Thursday, January 24, 2008
Deepening Waters
Many of you will be aware that the Lakewood City Council has finally decided to confront the difficult question of what to do about public property that might or might not be used to improve access to the lakes. If you are unfamiliar with the question, my earlier column, while even yet more material on the subject, might be useful background at this point. And reader Travis Lauricella kindly made up a map of the sites awhile back.
The Lakewood parks board has been holding meetings to discuss what to do about the street ends that dead end into lakes. Right now, there is some vague language in official city documents that call for someday maybe somehow turning some of the sites into parks.
This council wants to let people know if particular street ends would never be suitable for parks, and whether any might be.
There are have been three public hearings and Wednesday was the fourth, focusing on several sites around Lake Steilacoom, Not surprisingly, there is a lot of stress at the meetings. Many people who live at or near the street ends have understandable visions of crowds showing up at their homes. You can tell from the edge in their voices that this whole process has unsettled a lot of neighbors. That’s never comfortable.
For example, one person who lives near a street end asked, ‘What if kids are down there drinking and screwing - what are you going to do about that?”
On the other hand, another citizen said he had biked to one of the locations during the daytime to read a book, and been driven away from public property by an adjacent landowner.
The recent meetings have tended to draw a majority of people who are critical of increasing public access, since they are understandably motivated by their passion for their privacy and property to show up. However, in some cases, people who live down the street did show up; and there were exchanges about people who wanted to protect their privacy and people who want to be able to walk to the lake.
As I have written earlier, there are lots of other questions. There’s the whole question about whether the city can even afford to do much improving, which makes this whole process a little worrisome. One option is to sell some of the lots, presumably to adjacent homeowners, to pay for improvements at others.
To try to be measurable about it, the current idea is to look at each property and rank it by number to see what sites may be suitable for changes. That's what the meeting took a stab at Wednesday night. There are 11 categories that include the width of the street end parcel, how much of the area is useable, how steep the lot is, and so forth. A impossibly steep and narrow lot with no potential parking and other problems would get 1 point of value for a lowest possible score of 11. But a site that would make a perfect park would be 5 points for each of the 11 categories, or a total of 55. It’s unlikely any of the lots would be 55 since most are narrow or have other problems.
As the meeting went on approaching the third hour, it became pretty clear that the scale was more subjective than some people might have wanted. Very naturally, people who lived near the street ends were eager to request that their land be ranked as a 1. They were able to do so easily in various categories that were quite subjective, such as “how easy would it be to provide security for the site?” Who could know that, now, except by educated guess influenced by the tone of the audience?
In fact, as the evening wore on, the ranking of each park changed as the meeting moved to each specific site counterclockwise. People got much better getting sites ranked with 1s. The first lot to be discussed by the group, on Westlake, got a ranking of 34; by the end of the evening, the last lot was ranked 14.
I'm going to get ahold of the numbers and try to pull out some of the more subjective categories, and let you know how the sites might rank.
The good news is that there will be a lot more discussion. Staff will prepare more reports about individual sites, and the parks board will have a big discussion about them on Feb. 26. No decisions will be made without more discussion. There will be articles in the city newsletter about any proposal or increased focus before the whole subject goes to the City Council.
As I told the audience last night, if we do pick out some parcels for consideration for improvements, the sites will become the most studied, walked on and discussed land in all Lakewood.
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The Lakewood parks board has been holding meetings to discuss what to do about the street ends that dead end into lakes. Right now, there is some vague language in official city documents that call for someday maybe somehow turning some of the sites into parks.
This council wants to let people know if particular street ends would never be suitable for parks, and whether any might be.
There are have been three public hearings and Wednesday was the fourth, focusing on several sites around Lake Steilacoom, Not surprisingly, there is a lot of stress at the meetings. Many people who live at or near the street ends have understandable visions of crowds showing up at their homes. You can tell from the edge in their voices that this whole process has unsettled a lot of neighbors. That’s never comfortable.
For example, one person who lives near a street end asked, ‘What if kids are down there drinking and screwing - what are you going to do about that?”
On the other hand, another citizen said he had biked to one of the locations during the daytime to read a book, and been driven away from public property by an adjacent landowner.
The recent meetings have tended to draw a majority of people who are critical of increasing public access, since they are understandably motivated by their passion for their privacy and property to show up. However, in some cases, people who live down the street did show up; and there were exchanges about people who wanted to protect their privacy and people who want to be able to walk to the lake.
As I have written earlier, there are lots of other questions. There’s the whole question about whether the city can even afford to do much improving, which makes this whole process a little worrisome. One option is to sell some of the lots, presumably to adjacent homeowners, to pay for improvements at others.
To try to be measurable about it, the current idea is to look at each property and rank it by number to see what sites may be suitable for changes. That's what the meeting took a stab at Wednesday night. There are 11 categories that include the width of the street end parcel, how much of the area is useable, how steep the lot is, and so forth. A impossibly steep and narrow lot with no potential parking and other problems would get 1 point of value for a lowest possible score of 11. But a site that would make a perfect park would be 5 points for each of the 11 categories, or a total of 55. It’s unlikely any of the lots would be 55 since most are narrow or have other problems.
As the meeting went on approaching the third hour, it became pretty clear that the scale was more subjective than some people might have wanted. Very naturally, people who lived near the street ends were eager to request that their land be ranked as a 1. They were able to do so easily in various categories that were quite subjective, such as “how easy would it be to provide security for the site?” Who could know that, now, except by educated guess influenced by the tone of the audience?
In fact, as the evening wore on, the ranking of each park changed as the meeting moved to each specific site counterclockwise. People got much better getting sites ranked with 1s. The first lot to be discussed by the group, on Westlake, got a ranking of 34; by the end of the evening, the last lot was ranked 14.
I'm going to get ahold of the numbers and try to pull out some of the more subjective categories, and let you know how the sites might rank.
The good news is that there will be a lot more discussion. Staff will prepare more reports about individual sites, and the parks board will have a big discussion about them on Feb. 26. No decisions will be made without more discussion. There will be articles in the city newsletter about any proposal or increased focus before the whole subject goes to the City Council.
As I told the audience last night, if we do pick out some parcels for consideration for improvements, the sites will become the most studied, walked on and discussed land in all Lakewood.
