The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Hannah Krieg Scarf weather: I’m trying to become a scarf-wearing girlie and today’s a pretty good day to help solidify that identity. The morning will start out cloudy with temperatures in the low 40s. Then the sun will peak out around 11 am and temperatures will steadily rise to a high of 46 around 2 pm. Then, as these things tend to go, the temperatures will drift back down as it gets dark. Sounds like scarf weather to me!  California update: Southern California is still very much on fire. As of this morning, the fires, which include the record-breaking blaze in Palisades and another historic inferno in Eaton, have killed at least five people, forced tens of thousands under mandatory evacuation orders, destroyed at least 2,000 structures, and burned more than 27,000 acres. While many of the fires stand at 0% containment, firefighters made headway overnight to contain the Sunset fire, which triggered evacuation orders in Hollywood last night.  City budget’s matter: Ahead of the huge wildfire outbreak in Southern California, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reportedly cut more than $17 million from the fire department’s budget. According to the NBC4 report, most of the $17 million was absorbed by cutting fire department administration positions, but $7 million in variable overtime had to be axed. However, a Politico report found the claim about the budget cuts, which spread like wildfire (sorry) on social media, was not quite as black and white as it seems. From Politico: "The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle, according to Blumenfield’s office, although overall concerns about the department’s staffing level have persisted for a number of years."   Most succinct fact-check I've read of how LA Fire Dept's budget wasn't recently cut — in fact, the opposite — from @politico.com. But that misinformation spread anyway. www.politico.com/news/2025/01...[image or embed] — Ali Vitali (@alivitali.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 4:59 AM   Take the fucking bus: Local media is complaining about increased traffic and packed parking lots in the wake of Amazon’s new return-to-office mandate. However, the Seattle Department of Transportation is monitoring the situation and not really noticing a huge influx of traffic compared to this time last year. But now’s as good a time as ever to remind you that taking the bus is awesome and the more of us who do it the faster we can all get where we need to go! Now, Ashley, take it away! Mayor Bruce Harrell’s oopsy: On Tuesday, Harrell sent out a release celebrating the City’s progress on police recruitment. He boasted about how, for the first time since 2019, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) had hired more officers than it lost and the number of deployable officers had increased by 141 in a single year. Unbelievable, you might say. And you’d be correct. The mayor had to send out a follow-up press release to say that the total number of deployable officers only increased by about 20 compared to 2023. Also good to note that while the number of hirings did surpass separations from the police department in 2024, they only surpassed the number of separations by one: hiring 84 cops and losing 83. And they promptly lost an officer in the first couple weeks of January by firing Kevin Dave, so I’d call that a draw. But no, we should celebrate spending an additional $96 million on a new police contract and a couple million in 2024 to boost advertising for cops, as well as creating permanent hiring bonuses, all to add an additional 20 cops. Amazing fiscal responsibility, Mayor Harrell. Thanks, Ashley! Back to me.  Someone had to do it! The Seattle Times is suing the Seattle Police Department (SPD) for delaying public records requests, denying the public transparency guaranteed by state law. SPD's records come especially slowly because a 2017 policy allowed the department to “group” requests made by a single person into one, even when those requests were made months apart.  So each new request empowered SPD to add greater and greater delays and punish journalists with strong, recurring interest, as the Seattle Times's lawyer argued. In 2023, SPD agreed to reform the grouping practice so that it would only group requests within 8 weeks of each other. However, the lawsuit alleges SPD stopped complying with that agreement sometime last year. ICYMI: Did you see that Council Member Cathy Moore went on a little tirade in the first council meeting back? The City Council is starting to talk about the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan (long overdue! Looking at you, Mr. Mayor) and there’s going to be a lot—a lot—of debate as evidenced by Moore’s impassioned and kinda confusing remarks. To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it. She’s mad about affordability. And while it is true that we cannot simply build our way out of the housing crisis, I don’t think she has much authority to talk about affordability… I am sympathetic to cries for affordability more than the market urbanist Moore has built in her head, but this falls flat when it seems CM Moore is poised to rollback renters rights and she introduced the Chamber's alternative to the social housing funding initiative. https://t.co/8N4Jr7Tzyk pic.twitter.com/RXchOBHSXT — Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) January 8, 2025 Oh! Elected officials in Cle Elum are considering declaring bankruptcy, a move that’s “almost unheard of for cities in Washington,” according to the Seattle Times. The city is financially fucked because late last year an arbitrator ruled Cle Elum owes $22.2 million to a developer after repeatedly violating an agreement related to a plan to build nearly 1,000 homes near downtown. That’s a lot of money considering the city’s budget is about $5 million a year. The new minimum wage is a good thing actually: Conservative media has spent a lot of time these first days of 2025 trying to construct a narrative that the new minimum wage is destroying small businesses. If a business has already closed this year—before many people have seen their first paycheck of 2025—and the business is blaming the new wage, which they had a ten-year warning about, know that they are misplacing blame. They should be mad at their landlords for making it too expensive to rent a commercial space; or at restrictive zoning laws that tamp down development, depriving their neighborhood of more people and thus their business of more customers; or, at themselves for buying too much avocado toast, or whatever conservatives tell young people when they complain about money.  Interesting timing: ABC News reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito talked to President-elect Donald Trump on the phone just hours before Trump's lawyers filed an emergency request asking the justices to halt sentencing in his criminal hush money case. Really looks like Trump was calling to tell his conservative cronies what to do, but Alito says they didn’t discuss the case. He claims he was calling as a job reference to help one of his former law clerks get a position in the new administration. To be honest, that excuse doesn’t comfort me. Sounds like a good reason to make a little trade! The court is expected to decide on Trump's request by Friday morning. América Mexicana: After President-Elect Donald Trump said he’s going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum jokingly suggested renaming North America to “ “América Mexicana.” She said, “That sounds nice, no?” On this day in music history: Backstreet Boys member AJ McClean was born. Happy 47th birthday, man. This ones for you!