Neary-Sighted

After you read the post below about lake access, check out this handy map. (Give it a little time to load - first you see a U.S. map before the local map). It comes courtesy of Travis Lauricella, who hunted down the locations after reading the earlier post.

The map is only there to suggest the breadth of what will be a lengthy community discussion. For Heaven's sake, don't plan a company picnic at one of these street ends. There is still much to be discussed about their legal status. You can expect lakefront property owners to argue that just because a street dives into the lake does not mean you can turn the area into a mini-park.

Hopefully, we'll settle the matter over the next several months. Meantime, if someone who has never seen a stranger on these grounds runs you off with a pitchfork, don't blame me.
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Today's happy news is of interest to the regular readers who tell me that you fondly remember the Lakewood Journal. Former Ace Reporter and then Ace Editor Steve Dunkelberger and his wife, Amy, welcomed Peter James Benjamin Dunkelberger last Sunday at Tacoma General.

Peter arrived at 20 inches long and 7 pounds even. Peter gets his name from Amy's brother and Steve's brother and grandfather.

Steve says everyone is doing well, including mom and big sister and baby. That's happy news. If you want to send Steve a note, try Stevedunkel@mail.com
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Is lake access worth the grief it will cause?
The council decided tonight to launch into what could be a devisive issue. But for too long, we have pretended the issue did not exist . For years, the city's official documents have said that someday the city might develop mini-parks at several places where streets dead-end into lakes.
To me, this is like a sword hanging over the head of the people who live at these street ends. Those folks are understandably worried who may gather at those street ends.
But at the same time, you and I own the streets that dead-end into the lakes. Legally, we should have access to the lakes there. But are we interested enough to want to infringe on the tranquility of our neighbors?
Well, now we'll know. The council authorized staff to survey people who live around the lakes - and people who do not live on the lakes - to see what they think. Stay tuned for more information. There will also be further discussions about whether ownership would even allow active public access.
I should note that not everyone knows where these lanes are, so here's the list: On Lake Steilacoom, Westlake, Mt Tacoma Drive and West Shore Drive, Beach Lane SW, Lake Ave., 100th St Sw (off Meadow) and Holly Hedge Lane. On American Lake, Lake City Blvd and Wadsworth Street. On Gravelly Lake, Hilltop Lane and Linwood Lane. And there are a couple on Lake Louise that are not easily described - one by 104th St SW and Melody Lane and the other several driveways south of 104th on Lake Louise Lane.

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The Lakewood City Council will meet almost every Monday and Wednesday night in October to discuss the groundwork for a two-year city budget. This is where the council's real work for 2006 will be done. The budget will represent this council's best guess on what should happen spending-wise in 2007 and 2008. That means police and public safety ... and parks, and roads, and more.

Before we all dive in together, I wanted to offer a thoughtful column that appeared in the Spokane Journal of Business. It's worth reading to set a tone for what will follow in Lakewood in October. You won't hear any talk of tax increases here. But the column otherwise sets the stage for an understanding of how municipal budgets work these days.

What you will see between now and Oct. 4 will be a flurry of activity to try to 'clear the decks' before the budget workshops consume the rest of October. I'll keep in touch.
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This week's paper brought very sad news about a pioneer of local history. The only guy I know of who conducted professional archaeological excavations in Lakewood, Pierce College Professor Michael Avey, died on Sept. 16. Mike's work is very important to anyone who wants to understand Native American and pioneer history in Lakewood, as well as the early history of Western State Hospital. My deepest sympathies to his family and close friends.

In one of his reports of excavations on the grounds of Western State, he wrote:

"For my part, I should know better than to work 14 hour days for little or no pay, but I'm insane, so I have an excuse. However, we did it, and we're proud of it."

Any of us who volunteer or who work on the grounds of WSH will get the joke. And anyone who wants desperately to share our heritage with the young people of today - and the young people yet to be born - knows his passion. Lakewood is so much richer for having known Mike Avey. How incredbly cruel to lose him just a few weeks before the Lakewood museum opens.

