Neighborhood plans have no teeth
Neighborhood plans have no teeth
Did you know there are three public hearings this evening at the council meeting? The Herald had a big to-do article about banning Segways from sidewalks in Sunday’s paper - about as trivial an
Did you know there are three public hearings this evening at the council meeting? The Herald had a big to-do article about banning Segways from sidewalks in Sunday's paper - about as trivial an issue as exists. But nary a word about the hearings and many other very important decisions the council will deal with this evening - like the 2008 budget. Back we go to the old days.
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A regular reader has sent this comment. For personal reasons, they prefer to remain anon. They are known to me. They are responding to the Nov.15 post.
Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that neighborhood plans have any significance and the problem is merely a matter of process.
That boat sailed three years ago when the city extracted all regulatory power from the neighborhood plans under the guise of centralizing and unifying the codes and standards for the city. The bottom line is, neighborhood plans have no teeth, no way to ensure their recommendations (sadly, that's all they are) will ever be followed, much less enforced. For twenty-three city groups to get all worked up over some "vision" for the look and feel of their neighborhood is simply sad. At best the neighborhood planning meetings are a social feel-good exercise, at worst a useless waste of everyone's precious time.
It's just another political maneuver designed to keep large groups of people busy and distracted while city planning is carried out by the select few who have any actual legal standing. - Jaded
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And my response is that I agree . Former mayor Mark and his attorney friend, whom he made city planner for a few years, spent their time gutting all power from the neighborhood residents. Why? Again - because Happy Valley had beat city hall and implemented a neighborhood plan that the neighbors wanted - and not the one that city hall and Western Washington University wanted Happy Valley to have. Other neighborhood leaders were interested in how we had done it - and Mark was not going to have any of that citizens-in-control stuff.
City Council went along with this like sheep. Yes, and none of those who were skeptical spoke up in any sort of voice that could be heard. All seven were willing to go along in gutting the ability of neighborhoods to control their own plans.
Three issues dominated the city election campaign - with neighborhood planning being one of them. We wait and hope that newly elected mayor Dan Pike will take decisive action to correct this and many ills that our city planning process has been dealing with these past few years. We do not have planning just now - we have food fights. We have a dysfunctional planning process.
So - yes - the reader has a point and suggests I and all of us are still dealing with an illusion when it comes to planning.
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By the way - this website will soon have a comment process. But it is being designed to have intelligent comment - not trash talk. I realized two years ago it was time but the key was a design that truly allowed community dialog.
Comments from the anon process - like the Herald and blogspot - are the same as allowing ski-mask-hooded toughs to walk down streets stabbing people and slashing car tires. It is not free speech - it is assault. Those who practice this type of comment are rarely at any job risk if they used their own names but rather are loose screws who pretend to be normal but show their true dark selves when allowed to be anon. I now know who some of those are that took delight in trashing some candidates and this writer during the campaign season. Generally young, male, white, educated, big hunks who want power over others.
Anon can be done right for those who truly have good reason to fear retaliation if they exercise their Constitutional right to free speech. And I think we have a solution for allowing government employees, retail and sales employees, and others in sensitive job positions to participate in our public dialog. I hope it is in place before January. We started the actual work on this back in February and hope the metamorphized NwCitizen will be to your liking.
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A regular reader has sent this comment. For personal reasons, they prefer to remain anon. They are known to me. They are responding to the Nov.15 post.
Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that neighborhood plans have any significance and the problem is merely a matter of process.
That boat sailed three years ago when the city extracted all regulatory power from the neighborhood plans under the guise of centralizing and unifying the codes and standards for the city. The bottom line is, neighborhood plans have no teeth, no way to ensure their recommendations (sadly, that's all they are) will ever be followed, much less enforced. For twenty-three city groups to get all worked up over some "vision" for the look and feel of their neighborhood is simply sad. At best the neighborhood planning meetings are a social feel-good exercise, at worst a useless waste of everyone's precious time.
It's just another political maneuver designed to keep large groups of people busy and distracted while city planning is carried out by the select few who have any actual legal standing. - Jaded
-----------------------
And my response is that I agree . Former mayor Mark and his attorney friend, whom he made city planner for a few years, spent their time gutting all power from the neighborhood residents. Why? Again - because Happy Valley had beat city hall and implemented a neighborhood plan that the neighbors wanted - and not the one that city hall and Western Washington University wanted Happy Valley to have. Other neighborhood leaders were interested in how we had done it - and Mark was not going to have any of that citizens-in-control stuff.
City Council went along with this like sheep. Yes, and none of those who were skeptical spoke up in any sort of voice that could be heard. All seven were willing to go along in gutting the ability of neighborhoods to control their own plans.
Three issues dominated the city election campaign - with neighborhood planning being one of them. We wait and hope that newly elected mayor Dan Pike will take decisive action to correct this and many ills that our city planning process has been dealing with these past few years. We do not have planning just now - we have food fights. We have a dysfunctional planning process.
So - yes - the reader has a point and suggests I and all of us are still dealing with an illusion when it comes to planning.
---------------------------
By the way - this website will soon have a comment process. But it is being designed to have intelligent comment - not trash talk. I realized two years ago it was time but the key was a design that truly allowed community dialog.
Comments from the anon process - like the Herald and blogspot - are the same as allowing ski-mask-hooded toughs to walk down streets stabbing people and slashing car tires. It is not free speech - it is assault. Those who practice this type of comment are rarely at any job risk if they used their own names but rather are loose screws who pretend to be normal but show their true dark selves when allowed to be anon. I now know who some of those are that took delight in trashing some candidates and this writer during the campaign season. Generally young, male, white, educated, big hunks who want power over others.
Anon can be done right for those who truly have good reason to fear retaliation if they exercise their Constitutional right to free speech. And I think we have a solution for allowing government employees, retail and sales employees, and others in sensitive job positions to participate in our public dialog. I hope it is in place before January. We started the actual work on this back in February and hope the metamorphized NwCitizen will be to your liking.
