get right to work, and the rest will join in after the class. The event will finish with a discussion of future projects, so bring your ideas, the more specific the better.
*Skills Mob
Sustainable NE Seattle is excited to announce a new program: The Skills Mob! The Skills Mob is an idea that came out of its 2016 Annual Membership Meeting, and arose out of a robust conversation about interests and goals. The idea of the Skills Mob is that people will gather on a regular basis to learn together about specific skills and to work together on specific projects, using those skills for the betterment of the community. Each Skills Mob will end with a discussion of next projects. Skills shared may include carpentry, masonry, gardening, home repair, and various forms of community-building, self sufficiency, making, sharing, creating, and repairing.
SusNE hopes everyone will find skills to share and learn, projects to get excited about, and neighbors to engage with through this ongoing program.

Rent Smart: Tenant Rights and Housing Search Workshop

HouseAndAppleTreeA class for current and future renters

Having trouble finding an affordable place to rent?  While there is no easy, quick answer, this 90-minute workshop will provide you with valuable tips for navigating the housing search.

Topics include:

  • How to look for housing
  • Tips on navigating Craigslist
  • What to search besides Craigslist
  • How to handle barriers to housing (eviction record, criminal history, low credit score, etc.)
  • Tenant screening
  • Tenant rights and responsibilities to protect yourself from eviction
  • Subsidized housing
  • How 2-1-1 can help
  • Other resources

This class is taught by a Tenant Counselor from the local nonprofit organization Solid Ground.  Please note that Solid Ground staff are not attorneys and cannot provide legal advice, but they are recognized leaders in tenant education and advocacy.

Thursday May 19th

3:00-4:30pm
University Branch Library
5009 Roosevelt Way NE
206-684-4063

This program is co-sponsored by Solid Ground and Seattle Public Library.

Free and open to all – no registration required.

North Precinct Advisory Council Minutes for May 2016

This month’s guest speaker was Steve Freng, Prevention and Treatment Manager at the NW High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (NW-HIDTA). Heroin use is a big issue here and around the country. Meth is still a big problem, too. And not to anyone’s surprise probably is that prescription drugs are a big problem. In fact, they are considered a gateway drug to heroin. HIDTA helps 28 US regions deal with drug problems in a collaborative way instead of each agency working in a silo.

The North Precinct Captain told us that property crime is still a big problem, especially from Northgate Mall to Sand Point Way, and on south through the rest of the precinct. Task forces are still working on the problem. Crimes against persons are holding steady.

The City Attorney’s Office is working with an interdepartmental team to deal with problem abandoned buildings. The priority is the most hazardous, such as fire hazards, but North Precinct Liaison Brendan Brophy encourages us to let him know if there are any abandoned homes in our area that are problems. He can be reached at brendan.brophy@seattle.gov and 206-684-7765

You can read all the minutes here.

SPD Online Systems

At the May NPAC meeting, the Community Police Team Sergeant handed out this flyer with instructions for using SPD online systems:

2016-05SPDonlineSystems

April 2016 Pinehurst Crime Report

Here is a partial picture of Pinehurst property crime for the month. Click on the map to enlarge it.

You can see ALL the types of crime at http://web5.seattle.gov/mnm/policereports.aspx. Select the North neighborhood and enter a date range.

2016-05CrimeMap

Cinema Cafe at Northgate Community Center

CinemaCafeLand

Kids’ Art in Pinehurst Pocket Park

Serene

Serene made this drawing at last year’s Pinehurstfest. See if you can find some of the things she included: a spider web; her mom, drawn in turquoise; Serene drawn in yellow; a butterfly. What else do you see? Thanks, Serene, for this fun drawing with lots to see!

You can see this original artwork in the park kiosk on the corner of NE 117th St & 19th Ave NE.

If you would like to submit your child’s artwork for the Pocket Park, please email nancy@pinehurstseattle.org. We’ll put it on mat board donated by FRAMEIT Ltd, 10712 5th Ave NE.

 

Lake City Spring Clean

SpringClean

The Big Spring Clean for our neighbor, Lake City, is Saturday April 30th from 10 AM to noon.
All are welcome. Provided are T shirts, snacks and all the supplies you need to do some GOOD CHEER neighborhood clean up. To get started, come to a table at:
  1.  God’s Lil Acre on 33rd Ave NE just north of  NE125th, OR
  2. Lake City Mini Park on NE 125th St and Lake City Way, OR
  3. Lake City Library at NE 125th St and 28th Ave NE

Recycling – What’s New?

recycleSeattle Utilities is now allowing more stuff in our recycling bins. Here’s the scoop:

Large Plastic Items

Put plastic laundry baskets, molded plastic lawn chairs, and plastic tubs, bucket and storage containers directly into your recycling container. If they don’t fit in your cart, items less than 3’x3’x3′ can be set next to your recycling container. Items bigger than 3’x3’x3′ need to be broken down. Put small items in a sturdy box or reusable container and set it next to your recycling card.

