Employees take noxious weed fight to the streets
The employees of King County’s Noxious Weed Program know they can’t stop the spread of invasive plants on their own, so they’re bringing a secret weapon to the fight – local residents and businesses.
“We try to teach people enough so they can do better at controlling these plants. A lot of people want to control noxious weeds and invasive plants, but not everyone knows how. We offer that expertise,” said Sasha Shaw, the noxious weed education specialist.
Garlic Mustard
Throughout the year, staff from the program attend public events to answer questions about what noxious weeds are and how they can be controlled.
“We talk to people who are completely unfamiliar with the concept of invasive plants all the way up to farmers who have been farming for 50 years,” Shaw said.
Share this:
Radio brings out employee’s passion for music
When Sandy Macdonald isn’t working as a civil rights investigator, he is playing music – as a radio host, producer and in a band.
“I just enjoy playing the music and I enjoy being part of live radio,” Macdonald said.
An 18-year employee with what is now King County’s Office of Civil Rights and Open Government, Sandy gets in the radio booth every second and fourth Sunday of the month to host 91.3 KBCS’s show, “Sunday Folks” from 9 a.m. to noon. The show describes itself as “A morning mix of traditional and contemporary folk in all its undefined states.”
Macdonald has hosted shows at the public radio station for 23 years. He originally got into radio in college, graduating with a degree in radio, television and film.
Share this:
PAO’s Annual Food Frenzy Drive Raises $11,600 for Food Lifeline
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (PAO) completed its annual two-week fundraising project in July called Food Frenzy, which raised $11,600 for Food Lifeline which equals last year’s total. The money will provide 46,400 meals for hungry children. Food Frenzy is a “friendly” competition between law, accounting and engineering firms with the goal of feeding children during the summer months when food bank shelves aren’t well stocked and school lunch programs aren’t running.
The PAO again won the competition in the Public Sector category for 2014 and has won in that category for the past nine years.
Employees participate in many fundraising projects including cooking & bake sales, softball and bowling tournaments, a pie baking contest, a silent auction for gift baskets, a spaghetti luncheon, raffles and Dress Down for a Cause. The Food Frenzy competition fielded a new event this year, a dunk tank event called “Make a Splash to Fight Hunger.” Employees could vote for co-workers and have them dunked into a lot of cold water.
Share this:
Lync Awareness Event at King Street Center
More than 175 employees stopped by the KCIT Lync Team’s booth on July 23 and 24 to learn more about Lync.
Some of the questions we heard were focused on:
- What’s changed in Lync 2013 compared to 2010
- Update on the Outlook contact phone numbers in Lync issue
- How to get your picture in Lync
- How to get more information and training.
Share this:
Lunch and Learn highlights County’s efforts to end human trafficking
According to Kelly Mangiaracina, King County’s Task Force Coordinator for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC), an estimated 300-500 children are forced into prostitution in Seattle every year.
When the CSEC Task Force was convened by Juvenile Court Judge Barbara A. Mack in 2013, it hoped to change that.
“King County was very fortunate to realize this is an issue. We’re very fortunate to have great organizations in the area that want to do something about it,” Mangiaracina said at the Equity and Social Justice “Stopping Human Trafficking” Lunch and Learn held on June 30.
Share this:
Five Questions with Judy Garcia, Director of Probation Services, District Court
1. What was your first role at King County and how did you progress to Director of Probation Services? I began as a Volunteer for the Federal Way District Court Probation Department in 1982, while working for the Weyerhaeuser Company. During my time as a volunteer, I enjoyed interviewing defendants about life problems and writing pre-sentence reports much more than I enjoyed talking with sawmill managers about log inventories, and writing competitor analysis reports. I found working in the criminal justice system, rather than in the timber industry, to be highly interesting and very satisfying. I instantly knew the work was a perfect fit for my personality and skill set and my commitment hasn’t wavered in my 30 years on the job. My employment with Weyerhaeuser was terminated during a major round of timber industry layoffs, and with a severance, I was able to continue the volunteer work until I was hired in the summer of 1983 to job share the half time Volunteer Coordinator position. I became a Probation Officer II (a supervisor with a full caseload) when a full-service probation branch office was opened in Federal Way in 1986 and continued in that capacity for Federal Way and other locations for approximately 20 years. I became the Probation Services Director in May of 2009, after serving 18 months as Acting Director in two non-consecutive stints.
