Beckie Summers-Kirby has announced she will run this fall for the District 5 seat on the Tacoma City Council currently held by Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg.

Ladenburg is barred by term limits from running again.

Summers-Kirby, 52, has served on several public board and commissions, including the Tacoma Public Library Board of Trustees, the Tacoma Human Rights Commission, the Tacoma Civil Service Board, and the Pierce County Charter Review Commission. She also served as vice chair of the Pierce County Democratic Central Committee and is currently chairwoman of the 29th District Democrats.

Summers-Kirby ran for the District 4 seat on the Tacoma City Council in 2001, and lost to Rick Talbert, who is leaving the council at the end of the year after serving two terms.

Since then, Summers-Kirby moved into District 5 and is now running for the same seat that her husband, state Rep. Steve Kirby, D-Tacoma, occupied for a total of 15 years during stints in the '70s, '80s and '90s.

Kirby is serving as his wife's campaign manager.

Summers-Kirby said in a statement that she believes her background and experience will allow her to immediately go to work fixing the city's problems. She said the City Council's priorities need to include more basic neighborhood services.

"Our streets are falling apart, prostitution and gang activity are on the rise in the South End, and we need to direct more of our resources into making our neighborhoods safe and livable," Summers-Kirby said.

Pierce County residents, your property tax bills will be in the mail beginning Saturday. But if the suspense is killing you, here’s a sneak preview.

Some bills will fall: Average tax bills are down in some parts of Pierce County. The average Fife bill is down 11.4 percent. Average bills are down 3.7 percent in Milton and Puyallup. Tacoma, University Place and other communities also will see a decline in average bills.

Some bills will rise: Average bills are up 20 percent in Pacific and 18 percent in Eatonville. Other communities – including Sumner, DuPont and Bonney Lake – will see small or modest increases in average bills.

These figures are averages and may not reflect your individual tax bill.

Look for yourself: You can get more statistics on Pierce County property taxes at our SoundInfo web site. You’ll find detailed tax information by city, town, unincorporated area and school district.

If you can’t wait for your tax bill to show up in the mail you can look it up after 5 p.m. today at the assessor-treasurer’s web site. You can search for your tax information by address or parcel number.

Coming Sunday: We’ll have a story looking at local tax bill trends, including where they’re going up, where they’re going down and where the money goes.

Not too long ago I came across this police after action report on the 2007 Port of Tacoma anti-war protests -- it had been posted to the city's Web site in response to someone's public records request.

Curious, I thought I'd compare it to the report from the protests in the beginning of August 2008. So, I requested a copy of the 2008 after action report from the Tacoma Police. Today I was told that one was written, but it hadn't moved up through the bureaucratic ranks yet and received approval.

The 2008 protests were much more subdued than those the year before, so I'm not expecting the report to be all that exciting. Still, there were a few interesting incidents that did happen -- for example, Olympia attorney Legrand Jones was arrested for refusing to show his identification to police. His attorney argued that this was not a crime under Washington law and the charges against Jones were later dismissed.

Update:

After posting the above, I was contacted by Tim Smith of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee - Tacoma.

He forwarded some e-mail exchanges with the city in which he asked for the after action report I posted above and was told that it didn't exist.

Here's an excerpt from a May 30, 2007 e-mail (the report is dated April 19).

In addition, you requested "Final report AAR (After Action Review) to City Manager from Tacoma PD unknown date but sometime in April. Documents should be in City Manager's Office. Request all annexes and appendices." After inquiries of both the City Manager's Office and the office of the Police Chief, it has been determined that there are no documents responsive to this portion of your request.

This request is now closed; however, if you believe additional documents exist, or this does not meet the scope of your request, please contact me immediately.

Regards,

Yvonne Yaskus
Records Management Supervisor/
Public Records Officer

Now, I haven't yet talked to the city about this, but one possible hang up is that Smith asked for a report to the City Manager -- the report is from Assistant Chief Bob Sheehan to Chief Don Ramsdell.

I'm going to be following up on this with the city presently.

Update 2:

I e-mailed the city's record's officer, Yvonne Yaskus, asking about Smith's 2007 request.

Update 3:

I got this reply back from Yvonne Yaskus:

At the time the request and my subsequent reply to Mr. Smith was made, I was informed that this document did not exist.

I'm going see what additional information is available about why Mr. Smith wasn't able to obtain the document through the public records process.