You can read more about the rest of Mike Avey here (and with all due respect to the other folks listed in that link)
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The city of Lakewood is blessed with an army of volunteers who serve the city in many ways. The newest city advisory board will be an arts commission. We hope to get lots of applicants: for more information about the group, click here.

One thing that worries me is that the council has already loaded two hot potatoes on this group even though it has not been formed yet: the design of a public art project at the new rail station, and the design of an entryway to town that Wal-Mart will pay for. These subjects are likely to be very controversial as interest groups have already formed in many directions. So we welcome artists and people who love art and culture to the commission, but I'll just tell you candidly that they will be better off if they have thick skin.

Incidentally, speaking of culture, the city of Lakewood's landmarks board is also seeking volunteers.
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The Lakewood Historical Society Museum will open Saturday, Oct. 14. We're all very excited about this storefront museum, which will be the society's home until a permanent site is developed. This will be a place where we can gather photographs, documents, other items and, most importantly, gather the people who care about preserving and interpreting our heritage.

I myself expect to be there scanning in copies of all the photographs various people have offered the society!

The storefront is located in the Colonial Center, across the street from Columbia Bank, at 6211 Mount Tacoma Drive SW. For now, the museum will be open noon to 4 on Fridays and Saturdays.

The society is also celebrating the opening of the new LHS Web site. If you have any comments about the site, let me know and I will pass them along to the designers.

We are now eagerly recruiting volunteers who will greet visitors at the new museum. Training will be provided. This would be a fun way to meet and gather with other people who care about history and heritage.

We're also looking for someone who can help us manage the new museum store. It would be great if the person has retail experience, but mostly it needs to be someone good with numbers.

If you are interested, please shoot me a note at wtneary@hotmail.com
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Can you help me get the word to people with loved ones in the military?

<i>The offer below is good for the life of The Puyallup Fair, which runs
through Sept. 24. If there is one thing we have in Lakewood, it's people
who support the military. That's why I am coming to you. Please feel
free to tell anyone who might have a soldier overseas about this offer
(and the offer also goes for soldiers and airmen and women here who
might want to send a message back home)"</i>

Comcast welcomes members of the military and their loved ones to record
a free video mail from the Comcast booth at The Puyallup Fair this year.
Video mail can be sent to anyone with an email address and a reasonably
modern computer. There's no big file that the recipient has to worry
about; the recipient simply receives an email with a link that allows
them to view up to three minutes of video.

The offer is for both members of the military stationed here who would
like to communicate with relatives back home, as well as loved ones who
would like to communicate with a member of the military who is serving
outside the region.

The Comcast booth is located through "Door C North" inside the SHOWPLEX.
The fair is open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m.
to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 24. For more
information about the fair, see http://www.thefair.com

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There's a thoughtful editorial in today's News Tribune about the land use issue in my Sept. 11 posting and the right of citizens to protect property within their city's limits. I posted a quick reaction on the new blog of the editorial writers. I'll share that comment here because in all the fuss, the people we should most be worried about could be forgotten:

"I'm not sure if you welcome comments after editorials are written, but speaking as an individual member of the Lakewood City Council, I appreciated the breadth of your editorial. The underlying issue is whether a city's residents have a say in how the state uses land inside city boundaries.

"There are separate issues about Progress House specifically. I give tours at a museum on the grounds of Western State Hospital. I have met many of the mentally ill clients, and many of the family members who are visiting or accompanying them. Many times these family members include children, who often reflect the stress that the grown-ups around them are under. All three groups - the mentally ill, their family members, and the kids - deserve and need our support.

"It is monstrous that state government wants to expose these vulnerable people to rapists and robbers. You could only cook up such a plan inside the protected castles of Olympia."
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Last night, a subcommittee of the Lakewood City Council met to discuss what some folks might consider simply housekeeping. However, it was an important evening for a number of reasons. The subcommittee, appointed by the mayor to examine council rules, was chaired by Deputy Mayor John Arbeeny and included myself and Councilwoman Helen McGovern.

