Neary-Sighted

My regular readers, both of you, will know that the Lakewood City Council held a two-day retreat late last week. I actually had my laptop up and running most of the two days, but frankly, as an old newspaperman, even I could not identify a bunch of news to share in any sort of post-it-now-on-the-Internet sort of breathless way.

At the end of the day, the summary sounds strange to write. But here’s the news: The Lakewood City Council was united in deciding that we are in favor of what we are already doing. And if you follow Lakewood politics, that was not a given.

For those of you with an interest in politics, these were the keywords the council agreed on as a vision for the community:

Military
Diversity
Cultural
Safety
Good schools
Jobs
Recreation
Economic
Neighborhoods
Partnerships
Family
History
Activities

Frankly, you would have trouble getting anyone to disagree with any or many of those. So maybe it’s not meaningful except nobody put up the words ‘growth moratorium’ or many of the other words heard in various cities these days.

Here’s the meat of the matter. These are the priorities for the city, as recommended by the council:

The most votes:
Develop infrastructure of Tillicum, American Lake Gardens, Pacific Highway
Better prevention and intervention and suppression of crime

Nearly as many votes:
Neighborhood leaders/revitalization of neighborhoods
Work plan for ongoing capital projects
(Protect the bases future)
Validate vision through goal-setting through community vision process

And these each had two votes:
Cultural development
Take leadership role in creating relationships such as those with the school district
Performance audits

So what did the retreat accomplish? I think what it accomplished was exposing that our council, so bitterly divided at times, basically agrees on the big issues facing the city. And there are no strong proposals to move things in a radically different direction.

Instead, what we discussed was how to do what we are doing, but better. For example, nothing is as important as getting Tillicum and American Lake Gardens right. If we do them right, in partnership with private owners, these neighborhoods will be productive places to work and good places to live. If we squander this opportunity, the city will continue to pour tax dollars into patchwork solutions to problems.

So maybe the word ‘retreat’ was the wrong word. Maybe the word is ‘progress.’
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