Sunday, December 09, 2007
More than water is murky about the lakes
Lots of people have been working on the question about what to do, if anything, with publicly owned street ends and other city properties that dead-end at the edge of a lake. I wanted to give you an update.
At the Nov. 27 meeting of the parks and recreation board, staff and volunteers put up different slides showing property lines and photographs for 14 different city-owned properties. Many individuals among a large audience discussed each street end, sometimes to enormous detail. It took about three hours to go through the slides and some interesting discussions. And while that sounds like a lot of time, most of us felt when the meeting was over that we had just skimmed the surface.
The staff put the PowerPoint presentation in PDF form on the city's web site. It's worth looking at if you are interested in this topic. One caveat: the information is preliminary because the process is just starting. If you see a building jutting into the street end, it doesn't mean someone built a structure into public property; it might mean the lines are wrong on the map. We heard at the meeting about a couple examples of this.
There's a separate file you can look at which has measurements and elevations for each of the sites. The same caveat applies. The idea of the measurements was to provide a starting point for discussion, not a detailed blueprint.
As you might imagine, lots of people were squirming during the meeting. These would be the folks who own homes next to those street ends - or their immediate neighbors. I don't blame them. Some people imagine lake access as being a picnic table where a couple could hold hands and watch the sunset. Some people imagine lake access as a small spot where someone might quietly slip a kayak into the water. But other people will imagine lake access as a place where gangsters can gather at night to drink and shoot into the air.
Obviously, nobody is particularly in favor of that last option. But you can’t necessarily blame people who have lived in quiet areas for decades for assuming the worst, particularly in the absence of solid information.
The question now is, will people listen to each other? Will the people who want lake access understand the concerns of neighbors who have lived in quiet and isolation for as long as decades? Will the people who live at or near street ends understand that the lakes belong to every one of us, and that makes the need for access worth some change?
And then there’s a whole question of cost. There are a lot of poor children in Lakewood who don’t live within walking distance of, for example, Fort Steilacoom Park or Lake Steilacoom. These children need parks and recreation too. You could argue that a lot of the kids who live near Fort Steilacoom Park have access to more recreational opportunities because they have more access to transportation options than kids who live in some other parts of town and whose parents don’t own a car.
In fact, after the meeting, I walked from the room wondering what would have happened if we had spent those three hours talking about a very different subject: ways to bring more poor kids in touch with parks.
But that’s sort of another subject. I should have said at the outset that the next meeting to discuss lake access will be 6 p.m. this Tuesday, Dec. 11, in the council chambers at City Hall. I will have to miss this meeting for another obligation, so if you go, feel free to let me know what you thought. Another meeting just about Lake Steilacoom, where the larger share of street ends is located, will be held in January. And it will take some time for recommendations to get to the council. You can get an overview of the process at this site.
As you might imagine, I took a lot of notes during a three-hour meeting with dozens of citizens present. I was going to share some notes about each of the 14 properties, but this post is already long. I’ll be sure to do that at some point. One thing I found interesting is that many of the street ends are much narrower than one might think by what we've all heard so far. For example, the two properties on Gravelly Lake are each only 25 feet wide. Both involve a steep climb to the lake that would make a mockery of any handicapped accessibility requirements.
So many of us at the meeting, including at least one proponent of widespread lake access, were mentally crossing those properties off our list for much further consideration. But that itself makes for an interesting question. Gravelly Lake is widely known as 'the place where the rich folks live.' Is it fair to consider expanded lake access at, say, Lake Louise and Steilacoom Lake just because by historical accident they have wider street ends than Gravelly Lake? I’m having trouble putting into words why this concept bothers me, but it does bother me.
I should quickly note that this is not the final word on the subject; future meetings may involve some brainstorming that might come up with possibilities even for the many narrow properties among the 14. I don't mean to close anything off, just to let you know what some folks might have been thinking during the meeting.
There is a lot to this subject. I’m just glad we all finally summoned the fortitude to consider these questions, instead of pretending as most of us have for many years that the street ends did not even exist. That's one good thing you can say about the current Lakewood City Council. I'm glad we are approaching this proactively rather than waiting for someone to float an initiative that might send people into a panic.
