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Be happy the women of Seattle wear trench coats instead of bikinis...unless you like your women hairy and pale. 😍
Oh man…..😂
I’m go’n hungry……
Have you had a chance to hit Whidbey MX when you're in town?
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And then we have The Seattle Freeze. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
I lived on Whidbey as a young boy. Clinton, on Humphreys Road at the top of the hill coming off the ferry. They used to have a track back in the day for a few years in Coupeville. I saw that there’s a track in that area again. Pretty cool.
Yeah, I agree with most of that. Kinda sad.
Summers are awesome. The other 9 months, not so much. I actually have clear pics of Westport.
The kids place was only about a mile from the track, but sadly I never had a bike with me. I did go hang out on an open practice day a couple times. To be honest, the dirt was kinda shit. Looked like a fun track, on the smaller side layout-wise from what I'm used to, but still looked fun.
My daughter and the son in law got transferred to Fort Leonardwood a couple months ago, so it will be a while before we make it back to Whidbey, but my wife LOVES that island, so we will definitely be back one day.
Most of the state isn't 9 months of gloom, you just have to cross the Cascades!
As for Seattle, yeah the depths of winter can sick pretty bad. Is it worth it for the rest of the amazing weather? Hard to say. But here's a comparison of average monthly rainfall between Dallas, TX and Seattle, WA. There are only 4 months out of the year that Seattle averages more rainfall than Dallas does. And it's smack dab in the middle of the winter.
The green line on the bottom is 'Home'. Quite a difference between either of those places. And those totals include snow, too.
Another thing that makes Seattle winters so dreary is that the days are about an hour and a half shorter than daylight hours in Dallas at its winter peak, but in the summer the really nice days in Seattle are about an hour and a half longer! Going between those swings really makes those short winter days more depressing…..
After reading this again, it kind of sounds like a canned piece of propaganda. Especially little things like this that don’t quite make sense.
"My power bill is going up. The claim is supposed to be going up another 13%. But just last month, it almost doubled."
There wasn’t a doubling of power rates for Tacoma any time in the last 12 months, let alone ‘just last month’. His usage may have doubled over whatever time period he’s comparing that to, but that would double your power bill anywhere.
And Tacoma’s current electricity rate is just over half the national average.
There’s plenty of reasons to want to move a business (especially out of Tacoma!) but this reads a bit too much like a move that happens all the time being used for political purposes.
Depends on how he buys his power. As a commercial entity, he could be on a separate contract for power. You buy power from someone, it can be anyone, who isn't your local utility and then you pay the local utility a "transmission" fee to get it to you.
His base power cost may not have gone up, but his transmission cost could have doubled. Due to the contracts involved, his base power would be fixed costs and the transmission costs variable.
Now the wording in the article is still a bit clickbait about the whole thing, but it is probably still factual from a certain viewpoint: potential doubling of the variable costs.
Where I work we buy our power from a separate entity (tribal owned hydroelectric) then pay a transmission fee to the local utility to "get" it here. I can say our transmission fee (which is non-negotiable) has jumped close to 40% this year from the same time last year. Our power from the dam is bought on a 3 year length negotiated contract which started with a new locked in price on January 1st.
And just like dealing with the railroads, power transmission in a locality is a monopoly. You either pay or you don't get service.
I think your explanation can apply to some very large industrial users (Boeing, Data Centers, etc.), but Tacoma Power is a public utility with published rate schedules, not a deregulated market where most businesses are shopping transmission contracts independently. Washington’s electricity network is still highly regulated, and a lot of it is quite a bit less expensive than the national average.
Tacoma Power is a municipally owned public utility with published commercial rate schedules and approved increases that were around 6.5%, not 100%. A business could see a higher bill from increased usage or perhaps new demand spikes, but that’s very different from “Tacoma power rates doubled!”
At this point the more plausible explanation is that the story was framed hyperbolically. And since it came from Fox News, probably intentionally so for political effect.
I'm not saying the cam company is using a separate power supplier or not. Just throwing out where the basis of (partial) truth could come from.
You don't have to be that big to get power supplied, just have to be a steady user. Say a steady 1MW daily requirement and you'd probably be good to go. Even our facility down on the Seattle waterfront uses that much power daily when it is shut down for maintenance.
The facility I work at is small potatoes compared to most, and we are contracted for 6MW daily. Really sucks when we go over and then get billed at the "commercial" rate our transmission supplier gives us for their power even though it is still less than what my home rate is.
Now do I think that what the article states is exaggerated? Abso-f'n-lutely. But there's at least a kernel oe two of truth in there to back up the lies.
Personally, I'm just glad my sister-in-law was able to get out of the Seattle area and sell her rental properties on the way to Arizona when she did.
I'm not well versed in utility company rates or policies other than what I pay at my house.
Having said all that do you disagree with the under lying points of the article regarding the business environment in the area?
I don’t disagree that businesses can have legitimate frustrations with taxes, crime, homelessness, regulation, etc. Some of those reasons for frustration can be objective, but it’s often extremely subjective.
What I disagree with is the simplistic ‘Washington collapsed because liberals’ framing while leaving out context (and adding in very questionable context).
That business is basically on the edge of Hilltop, which had a far worse gang/crime problem in the 80s and 90s than it does today. If they opened there in 1978, it wasn’t exactly some pristine low-crime area back then either. It’s definitely better today than it was back then, but it’s still not somewhere I’d choose to set up a business of my own.
And people love citing Washington business taxes while ignoring the state still has no personal income tax, which is a huge advantage compared to a great number of states.
So yes, costs and frustrations are real. But Fox presenting it like Tacoma utilities suddenly doubled and the state became unlivable feels pretty hyperbolic to me.
Pit Row
Did you see what former Democrat governor Christine Gregoire had to say about 3 terms of Democrat Jay Inslee as governor and now 1.5 years of Democrat Bob Ferguson?
I thought she died a couple years ago, actually. Haven’t heard her name mentioned in forever. What did she say?
There’s probably just cheaper places to run a business. Politics are a little volatile out there.
Yes, I know it is a right leaning YT channel but its a starting point if you feel like diving deeper into the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5vRweDKXZw
Christine Gregoire, former governor of Washington state is not dead.
Did some work for her not too long ago.
You dog.
How's her plumbing? Did you lay some pipe?
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