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| Seattle Apartment Locator Services : Seattle Apartments |  | Contents | |
| Law and Government |
The statue of Vladimir Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood
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| Seattle is a charter city, with a Mayor-Council form of government,
unlike many of its neighbors that use the Council-Manager form.
Seattle's mayor and nine city council members are elected annually,
at large, rather than by geographic subdivisions. The only other
elected office is the city attorney. All offices are non-partisan. |
| The city government provides more utilities than many cities;
either running the whole operation, such as the water, sewer,
and electricity services, or handling the billing and administration,
but contracting out the rest of the operations, such as trash
and recycling collection. In most neighboring cities, for example,
electricity is provided by either a private company such as
Puget Sound Energy, or a county public utility district. See
the Utilities section for more details. |
| As with most U.S. cities, the county judicial system (courts
and jails) handles most crime—the Seattle Municipal Court deals
mostly with parking tickets and the like. Seattle does not even
have its own jail, contracting out the few misdemeanor inmates
it convicts to either the King County Jail (which is located
downtown), the Yakima County Jail, or (for short-term holdings)
the Renton City Jail. In 2004, there were only 24 murders in
Seattle, the fewest since 1965. Violent crime has declined by
nearly 42 percent since 1994, to a rate of approximately seven
per 1,000 people. Auto theft has increased about 44 percent
in the same period; the SPD has responded by almost doubling
the number of detectives in the auto theft detail, and is starting
a 'bait car' program. A Money magazine table, using 2001 statistics,
ranked Seattle 18th in highest crime rate in the US, with 80.5
crimes per 1,000 citizens. |
| Seattle's politics lean famously to the left compared to the
U.S. as a whole, although there are some conservative neighborhoods.
In partisan elections, such as for the State Legislature and
US Congress, most elections are won by Democrats, with Greens
getting more votes than in many cities. |
| Official nickname, flower, slogan, and song |
| In 1981, Seattle held a contest to come up with a new official
nickname to replace "the Queen City," which it had
been since 1869 and was also the nickname of Cincinnati, Toronto,
and Charlotte, North Carolina. The winner, selected in 1982,
was "the Emerald City." Submitted by Californian Sarah
Sterling-Franklin, it referred to the lush surroundings of Seattle
that were the result of frequent rain. Seattle has also been
known in the past as the "Jet City" though this nickname,
related to Boeing, was entirely unofficial. |
| Seattle's official flower has been the dahlia since 1913.
Its official song has been "Seattle the Peerless City"
since 1909. In 1942, its official slogan was "The City
of Flowers"; 48 years later, in 1990, it was "The
City of Goodwill," for the Goodwill Games held that year
in Seattle. |
| Seattle mayors of note |
| Among Seattle's notable past politicians is Bertha Knight
Landes, mayor from 1926 to 1928. She was the first woman to
be mayor of a major American city. |
| Another, Bailey Gatzert, was mayor from 1875 to 1876. He was
the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, narrowly missed being the
first Jewish mayor of a major American city (Moses Bloom became
mayor of Iowa City, Iowa in 1873), and has been the only Jewish
mayor of Seattle so far. |
| Sister cities |
| Seattle is twinned with: Beer Sheva (Israel), Bergen (Norway),
Cebu (Philippines), Chongqing (China), Christchurch (New Zealand),
Galway (Ireland), Gdynia (Poland), Haiphong (Vietnam), Kaohsiung
(Taiwan), Kobe (Japan), Limbe (Cameroon), Mazatlan (Mexico),
Mombasa (Kenya), Nantes (France), Pecs (Hungary), Perugia (Italy),
Reykjavik Iceland, Sihanoukville (Cambodia), Surabaya (Indonesia),
Taejon (Korea), Tashkent (Uzbekistan).
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