Plastic Caps on Empty Plastic Bottles

To recycle plastic bottle caps, put the plastic cap on an EMPTY plastic bottle and drop it in the recycling container. Put loose caps (not attached to a bottle) in the garbage.

Cooking Oil

Follow these instructions to recycle used cooking oil:

  1. Pour the COOLED oil into a plastic jug with a tight-fitting crew-on lid.
  2. Label the jug with your name and address.
  3. Set the labelled, tightly-closed jug next to your recycling container.

Used motor oil is also recyclable if prepared and set out as described above. There is a limit of 2 gallons of of oil (either type of oil) per collection day. Do not mix oils in the container.

Not new, but things I didn’t know until now

Bubble wrap: This isn’t new, but I didn’t know until now that you can recycle bubble wrap. Bundle it together in a plastic grocery bag and put it in your recycling container.

Corks: they are too dense to compost, so they go in the garbage. Corks can also be recycled through the Cork ReHarvest Program, which has drop boxes at PCC, Whole Foods Markets, and Wine World Warehouses.

Clam-shell containers: Rigid plastic clam-shell containers and poly-coated paper box containers can go in your curbside recycling cart. Recycle clean containers only. Dirty non-compostable containers and Styrofoam containers and cups go in the garbage. To reduce waste, bring your own resealable container for take-out food or left-overs. Plastic-like containers marked “Compostable” go in the garbage unless they are approved as compostable by Cedar Grove (more information). Then they can go in the food and yard waste cart.

Seattle Utilities has a handy look-up guide to what’s recyclable and what’s not here.

SPD Crime Prevention Bulletin: Door Security

SPDbadgeAt the April North Precinct Advisory Counsel meeting, our Crime Prevention Coordinator, Mary Amberg, handed out this flyer on Home Security: Door Security:

The most common way used to force entry through a door with a wooden jamb is to kick it open. When a door is kicked in, the frame usually splinters and gives way, allowing the burglar to enter. The weakest point is almost always the strike plate that holds the latch or lock bolt in place. The average door strike plate is secured only to the door frame molding. These lightweight moldings are often tacked on to the door frame and can be torn away with a firm kick. Increasingly, we’ve noticed a trend of burglars using pry tools at doors to gain entry into homes.

Suggestions Regarding Exterior Doors

– Check the condition of the wood frame. If worn, have a new frame made.

– Anchor the frame to the wall stud. Do this by removing the short screws used to
secure the strike plates and hinge plates. Replace them with 3”-4” wood screws.
This should be done to all exterior doors.

– Consider upgrading to a four-screw, heavy-duty, high security strike plate. They are
available at any hardware store or home improvement center. Install this heavy-duty
strike plate using 3”-4” wood screws to cut deep into the doorframe stud. Use these
longer screws in the knob lock strike plate as well and use at least one long screw in
each door hinge. This one step alone will deter or prevent most through-the-door
forced entries. Even without installing a heavy duty strike plate, using the longer 3”-4”
screws to secure your existing strike plates will vastly improve the security of your door.

– To combat pry tools being used against your doors, ensure you have 3-4” inch screws on the
strike plates, have a deadbolt lock on the door (see below), and install a latch guard on the door
that covers the area above and below where your door knob and deadbolt engage. A latch
guard costs about $12 at major hardware retailers.

– Finally, deadbolt locks should be installed on every exterior door, including doors that lead
from the garage to the interior of the home. A decent deadbolt lock will retail for about $30.
More substantial deadbolts can run upwards of $200.

Deadbolt Locks
There are two types of deadbolt locks: a single cylinder deadbolt, which has a thumb turn on the inside and is keyed on the outside, and a double cylinder deadbolt, which is keyed on both the inside and outside. Deadbolt “throws” (the part that actually goes in to the door jamb) should always be a minimum of 1” in length.

– Single Cylinder – Install on all solid doors where access to the locks and knobs cannot be gained by breaking adjacent glass

– Double Cylinder – Install on all doors where access to locks and knobs can be gained by breaking adjacent glass. Never leave the key in the lock. If you live in an apartment or condo, make sure you know the building code.

– Consider deadbolts with captive key locks on all doors located next to windows.
These locks have removable thumb latches so that even if a thief breaks a window, he still can’t reach around and unlock the door. But because deadbolts can also be a fire hazard, make sure they have a removable key on the inside cylinder for when you are home. When you leave, just remove the key and keep the lock bolted on both sides.

– Note: City of Seattle building codes do not permit Double Cylinder deadbolts to be
installed in apartment or condominium settings, nor does the code allow for “Captive Keylock”
deadbolts.