Tacoma public utilities director William Gaines told the city council Tuesday that he wants to sell three small chunks of property the utility no longer needs.

The three are:

– one-third acre at North 18th and Orchard,
– 0.2 acres at S. 35th and S. J Street,
– 0.15 acres at S. 45th and S. Warner.

The first lot is about two building lots. The others are single building lots. They are among nine that the utility had wanted to sell but stopped to gauge whether there was interest in the community to use them for public purposes.

TPU chief Gaines told the council there was no community interest in these three parcels.

City Councilwoman Lauren Walker said she had heard concerns from the Warner Street neighbors about the lack of green space in the area due to apartment and townhouse construction. Perhaps, she wondered, it could be used for a small park.

Gaines said the utility was open to discussion.

Qannik showed more small signs of improvement today, officials with the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium said. He's less dehydrated, his white blood cell count is approaching normal and his kidney function is better.

"But he's not out of the woods yet," said curator Karen Goodrowe Beck. The 8-year-old beluga whale, who has been suffering from an unknown kind of infection, was less playful today than he was yesterday.

See Qannik when he was feeling his oats:

Tacoma Public Utilities will be disposing of nine lots it no longer needs for substations.

According to state law and the city charter, they have to be sold if they're no longer playing the electricity game. The question is, should they be sold to private parties, or to a government agency that will preserve them as public lands.

Morgan Alexander has been harnessing the power of the gardening community to preserve some of the suitable lots as pocket parks or community gardens.

Who knows? Some of them might work as solar demonstration projects, combining solar panels with rows of beets and peas. If the panels feed into the grid, that might make it possible to preserve them as TPU property, and uncomplicate the process?

Alexander is making progress. Already, he is on the agenda for the Metro Parks Board meeting Monday, March 9 at 6pm, Metro headquarters: 4702 S 19th St.

Here's the list of surplus properties:

Adams, 1920 Adams St. N.

Centennial, 543 N. Stadium Way.

Downing, 1801 N. Orchard St.

Fairmont, 4924 N. 31st St.

Junett, 3008 N. 16th St.

Ruston, 5001 N. Visscher St.

Parkland, 101 127th St. E.

Warner, 3404 S. 45th St.

Lincoln Park, 1009 South 35th Street.

Eastsiders have come to love the sound of tow trucks in the morning.

They have been working with Tacoma Police Department Officer Don Williams to rid the neighborhood of illegal and decaying cars in all the wrong places.

They’ve alerted Williams to blocks clogged with cars on the planting strips, cars with grass growing in their wheel wells, cars with expired tabs, cars on lawns, cars on sidewalks, cars parked facing the wrong way. Williams checks off the pertinent violation on a form. He leaves the form on the windshield with a notice that, if the owner doesn’t move the car by a certain date, the city will do it, and send a bill.

The first time Williams went out, people thought it was a bluff.
Then big trucks towed 30-plus cars away.

The next few times around, owners dealt with the problem themselves, and the tow trucks hauled off half a dozen vehicles.
Now Tow Day is going city-wide.

Jeanie Peterson of Hilltop Action Coalition is inviting volunteers in Sector One, which includes Hilltop and the downtown, to get the training to hit the sidewalks for the program. The police will offer free training sessions the weekend of Dec. 6 and 7.

“The first training class for the 6th will begin at noon at the Sector One Substation, South 16th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and other trainings will happen throughout the day,” she said.
Tow Day will come to Sector One in time for the holidays, then cycle through Sectors Two and Three, then back to Four.

Maurice Akins, Dion Ames and their families are loyal customers at the Hilltop’s Safeway at 1112 South M Street.

They like and admire the people who work hard to keep the store clean and orderly, and the atmosphere friendly.

Their issue is with the building. It’s old. It’s drab. And it’s too small to offer the services Safeway customers in every other quarter of Tacoma enjoy. It has no bakery, no deli, no coffee bar, no China Express. Its meat and produce departments are smaller than in other stores.

That’s why they were picketing the store this morning.

Ames’ sign read “If this store was a child, I’d have to call CPS.”

Akins carried one that read “Safeway Shape Up Or Ship Out.”

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While most area farmer’s markets are closed already or are shutting down after this weekend, the Proctor Farmers’ Market is extending its season into November.

For the first time in its 15 years, the market will continue to operate through Nov. 22, according to co-market manager Jessica Troy. The decision to extend was made a while ago but she wanted to make sure the word got out. “We’ve talked about it for years,” she said but finally vendors, customers and supporters decided it was time.

Along with vegetables, fruit and flowers, Troy said they have a few new vendors offering goat cheese, fresh homemade pasta, fresh tamales, local honey and even some potted evergreen trees that could be Christmas trees.