- This is the first time I am aware of that a committee of the Lakewood council that consisted of less than a majority has met in public session. We had an audience - OK, the crowd crested at three people - but it was a meeting open to the public. I take credit for this because I believe all council committees should be open to the public whether or not a quorum is present. I think the law is pretty clear on that, though you can argue otherwise.

When I presented the question to the council, the mayor took a poll: John and Ron Cronk said the meeting should not be public; Pad Finnigan said it should be up to the participants; and the other folks pretty much just nodded OK with a public meeting. OK, so it's not a crescendo of enthusiasm; but this still sets an important precedent. If I run for re-election next year, the formation of council committees will be very, very important(unless we come to our senses as a group and form committees before then). There's no question that public policy in Lakewood suffers because our council does not spend enough time in the right ways. We need committees to delve into public safety, to the city budget and taxes, and more.

But it never occurred to me that these committees should meet in secret. It would be monstrous if I ran for re-election on a platform calling for committees only to see them turn into secret tribunals. So I am grateful the council majority went along with this precedent-setting public meeting.

Now, as to content. The committee made some recommendations, sometimes unanimously, sometimes not. These recommendations will go before the full council and will be subject to further discussion:

- Public comment at council meetings would be limited to three minutes. There could be some limited circumstances where a legitimate group might have 10 minutes to discuss a specific item on the agenda; but stay tuned as we try to work out this detail. We have received a lot of feedback that the current system even goes so far as to repulse people from attending meetings (some of you might remember my online poll on this subject)

- We will consider ways to set up a system where another council member or a member of the public can report that he or she thinks a council member might have either a financial conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest. The potential conflict of interest would then be investigated, and a procedure developed to determine what the council member and the council might do depending on the findings.

Unlike many other cities, we have no formal method of screening such questions. We need it. It's better to set up a protocol for this before we get into a full crisis. Some of you may recall that my online survey asked people about this question as well. Two-thirds of the 115 respondents said they would not know what to do if they thought someone had a conflict of interest. We need a standardized procedure to discuss these questions in a non-sensationalized way.

- We also had discussion about how to make sure that the council does not inadvertently 'meet' outside of the public eye through email. It is chillingly easy to cc council members on an email and have the sorts of discussions that should, by law and by right, only take place in a place where you can see and hear those discussions. I can assure you that after a couple of bad moves a year or two ago, such email discussions only take place rarely now and are usually caught within one or two emails. But any such email discussions are inappropriate, and very possibly illegal, and the committee suggested ways to avoid them.

I'll keep you posted as these and other issues move through the process; as always, I welcome your thoughts.
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Tonight, the Lakewood City Council by 7-0 vote approved new rules for land within ‘public institutional’ zoning and for large group homes. One side effect of the rules is to create requirements for the state to put a prison in Lakewood, though there are many other reasons for these changes.

The changes, among other things, make it possible for the city to conduct extensive review of proposals that would make big changes in public lands within our city. The changes include strict rules for group homes (and yes, one form of Group Home is Progress House, the work-release prison that the state wants to put on the grounds of Western State Hospital). One rule for large group homes is that they would have to be 1,000 feet from schools, day cares or public parks. This would mean that Progress House could not be located on Western State because it is across the street from a park.

Now, this is only the latest step in a long regulatory saga. State government wields great power and, sadly, has no reason to care about the mentally ill, their families, or the people or laws of Lakewood. If state government challenges our rules as expected, the first stop in making a decision about whether these rules are appropriate will be … you guessed it … a state agency: the Central Puget Sound Growth Management Control Board. http://www.gmhb.wa.gov/central/index.html

There is a real risk, based on past judgements, that the board might say that Lakewood as a city has no right to protect schoolkids and the vulnerable mentally ill from rapists and robbers. But the makeup of the board has changed a bit since the last ruling – I see Gov. Gregoire has an appointee on there now – so we’ll have to see. Maybe they will come down in favor of public safety.

