Clueless in Seattle

Seattle has a reputation for civic niceness, for compromise, for letting people have their say and building consensus before moving forward. For bending over backward to avoid negativity.

I guess it works for some things, like building nice libraries and city halls and having a fairly thriving arts scene (except that midsize theatres are dying off one by one...but I digress).

But it absolutely hamstrings important decisions like where, when, and whether to build public transportation projects or freeway viaducts or halfway housing for sex offenders who've served their jail time. Inevitably these decisions bog down amid all the public hearings and votes and redesigns and whatnot, and the resulting compromise pleases no one.

At least that is what's widely believed. But there could be another explanation: Seattle hires too many stupid people. Here's Exhibit A, as reported by KING-5 TV:

1) Evidently City of Seattle employees are too dumb to heat up popcorn in the microwave without burning it;
2) and then their supervisors overreact by evacuating the building because of the burned popcorn;
3) and then they further overreact by threatening to enact a ban on microwave popcorn in city buildings.

If I were Robert Mak, the TV reporter who filed this segment, I wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. Notice how the City's facilities manager can't give Robert a straight answer? About popcorn?