We owe everyone - whether they want more lake access or want no changes at all - the chance to explore these questions together as a community. We owe it to ourselves to come up with some answers.
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At the Nov. 27 meeting of the parks and recreation board, staff and volunteers put up different slides showing property lines and photographs for 14 different city-owned properties. Many individuals among a large audience discussed each street end, sometimes to enormous detail. It took about three hours to go through the slides and some interesting discussions. And while that sounds like a lot of time, most of us felt when the meeting was over that we had just skimmed the surface.
The staff put the PowerPoint presentation in PDF form on the city's web site. It's worth looking at if you are interested in this topic. One caveat: the information is preliminary because the process is just starting. If you see a building jutting into the street end, it doesn't mean someone built a structure into public property; it might mean the lines are wrong on the map. We heard at the meeting about a couple examples of this.
There's a separate file you can look at which has measurements and elevations for each of the sites. The same caveat applies. The idea of the measurements was to provide a starting point for discussion, not a detailed blueprint.
As you might imagine, lots of people were squirming during the meeting. These would be the folks who own homes next to those street ends - or their immediate neighbors. I don't blame them. Some people imagine lake access as being a picnic table where a couple could hold hands and watch the sunset. Some people imagine lake access as a small spot where someone might quietly slip a kayak into the water. But other people will imagine lake access as a place where gangsters can gather at night to drink and shoot into the air.
Obviously, nobody is particularly in favor of that last option. But you can’t necessarily blame people who have lived in quiet areas for decades for assuming the worst, particularly in the absence of solid information.
The question now is, will people listen to each other? Will the people who want lake access understand the concerns of neighbors who have lived in quiet and isolation for as long as decades? Will the people who live at or near street ends understand that the lakes belong to every one of us, and that makes the need for access worth some change?
And then there’s a whole question of cost. There are a lot of poor children in Lakewood who don’t live within walking distance of, for example, Fort Steilacoom Park or Lake Steilacoom. These children need parks and recreation too. You could argue that a lot of the kids who live near Fort Steilacoom Park have access to more recreational opportunities because they have more access to transportation options than kids who live in some other parts of town and whose parents don’t own a car.
In fact, after the meeting, I walked from the room wondering what would have happened if we had spent those three hours talking about a very different subject: ways to bring more poor kids in touch with parks.
But that’s sort of another subject. I should have said at the outset that the next meeting to discuss lake access will be 6 p.m. this Tuesday, Dec. 11, in the council chambers at City Hall. I will have to miss this meeting for another obligation, so if you go, feel free to let me know what you thought. Another meeting just about Lake Steilacoom, where the larger share of street ends is located, will be held in January. And it will take some time for recommendations to get to the council. You can get an overview of the process at this site.
As you might imagine, I took a lot of notes during a three-hour meeting with dozens of citizens present. I was going to share some notes about each of the 14 properties, but this post is already long. I’ll be sure to do that at some point. One thing I found interesting is that many of the street ends are much narrower than one might think by what we've all heard so far. For example, the two properties on Gravelly Lake are each only 25 feet wide. Both involve a steep climb to the lake that would make a mockery of any handicapped accessibility requirements.
So many of us at the meeting, including at least one proponent of widespread lake access, were mentally crossing those properties off our list for much further consideration. But that itself makes for an interesting question. Gravelly Lake is widely known as 'the place where the rich folks live.' Is it fair to consider expanded lake access at, say, Lake Louise and Steilacoom Lake just because by historical accident they have wider street ends than Gravelly Lake? I’m having trouble putting into words why this concept bothers me, but it does bother me.
I should quickly note that this is not the final word on the subject; future meetings may involve some brainstorming that might come up with possibilities even for the many narrow properties among the 14. I don't mean to close anything off, just to let you know what some folks might have been thinking during the meeting.
There is a lot to this subject. I’m just glad we all finally summoned the fortitude to consider these questions, instead of pretending as most of us have for many years that the street ends did not even exist. That's one good thing you can say about the current Lakewood City Council. I'm glad we are approaching this proactively rather than waiting for someone to float an initiative that might send people into a panic.
We owe everyone - whether they want more lake access or want no changes at all - the chance to explore these questions together as a community. We owe it to ourselves to come up with some answers.
