Seattle needs to empower our citizens to organize more community-sized events.
A few weeks ago my family participated in the inaugural Cove to Clover St. Patrick’s Day Run in Burien. About 350 people ran, it was a great community event, and it raised over $10,000 for a local food bank. As I was running the 3 mile course, I was doing the math in my head of how it was generating revenue (350 registrations at $30 each and some community sponsors on the income side, street closure permits, police on the course, timing chips, t-shirts on the expense side) and I thought something didn’t add up. After the event I asked my friend who organized it how he made it work out. It turns out the police donated their time (quite generous), and the city waived the fees for street permits.
In Seattle, this event likely would not have happened because of the costs and the hoops a race organizer would have to jump through. The street permits alone would have added over $1000 in costs. The result is that the events we get are scaled much larger and rarely spin off money for charity. I love the St. Patrick’s Day Dash, but with 15,000 runners, it has a very different feel and scale. I know Seattle is a much bigger city than Burien, but we need to figure out ways we can support our people in organizing community and neighborhood sized events. These types of neighborhood events are exactly what help build community, make connections and give neighborhoods identity.
Two summers ago I wanted to get street closure permits to hold a couple evening summer concerts featuring neighbors who played instruments. It seemed like a relatively simple way to have some fun without leaving the neighborhood and help people who live here make connections with others. What I found was that the city required an “inspection” fee after the event of about $100 to make sure we didn’t damage the street. It seemed absurd that 1000′s of pounds of vehicles drive on the street every hour without requiring an inspection, yet a few people dancing to some music might damage the street? $100 is not a huge amount of money, but it was enough to derail our efforts.
Last summer the city adjusted its policy on “block party” permits: inspections are no longer required, so they are effectively free. This is a good first step, but the city needs to do more to encourage and promote more active use of our streets and more events to bring people together. Fun runs, scavenger hunts, neighborhood parades, or whatever our creative people can dream up should be encouraged. With people feeling pinched financially, these events put smiles on faces and build community at a time when it is really needed.
First of all, thanks for supporting our local food bank. I was the race director for this event and while Burien is smaller, it was difficult to pull this thing off. Sometimes I felt as though the city was trying to put enough barriers in my way so that I’d just give up and go away. It’d be refreshing if the attitude with the City was “Hey, you’re making our City a better place to live and providing many hours of volunteer service to do so. So what can we do to facilitate your event and maximize the value to the community at large”. This is a bit of an oversimplification of course.