Mayor Nickels' final Ask the Mayor

"The American public turning out and saying we want our government to work for us."
—Senator Patty Murray in response to a question asking what was most inspiring about this year. 12/12/08 Year in Review

"We are a city that is starting to understand urban density. It's not just the other guy taking the bus."

--Denny Onslow, Harbor Properties

"There's lots of different ways that anybody can contribute. I mentioned the humble task of just serving other people... If you are going to be a medical anthropologist, feel free to contribute to medical anthropology, but there are also other ways to contribute too to that problem and many others, and I would encourage you to keep that in mind. Just because you're a hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail. And just because you're a medical anthropologist doesn't mean you have to only write books."

- Paul Farmer

"The serious challenge we have, particularly in our community where there's a high rate of volunteerism, is around raising the capacity of our nonprofits to effectively utilize volunteers... A big part of it is volunteer management... We've got some wonderful systems here locally for helping people engage... but what we have to do is make sure that when people show up to engage, that nonprofit has the right kind of training, the right kind of staff in place, the right kind of leadership mentality to really make use of volunteers in a high value way."

- Nancy Long, Executive Director of Executive Service Corps of Washington