Monday, May 05, 2008
Updates: Pac Highway, County Exec, and an Upcoming Lakewood United Meeting about the Gambling Initiative
Greetings. This past weekend was about the first weekend since I felt really whole after I got what they vaguely describe as 'walking pneumonia" back in February. It was great to be out and about. We certainly fell behind in this blog, so let's do some catching up:
PACIFIC HIGHWAY: Tonight's Lakewood City Council meeting at 7 p.m. *may* be when the council makes the decision on alignment and the width of Pacific Highway between Bridgeport and Ponders. The overall goal is to reshape the road and widen some lots to allow for bigger and more varied businesses than what's there now.
You can read about the novel idea of changing the road to three lanes, based on a successful road in Fife, at this original posting, and then the update from the time we commissioned design studies is at this link.
We've since looked at designs that show a real attractive three-lane road on Pacific Highway, and larger lots on probably the railroad side to allow for more businesses and the creation of new jobs. I'm not entirely sure if we will make the final decision tonight or not.
COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Here's just one of many updates you will read this year about the election for Pierce County Executive: candidate Shawn Bunney's thoughts about economic development. As I have written before, even though Lakewood has its own locally elected government, the race for who will lead Pierce County government will be crucial. Pierce County government can make life easy or hard for us. And the way Pierce County government is set up, the county executive is pretty much like an emperor. So the post is crucial. The election this year will be crucial.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of three reasons that the Pierce County government can help or hinder Lakewood. And these only involve one important, but unglamorous part of county government, the sewer system:
1. Ask a developer about doing business in Lakewood, and you will often hear a lot about the sewer permitting system, which is controlled entirely by the county. How the county permitting system works with the city is crucial to economic development.
2. If we want to put more bathrooms in Fort Steilacoom Park, or something like a farmer's market in one of the barns, we will need to run a sewer line into the park. The county decides how much it charges for hooking up sewers, and the last cost estimate I heard was pretty large. It would be awful if the county charges too much for something that would be of such regional benefit; the new county executive will presumably have a say in such things.
3. And finally, construction will begin on a sewer line to Tillicum that will dramatically change that area. As you can already tell, county government runs the sewer system, and we need to hope its folks will continue to cooperate with Lakewood on what's sure to be a very, very complicated project.
I plan to work on questions that you might to ask a county executive candidate. You will probably meet several of them, as the race is sure to be a dogfight. Here's just one recent update on the race from The News Tribune. More to come.
GAMING UPDATE: The nonpartisan and always informative group Lakewood United will host a forum at 7 a.m. on Thursday, May 15, at Burs, during one of its regular sessions on the proposed gaming initiative. Former City Councilman John Arbeeny will be speaking on behalf of the initiative to ban minicasinos; yours truly will be speaking against it. A minicasino manager was scheduled to come in case there were questions about gaming itself, but he had to cancel. So I have a message into Lakewood United about whether they want to find someone from that industry to come speak or not. I plan to speak more about the importance of limiting government, as I am no expert on gambling; so it would be good to have someone there in case questions come up about minicasinos themselves. So I'll let you know how that turns out.
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PACIFIC HIGHWAY: Tonight's Lakewood City Council meeting at 7 p.m. *may* be when the council makes the decision on alignment and the width of Pacific Highway between Bridgeport and Ponders. The overall goal is to reshape the road and widen some lots to allow for bigger and more varied businesses than what's there now.
You can read about the novel idea of changing the road to three lanes, based on a successful road in Fife, at this original posting, and then the update from the time we commissioned design studies is at this link.
We've since looked at designs that show a real attractive three-lane road on Pacific Highway, and larger lots on probably the railroad side to allow for more businesses and the creation of new jobs. I'm not entirely sure if we will make the final decision tonight or not.
COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Here's just one of many updates you will read this year about the election for Pierce County Executive: candidate Shawn Bunney's thoughts about economic development. As I have written before, even though Lakewood has its own locally elected government, the race for who will lead Pierce County government will be crucial. Pierce County government can make life easy or hard for us. And the way Pierce County government is set up, the county executive is pretty much like an emperor. So the post is crucial. The election this year will be crucial.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of three reasons that the Pierce County government can help or hinder Lakewood. And these only involve one important, but unglamorous part of county government, the sewer system:
1. Ask a developer about doing business in Lakewood, and you will often hear a lot about the sewer permitting system, which is controlled entirely by the county. How the county permitting system works with the city is crucial to economic development.
2. If we want to put more bathrooms in Fort Steilacoom Park, or something like a farmer's market in one of the barns, we will need to run a sewer line into the park. The county decides how much it charges for hooking up sewers, and the last cost estimate I heard was pretty large. It would be awful if the county charges too much for something that would be of such regional benefit; the new county executive will presumably have a say in such things.
3. And finally, construction will begin on a sewer line to Tillicum that will dramatically change that area. As you can already tell, county government runs the sewer system, and we need to hope its folks will continue to cooperate with Lakewood on what's sure to be a very, very complicated project.
I plan to work on questions that you might to ask a county executive candidate. You will probably meet several of them, as the race is sure to be a dogfight. Here's just one recent update on the race from The News Tribune. More to come.
GAMING UPDATE: The nonpartisan and always informative group Lakewood United will host a forum at 7 a.m. on Thursday, May 15, at Burs, during one of its regular sessions on the proposed gaming initiative. Former City Councilman John Arbeeny will be speaking on behalf of the initiative to ban minicasinos; yours truly will be speaking against it. A minicasino manager was scheduled to come in case there were questions about gaming itself, but he had to cancel. So I have a message into Lakewood United about whether they want to find someone from that industry to come speak or not. I plan to speak more about the importance of limiting government, as I am no expert on gambling; so it would be good to have someone there in case questions come up about minicasinos themselves. So I'll let you know how that turns out.