Once again, it is important to know that despite all the speeches and what you are likely to read in the paper, Progess House is no further away, and no closer either. If the board does rule against the people of Lakewood, the next likely stop after that will be court.

All in all, it comes down to the old truism in government: whatever happens, the lawyers get busier.

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Two documents were in the weekend City Council packet that might be worth a look if you'd like detailed info about Lakewood taxes and the economy.Both documents are in an annual report that is prepared for financial reporting purposes.

First, here's a breakdown of who collects what from your property taxes in Lakewood. It's worth noting - because I think a lot of folks miss this point - that the city is responsible for 10.5 percent of your property tax bill.

There's also a comparison of what you would pay if you lived within unincorporated Pierce County.

http://walterneary.net/documents/PropertyTaxBill06.pdf

(The report is on oatmeal-colored paper; I apologize for the quality of my scan)

Second, the Certified Annual Financial Report contains some interesting reflections on economic development within Lakewood. It can update you about both specifics and general philosophy.

http://walterneary.net/documents/LakewoodCAFR06.pdf

Tonight's council meeting will likely include long discussions about two important issues: our first contract with the police department union (you'll recall we previously contracted with the sheriff for police protection), and land use proposals that could affect plans to put a prison on the grounds of Western State Hospital. Stay tuned.
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There's a misleading letter to the editor in The News Tribune, so here's the rest of the story.

The letter is at http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/letters/story/6072890p-5326129c.html#

As a volunteer at Fort Steilacoom, I helped coordinate volunteers who collected admissions at the 'main gate' of the re-enactment. It was only within the last year or two that we started to hear that security was the reason the Civil War Association did not have re-enactments at the park. At the time they canceled, a couple years ago, we were told the big problem was the Fort Steilacoom Park is so porous. Unlike so many other re-enactment sites, you can't put a fence around it and guarantee that everyone paid admission. Thus, the Civil War Assn. was losing money.

To put it another way, a lot of people were taking the many other entrances - Angle Lane, Pierce College, etc... - to avoid paying the entry fee. Frankly, gang, I don't blame the Civil War folks for being angry and disappointed by that.

When I did hear that security was an issue, I offered to mediate a session with our police department to discuss security in the park during a re-enactment. That offer still stands.

I should also quickly note that the letter makes it sound like there is something wrong with police telling people to stay out of the park after dark. Well, the park is closed after dark. So I would think sensible people would indeed stay out of a park that's closed. If people had stayed out of the park after dark, the so-called Juggalo attacks would not have taken place. So I guess some people are going to enter a park when it is closed. I sure would not write a letter to the editor that makes stupidity sound appropriate.

If somebody wants to keep Fort Steilacoom Park open after dark, with the costs of floodlighting and night security etc..., I know I for one will want to hear a lot of good reasons.
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The company that closed The Lakewood and UP Journals is based on Bainbridge Island, so you can imagine what I think of the place. But I have decided to change my way of thinking. There's a great resource on Bainbridge, and I will no longer let one bad experience affect my view of an entire community.

Comcast will be sponsoring the free entry program at the Kids Discovery Museum on Bainbridge. One thing that really impressed me about this place is their commitment to education before profits. Sure, they are distributing thousands of free tickets to places where you would expect to find disadvantaged parents. But they also keep these free passes at their front counter. If you can't afford it, you don't have to pay. That's just cool.

So obviously that is an opportunity to bear in mind if you know of any local family that might enjoy the outing (and, of course, can get to Bainbridge). If they can afford entry, great, as the museum needs support for a planned expansion into Bremerton. If the family can't afford it, Comcast and the museum will help them out with those free passes. You can learn more about the museum at http://www.kidimu.org/discover.htm and http://www1.kitsapsun.com/bsun/features/article/0,2403,BSUN_19080_4859161,00.html

Oh, and be sure to check out the Lakewood chuckle of the day at http://www.thesubtimes.com/2006/08/letter_a_sign_o.html
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