The various races for city council have been pretty boring lately, and this worries me. Whether you are a progressive or a conservative, there is reason to be involved. Doug Mah is talking about community building and working with social groups to reform downtown. Ira Knight wants to work with the police to create zero tolerence policies for loitering, panhandling, graffitti, etc. Silence from John Bell so far leaves Joe Hyer with no competition and I expect it to remain this way. This election is critical for our community, the Olympian is serving as not a community newspaper, but as a mouthpiece for the ODA and their agenda. Joe Hyer is a former president of the ODA (Olympia Downtown Association), Jeff Kingsbury is the current president of the ODA. Should they both be on the council together will they represent the Olympia community or will we see them strongly advocating for large businesses? A number of smaller, and some not so small, businesses in Olympia are against the ODA's Business Improvement District (BID), some who signed originally want to take back their support, but it may well pass regardless. Under the BID, even if a business doesn't agree to it, they will be taxed for it. If they don't pay the tax, the city will fine them. Is this an example of a free market?

We should be talking about this!

I've added a couple of new features:

• The video interview of Mayor Foutch is now accessible on the sidebar, as are the interviews with folks living on the street.
• I've added an rss feed of blogs that mention "Olympia". It is located below the links section on the sidebar.
• I've been slowly accumulating links to local blogs, resources, and music, and I'd appreciate any new links that folks know of that I haven't yet run across.

Any comments on the layout or funciton of the site would be welcome.

The 8th Olympia International Film Festival for Children &Young People will take place from December 3 to December 10, 2005.

Deadline for submission of applications: October 10, 2005.

WEBSITE: http://www.olympiafestival.gr/01_FilmFestival/About.htm