I'm building a stilt fortress for my kid in the back yard, I started today.

I've got 4 20 foot 4x4 in, they look insanely tall.

I'll probably wait until Saturday to frame in the floor so the concrete has time to cure.

The city has purposed the closure of our neighborhood pool. It's one five indoor pools in the city, and a lovely facility.

The city talks a bunch of jive about how the necessary budget cuts are done with an eye toward equity and serving less advantaged communities. The peninsula I live on has one neighborhood with the 2nd highest minority community, a larger amount of households living in poverty than most the city, including Oregon's largest housing project. It's recently been zoned to drastically increase density.

At least three schools hold their competitive swimming practices there. Swimming lessons for kids are always full, you have to register the day classes open if you want to get in. The old folks have water aerobics classes there. I was told that yesterday's class had 58 attendees. Lots of people go there to lap swim.

In short it's a shitty thing to do to our often underserved collection of neighborhoods. The park department has a 6 million dollar shortfall and our pool needs 200k in roof maintanince.

The city wants to increase the police budget by $12 million this year.

I've been spreading the word at my shop and encouraging people to call and write city council. Because my wife works in printing we've been able to donate posters and handbills. My mom who's very active in the League of Women's Voters has been leafleting. I attended the city budget meeting last night and people really came out to let the council know what they thought.

I'm pretty sure 2 out of five member of the council would be happy to push half of the proposed police budget increase toward parks and rec. There is a fair chance that two other will come around.

I had a few things to say about the homeless community today as well but I'm talked out. Generally I'm really coming around to the idea that we all suffer more when we neglect our least advantaged community members than we realize.