Earlier this year, Juvenile Court implemented a Restorative Mediation Pilot option for youth in diversion. The pilot has since expanded beyond diversion and is now available to adjudicated youth. It provides youth with the opportunity to reduce time on supervision or in place of court-ordered community service hours. Restorative Mediation is an opportunity for an offender to have a facilitated conversation with the victim, giving the victim an opportunity to express how the event affected him/her, to provide space for understanding what took place for both parties, and to restore relationships that were… Read More

Mari Jane Friel is up to her knees in mud as dark as chocolate cake and smiling broadly. “I love what I do,’’ she says. “It’s something different every day.” Friel, 58, a laborer with King County’s Road Services Division 2, previously worked in corrections and as a chef in downtown Seattle. Her first day on the job, she was assigned to dig a ditch. Today, she’s wielding a shovel and a siphon to clear a drainage ditch of mud and weeds so that salmon can pass through during the rainy season…. Read More

How can King County keep dangerous, hazardous materials from finding their way into landfills and the environment? One solution is the Local Hazardous Waste Management Program’s Wastemobile. Rather than a fleet of vehicles driving to various locations in King County, each “wastemobile” is a temporary tent location set up on the weekends, usually in parking lots of businesses or schools, where small businesses and home owners can bring their hazardous waste to be properly disposed of. “A little hazardous waste in the environment goes a long way and is very bad for… Read More

On Saturday, July 18, members of King County Sheriff’s Office along with their friends and family, readied themselves on the starting line by Safeco Field. For the second year in a row, the Sheriff’s Office was represented at the Refuse to Abuse 5K. An avid runner, Detective Jason Houck first heard of the race last year. Wanting to participate, Houck wondered if he could get any other Sheriff’s Office employees involved and sent out a department wide email in hopes of putting together a team. He received responses from all over King County, from non-runners to avid runners like himself. While the members had different reasons for joining, they all… Read More

The dark blue King County Commuter VanPool Program vans are a familiar sight in our region. For some, the vehicles are a necessity for getting to and from work each day. But what happens once the vans have passed their useful economic life with the program? Since 1996, VanPool has been working with Metro’s Accessible Services and King County Councilmembers to pair nonprofits, in need of vehicles to meet their transportation needs, with retired vanpool vehicles. If a nonprofit agency meets the criteria of having adequate insurance and the ability to cover… Read More

When our animal friends need a helping hand, who’s there to help them? King County TV recently rode along with employees from King County Animal Control Services as they responded to reports of injured or escaped animals. “We are a relatively small unit,” Dr. Gene Mueller, manager of Regional Animal Services, said. “We are covering almost a thousand square miles and almost a million people in our jurisdiction.” Animal Services covers all of unincorporated King County and 25 contract cities, and responds to anything from dog bites to animal cruelty complaints, Animal Control Sergeant… Read More

Rich Garmong, King County Veterans Business Outreach Coordinator with the Department of Community and Human Services (pictured far right), was honored by the International Association of Workforce Professionals (IAWP) for his work in helping returning veterans find new careers when they leave the military. The “Group Service to Veterans Award” was presented to the South King County Veterans Team at the IAWP annual conference. In addition to Rich, the team includes staff members from the Washington State Employment Security Department in the Renton and Auburn WorkSource sites. The team won the award… Read More

Everyone tries to keep work life and personal life separate. But what happens when personal life starts to affect work life? King County understands that sometimes personal life can subsume everything else, and when that happens the Making Life Easier program is there to help. A free service offered to all King County employees and their dependents, MLE can help with personal counseling, financial and legal help, along with providing support with child, adult and elder care. “No matter what the problem is, whether it is substance abuse, legal advice or advice… Read More

Most people don’t think about what happens to what they flush or the sewer systems it flows into, unless things back up and cause a problem. But for King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) employees, part of their jobs is to think about everyone’s sewage. In King County’s regional sewer system, everything that goes down the drains from homes and business ends up at a few regional treatment plants that clean all of our water. However, in the oldest parts of our regional system, pipes were designed to carry a mix of… Read More