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By Maria Saporta

The Piedmont Park Conservancy just announced that it is canceling the 2011 season of “Screen on the Green.”

The film series had to be canceled because the conservancy was unable to find a partner to produce the event after the management of Peachtree TV — its former sponsor — had changed. Turner Broadcasting System had provided the funding for the Peachtree TV sponsorship.

Peachtree TV had informed the conservancy in January that it would no longer produce the popular free open air film series, and the conservancy had been trying to find other

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta-based Newell Rubbermaid is establishing an endowed foundation, which should, over time, increase the company’s giving in the communities throughout the world where it has operations.

The company plans to endow the foundation with $25 million over the next five years, and the foundation eventually will become the company’s primary vehicle for charitable donations.

“It’s a way to make sure we can sustain and continue to contribute to the community,” said Mark Ketchum, Newell Rubbermaid’s president and CEO, after the company’s annual meeting Tuesday morning at its headquarters in Sandy Springs. “It certainly creates the potential in the long run for increased giving.”

By Maria Saporta

The Greater Seattle area could write the textbook on how to pass (and how not to pass) a regional transportation sales tax.

The story actually goes back to the late 1960s when Seattle voters turned down a referendum to build a rail transit system with a 20 percent local match for 80 percent federal funds.

Their loss was Atlanta’s gain. In 1971, Atlanta voters in Fulton and DeKalb counties passed the MARTA Act, and the federal dollars flowed to the Atlanta region.

By Maria Saporta

There are sustainable cities, and then there are sustainable cities.

Atlanta has been delighted to have increased its rank from being the 38th most sustainable city in the United States to No. 18 under the administration of our previous mayor, Shirley Franklin.

Now Mayor Kasim Reed would like to catapult Atlanta into the top 10.

But Atlanta will be competing against cities like Seattle, and that will be tough.

By Maria Saporta

Think of a region that’s working to build a new economy based on the life sciences, logistics, global health and information technology.

It easily could be the Atlanta region.

But it also is Greater Seattle with its relatively new “Prosperity Partnership” — a coalition of hundreds of business, nonprofits and governments trying to bolster its future economic base.

“The bringing together (of everyone) is a pretty significant political achievement,” said Lee Huntsman, executive director of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund. “The fact that we

By Maria Saporta

In the past decade, there has been growing acceptance in Seattle for greater density and urban growth boundaries, according to Dow Constantine, the executive of King County

Today, Seattle represents 31 percent of King County’s 1.9 million population. But King County also has 38 other municipalities. And about one-third of its land is unincorporated — thereby retaining its rural or agricultural quality.

Constantine said that in the 1990s there had been widespread disagreement over the establishment of urban growth boundaries — keeping urban development within city borders.

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta LINK delegation was predisposed to believe Seattle’s mayor was out of step with the community.

But when Mike McGinn shared his view of the world and his city at a dinner Wednesday night — and all of a sudden, it was a lot harder to make judgments on who was right or wrong.

In some ways, McGinn is an accidental mayor. He entered the civic arena as an environmentalist, a cyclist, an urban advocate.

By Maria Saporta

It’s called the “Seattle Process.”

It’s a process that painstakingly seeks to find areas of consensus on issues before tackling areas of disagreements and a process that tries to be inclusive before a decision is reached – even if it seems to take forever.

According to former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, the Seattle Process had a three-pronged framework that worked when he was in office from 1990 to 1998. Rice outlined the process during a panel discussion Wednesday in front of about 110 metro Atlanta leaders visiting Seattle on the organization’s 15th annual LINK trip.

By Maria Saporta

One of the biggest challenges facing the Greater Seattle region is “Seattle Nice.”

That’s what Phil Bussey, president of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce told a delegation of about 110 metro Atlanta leaders visiting the region on the annual LINK trip.

“We can not make a decision until everybody is happy,” Bussey said. “It took us 13 years to build a third runway.”

By Maria Saporta

The campaign team charged with getting the one-cent regional transportation sales tax passed in the summer of 2012 has been selected.

Imagine the transportation tax referendum as a candidate. About 70 Atlanta and Georgia organizations — known as the First Friday Transportation Forum — have hired professional consultants to make sure their candidate gets elected.

By Maria Saporta

The “Gang of Six” is the nation’s best hope to address its gargantuan budget deficit.

That is the opinion of Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who was one of the co-chair’s of the White House’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The other co-chair was Alan Simpson, a Republican and a former U.S. senator.

Bowles spoke at Monday’s Atlanta Rotary Club when he talked about the urgency for the United States to reduce its mounting debt. Bowles was in town to attend the Cousins Properties annual meeting that will