City Council, Seemed Like the Good Old Days

Went to the city council meeting this week. It brought back some fond memories. Name calling, threats, complaints; and this was before the meeting started!

This would have been pretty much the standard meeting before Mr. Johnson became mayor. It tells us that while things aren’t perfect, Neil deserves another term.

Much of the angst focused on the Transportation Plan and street (186th) changes should an apartment development happen. In short, a quiet street possibly becomes a main drag and gets widened.

As I understand, this involves the land behind the library and KinderCare. There’s really just one way in or out of the parcel. It seems the issue is between those that have lived there for years and like the street “as is,” and those that want to develop land that they own. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that people can, within the law, pretty much do what they want with their land.

Sitting in the audience, it was clear that many people had just found out about the Transportation Plan and felt blindsided. Many complaints included “The city didn’t tell us” as part of the complaint. So what responsibility does the city have to tell people about things? Hold that thought.

My personal experience, with being blindsided, goes back ten years. I was at the Annex when a staff person asked me if I was going to the council meeting that night. That was when I learned that the city was planning to open one of our streets to create a cut through to the Panorama “Street of Dreams.” Whoops. The intent seemed to have been to have traffic drive through Sky Island rather than the more roundabout Angeline. The allure appeared to be having a short route through a nice development compared to a poorer road through a less developed area.

Legally what is the city supposed to do about telling people? I know it’s not sending someone to knock on doors and speak to the people. Generally the process has involved publishing the information and sending letters to the houses involved. The latter, I’ve been told, is above what’s required.

What does the city do?

* Publishes notices in the paper (Courier Herald)

* Has hard copy material at the City Hall and Bonney Lake Library

* Posts the City Council Agenda AND the council packet on its website. The last has all the material that the councilmembers use to make their decisions.

* Has posted the emails for each city councilmember. You can ask them question and offer advice.

* provides a weekly letter from the mayor with updates on what the government is doing.
* Will let you sign up for emails of public notices. 

As I’ve said, they do mail letters to those whose properties are affected by legislation. Listening to the complaints, I heard a “600 foot” limit mentioned (one person said she didn’t get a letter as her property was two feet past the limit.) and that the letters don’t always get there (or aren’t read) 

The issue with all of this published information is that one has to read a good deal of “stuff” and understand it. This week’s packet was 136 pages. Page 15 had information on 186th street and page 26 had “Map 9” with the possible changes to 186th. That’s all I found. Much of the information is in “legalese” as required by law. It’s a hard read. 

Should the plan progress, there would need to be designs, likely an open house, and public hearings. It’s not something that would be done behind a homeowners back. However, you have to be watchful. 

The lesson here is that one can’t sit and have someone come to tell you things. You need to seek things out and then need to be involved. Being involved means speaking to your neighbors and committing time and effort. In the case I mentioned, the neighborhood organized and 57 of us showed up at the next council meeting. That stopped the cut through. 

Get involved, sign up to get information, read and be informed.