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Comment by rbritton | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure what I'd call it, but competent is not the word. Seattle has a history of attempting to push constitutionally-questionable and ill-thought legislation.

0: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-p...

1: https://q13fox.com/2018/05/08/seattles-proposed-employee-tax...

2: https://patch.com/washington/seattle/seattle-residents-jolte...

3: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-t...

and so on.

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I get that you don't like taxes, but policy disagreement is not evidence of incompetence.

There's much more that's not just not liking taxes.

- https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/12-millio...

- https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/like-terr...

Or see the city council's total failure at dealing with homelessness. Or their 180 on the head tax.

I drove a stiffened up sports car in the area for years and the idea that Seattle has bad roads is ludicrous. The city of Seattle literally has an app where you can report potholes. I reported one on my street and it was fixed 2 days later with no further interaction from me.

For comparison, my parents' road in South Carolina is less than 5 miles from a major downtown and has a pothole in it that disabled an ambulance a few years ago. The pothole has been there for at least a decade.

People who live here have no idea how good they have it.

Yeah, I think many Seattleites do not understand the sheer ineptitude of many local governments, even large ones such as Chicago or LA that have budget. God help you if you want the city of Chicago to provide you with any kind of basic service in a reasonable amount of time.

I think the reason that we think our government is incompetent is the reason it works. We're constantly angry and trying to fix it, and electing reformers that shake things up.

Although I would say is that Seattle does elect a few activists and others to the council that aren't competent administrators but push the right electoral buttons. Kshama Sawant comes to mind. That progressive spirit is a double edged sword.

This isn't a statement against your other critiques of Seattle's government. In fact, I have no standing to speak on them given I've never been to the city.

But I'm be quite weary of criticisms against city's handling of their homeless populations, given the issue is a box of hand grenades, all with different timing mechanisms that must be diffused the moment it's opened.

The most vocal political actors around the issue are generally highly empathetic activists averse to almost any form of outcome oriented case management, metric collection or conditional aid policies; and those that vociferously oppose all forms of state-driven social aid.

Cities that pander to the first, compassion-oriented constituency tend to risk becoming a dumping ground for the region's less compassionate actors, and cities that pander to the other tend to dump their homeless populations on the more compassionate ones. This means that whoever tries to solve the issue first inevitably finds their public/private resources strained beyond reason.

Attempts to reconcile the two perspectives usually satisfy no one, and more often than not seem to produce counterproductive and Byzantine bureacratic mazes that ultimately produce little to no positive outcomes and lack the flexibility to adapt their social services on a case by case basis.

With the head tax, it was hard to say there was not incompetence or at least gross miscalculation. The city council passed the tax, the mayor signed it, and then less than a month later it was repealed.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/about-fac...

How about them buying new trains that don't fit the tracks and maintenance barns?

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sea...

and a wikipedia page dedicated to its slow and inefficient methods of deliberation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process

Keep in mind that most people in Seattle think those are features, not bugs. Fast and efficient does not mean a system you want to live in.

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