A Lopez Island farmer with ties to Tacoma will offer grass-fed meat, she said.

The market is located in the Proctor District on North 27th Street between Proctor and Madison streets. It is open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

More than 1,000 people participated in a three-mile walk through Tacoma's Stadium District on Saturday to raise funds for breast cancer research and awareness programs. The event raised about $90,000 said Liz Lamb-Ferro, a spokeswoman with the American Cancer Society.

The walk was followed by a celebration at Stadium High School, including a performance from country music group Nathan Chance, which helped raise funds and donated half of its CD sales to the event

Sixty percent of the funds raised will go toward early detection and awareness programs, Lamb-Ferro said, with a particular emphasis on providing mammograms to uninsured and underinsured women. The other 40 percent is earmarked for breast-cancer research.

Students from Stadium High School's Darfur Action Club are staging a "displacement camp" at Washington-Hoyt Elementary School overnight tonight. They'll sleep in cardboard boxes and have minimal food and water, to simulate conditions in a Sudanese refugee camp. Group organizer Luke Kneeshaw said he expects 50 to 70 students. The point, he says is to raise awareness and educate about the genocide happening in Darfur.

Gray clouds blanketed the sky and pelted the campus of the University of Puget Sound with rain. The grass of Todd Field was totally saturated.

Sounds like a perfect time and place to dig through the garbage.

James Vance, a facilities services manager, picked through eight large bags full of trash from one of the Tacoma school’s residence halls Thursday morning. He stood over a blue tarp and separated all the refuse into two piles – the kind that’s recyclable but wound up in the regular trash can and the kind that is destined for the landfill.

“We’re trying to bring attention to what can be recycled,” he said. “I mean, there’s almost always a recycle bin right next to the trash can. Just throw it in there. Make that choice.”

The "garbology" event is part of UPS' Live Green Challenge, in which the entire student body is being asked to focus on sustainability. Vance will be back at Todd Field again at the end of the month with garbage bags from the same residence hall. Organizers hope to find fewer recyclables.

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The Tacoma Tall Ships Organization folks appeared before a Tacoma city council committee to discuss their economic impact statement.

Earlier this month, organizers released a study showing a $19.2 million impact. And that played well with the members of the economic development committee.

Councilman Rick Talbert seemed particularly impressed with the infrastructure improvements the festival brought to the Thea Foss Waterway. And, he added, "what isn't measurable is the positive impact for Tacoma and Pierce County from people who visited here."

A board member of the Tacoma Tall Ships Organization will head a resource action committee that will raise funds to pay down the deficit from July’s festival and collect donations toward the 2011 event. Already, one anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $100,000 pledge.

Mike McLeod, a commercial real estate developer, will work full-time for the nonprofit organization over the next two months, board members said Tuesday. Tall Ships ran a $500,000 deficit on a $2.5 million budget.

Thirty-five creditors – mostly smaller companies and individuals – have been paid, with 63 still outstanding, board co-chairman Stan Selden said. The organization still owes about $450,000, $50,000 less than the initial deficit organizers announced last month. The nonprofit has received additional payments and bills since then, Selden said.

McLeod was five weeks into a three-month vacation when he decided to return to Tacoma and work to pay down the deficit.

“Bottom line is I couldn’t relax,” he said. “I wasn’t comfortable. We cut the trip short by about a month to come back and work on it.”

McLeod will approach sponsors from this year’s event and ask them to sign up early for 2011. One such deal he’s proposing to sponsors is a four-year commitment: help toward the deficit this year, money toward organizational operations in 2009-10 and donations toward the event in 2011.

The nonprofit has already received one large gift: An anonymous woman gave $100,000 earmarked for The Pollard Group, the Tacoma printing firm.

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Connor Rataezyk’s feet didn’t reach the ground as he sat in the captain’s chair. He stared in amazement at the board of knobs and switches as a wide smile grew across his face.

“It’s really cool!” the 7-year-old exclaimed after a chance to tour the Commencement, the Tacoma Fire Department’s newly refurbished fireboat.

Connor’s grandparents were impressed too. Jerry and Sandi Rataezyk were among hundreds at the Commencement Bay Maritime Fest on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma. They toured the dozens of boats – mostly tugs and other working vessels – moored along floats near Dock Street. The steady drumbeat from nearby dragon boats thumped through the air and mixed with the chattering of families touring the ships and viewing what rows of vendors were selling. In the distance, an Army landing craft ferried festivalgoers past the waterfront.

“We think this is a great way to spend the day,” Sandi Rataezyk said. “It lets everyone know what’s going on on the waterfront. It shows what we can do.”

“Most people have no idea,” Jerry added.

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