A Minister’s Sharp Critique of City Hall’s 'Joinery'
Rev. Wallace Nutting takes the pulpit to call out bureaucratic waste, road-grading failures, and a lack of conscience in police enforcement.
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Rev. Wallace Nutting prefaced his evening sermon with a prelude on 'What We Ask in a City Government,' pointing out the incomprehensible actions of the administration. He lamented the waste of public funds, noting that streets were often surveyed four or more times at the city's expense and culverts were installed with outlets higher than intakes. He specifically criticized the police department's failure to enforce Sunday liquor laws, suggesting that publicizing the names of men frequenting 'indecent resorts' would do more for the public conscience than the current ineffective policing. Nutting called for a business-like administration, free from the political 'joinery' of party platforms that were designed only to catch votes.
“We should not have culverts placed under crossings so that the outlet is eighteen inches higher than the intake... If this city were finished it might not be a sin to hire men to dig holes and fill them up.”
Nutting’s complaints about 'muddled affairs' and poorly engineered streets—often leading to dead-ends or elevation mismatches—capture the growing pains of a city rapidly expanding without a coherent master plan. His critique of police enforcement of social laws versus the corruption of the elite is a perennial theme in Seattle’s political history.
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