2. What do you do as Director of Probation Services for District Court? Probation provides pre- and post-sentence investigations, to include in-custody interviews and monitors compliance with conditions of sentencing for misdemeanant offenders, primarily high-impact and repeat DUI offenders, those convicted of violent offenses, and those in need of drug, alcohol and/or mental health treatment. Services are provided for state cases in unincorporated areas of King County as well as the King County Domestic Violence Court, Regional Mental Health Court, Regional Veteran’s Court, and 12 cities that contract for the full array of District Court Services. Currently we have four probation mental health specialists and 12 probation officers in five courthouse locations, supervised by two management positions, including me. As the Probation Director, I am responsible for all program and staff activity and supervise and train new officers and supervisory staff. My responsibility also involves evaluation of departmental activity, community trends for use in short and long-range planning, being a liaison with treatment agencies, coordinating public relations efforts, and representing Probation and/or the Court on agency, county, and state committees and task forces.
Share this:
It’s not waste anymore at King County Transfer Stations
King County is reducing our impact on the environment by helping residents and businesses increase recycling at County owned transfer stations, keeping reusable and recyclable items out of the landfill.
Transfer station recycling is up by 2,057 tons or 49 percent over the first half of this year, due largely to a 21 percent jump in yard waste recycling, a 60 percent spike in scrap metal recycling, and a more than 400 percent increase in wood waste recycling.
New roof at the Houghton Transfer Station in Kirkland
These increases are the result of a number of changes, including the full restoration of recycling services at Shoreline, Renton, and Houghton transfer stations in April 2013, the opening of a new recycling area at Bow Lake Recycling & Transfer Station last October, and the launch of a new Resource Recovery Pilot at Shoreline transfer station.
“Through the pilot we’re actively removing materials from the waste stream,” transfer station recycling manager Eric Johnson said.
Share this:
Helping young adults with disabilities make school-to-work transition
The transition from high school to adulthood can be scary for anyone, but particularly for someone who has a developmental or intellectual disability.
“You start to become an adult when you leave high school. Whether you’re an 18 or 21 year old like the people we serve, it’s just a pivotal time. Everyone wants to know, ‘Well what are you going to do?,’” Richard Wilson said.
A client working at Americas Foundation for Chess
Wilson is the program manager who heads up the Developmental Disabilities Division’s School to Work Program. The program works with school districts in King County to help students with developmental and intellectual disabilities receive job training and seek employment in their last year of high school, so that when they graduate they’ll have a job.
“What the program really does is bring adult-style employment services to these young adults at minimum a year before they can normally get it,” Wilson said. “We bridge the gap between school and our complicated adult service system that is difficult to access.”
Share this:
Transitional Duty Program a win-win for employees and King County
When an employee gets injured at work, returning to their job can sometimes be difficult.
That’s where King County’s Transitional Duty Assignment Program comes in. The TDA program helps employees who aren’t medically ready to return to their regular jobs because of temporary medical restrictions. A TDA helps employees get back into a work routine through short-term, temporary work assignments.
The TDA program, managed by Human Resources Division’s Safety and Claims, partners with work groups throughout King County to identify short-term work assignments that can be performed by employees with temporary medical restrictions. There is always a need for placement within the County. Employees in the program undertake administrative work, customer service, data entry, E-file management, scanning projects, surveys, phone work and other short terms projects lasting from a week to a maximum of six months. Injured workers participating in the TDA program earn vacation and sick days on top of being paid through their home departments. There is no cost for the receiving Department to host a TDA worker.
“Pleased supervisors typically note that they are surprised at the level of knowledge their TDA workers have. They are also comfortable working with me in finding the appropriate person for their tasks if a referral is not able to complete the scope of work needed,” said Aliza Hauser the TDA coordinator.
Share this:
Disproportionality in the jury room
Three attorneys with King County’s Department of Public Defense are partnering with the Public Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project to prove what they have seen over and over again in their work as felony public defenders: African-Americans are not only vastly under-represented on juries, they’re also under-represented in the jury pool.
Ben Goldsmith and Twyla Carter, both felony attorneys in DPD’s The Defender Association Division (TDAD), and Daron Morris, deputy division director, hope to collect enough data to put forward a compelling case to court administrators and others in the criminal justice system about the disproportionate composition of jury pools. “I believe what my eyes are telling me – that minorities are under-represented in the jury pool,” Goldsmith said. “But to make some meaningful changes, we need to collect some data.”
To obtain that data, Goldsmith and Carter have asked the 15 attorneys in TDAD’s felony unit to complete declarations after each jury selection they participate in and note the apparent race of potential jurors. They’re also asking supervisors of the felony units in DPD’s three other divisions to have their attorneys do the same, Goldsmith said.
Meanwhile, Anita Khandelwal, an attorney who supervises the Racial Disparity Project for the Public Defender Association (PDA), and Lisa Daugaard, PDA’s policy director, are working with the judges and administrators in King County Superior Court to conduct demographic surveys of potential jurors in the jury room. The two efforts – the declarations and surveys – should provide sufficient data to begin the hard work of addressing the problem, Goldsmith said.
Employee News 