Q: Mr. Federal Way, just off of 312th is a small gray building that has been giving showers to the homeless since 2009 (over 1,200 showers were provided just last year). It’s called New Hope Christian Fellowship.
For some reason – be it memory loss, lack of research, not knowing the city, or alien mind wipe – our city leaders don’t seem to know we exist. Have you heard us mentioned in discussions of the new hygiene center? If not, have you seen any UFOs lately? If anyone would like to see our program in action, we open at 9 a.m. every Tuesday.
A: Mr. Federal Way has been trying really hard to take a break from harping on the city and from having a bit of sympathy for the worst-off of us. One of those makes people write him nasty emails, and the other provokes mayoral aides into calling for Mr. Federal Way’s fedora-crowned head.
Mr. Federal Way has spent some of his being-nice-time following the gripping StreetsBlog.org action, where our fair city made it to the finals of the “Parking Madness” tournament to compete for the coveted Golden Crater award for excellence in having an ugly city composed mainly of barren parking lots. I’m sad to announce that we lost the title to Louisville, a city of more than 250,000 people and what appears to be more than 380,000 square miles of surface parking space.
Watch your back, Louisville. Federal Way thinks “second-place” is whiny liberal-speak for “first-loser,” and we’re coming for you next year: We have bajillion apartment complexes going up that are all going to require vast parking space. We’ll see you in 2017, jerks.
And so, his attention now unseized by obscure urban planning blogs making obscure points about obscure complaints, Mr. Federal Way can snatch the target off Bob Roegner’s back and run headfirst again into the hilariously unending hailstorm of stern messages from city Chief of Staff Brian Wilson.
If Mr. Federal Way were you, gentle writer, he wouldn’t expect many mentions of New Hope Christian Fellowship from city chiefs. At least not any time soon. It seems to Mr. Federal Way that the mayor and, to a lesser extent, the members of the City Council have decided that “getting tough” on homeless people is the way of the future. Mr. Federal Way might even accept that as a plan of last resort if, you know, other resorts had been resorted to. Apparently Plan A, “toss a bit of cash at nonprofits,” led immediately to Plan B: scorch the earth.
So the theatrics have begun, with photos of dirty lots getting sent to anyone who will look at them, needle images getting screen time at City Hall during council meetings, and mayors agreeing with every notion short of “shoot ’em all into the sun” that some screwloose quasi-anarcho-brownshirt radio ape spits out.
Does all of that seem oddly coordinated and talking-pointed? That’s because it is. Ladies and gentlemen and radio apes, our city is waging a PR assault against people who sleep in dirt. Usually reserved for political candidates and tourism campaigns, the city is devoting resources to pre-emptively trying to convince others in the Puget Sound region that they’re not cold-hearted monsters for dispatching excavators and law enforcement officers to threaten people who don’t have anything but ratty coats, bad smells and brain-gripping heroin habits. Because doing anything else is “facilitating and encouraging this sort of lack-of-accountability lifestyle to continue,” to quoth the craven.
Mr. Federal Way, for one, would like to see such effort and zeal put into actual tourism campaigns, or maybe official excursions to business leaders to try and sell them on bringing decent jobs to our ‘burb to improve the local economy. I’ll even supply the marketing slogan: “Come to beautiful Federal Way! We’re NOT the most concrete-basted city in the country!”
Q: Mr. Federal Way, will you be watching the Warriors going for 73 or watching Kobe going away?
A: None of your business.
Got a question for Mr. Federal Way? Email your questions, complaints and hate mail to mrfederalway@federalwaymirror.com.
