Neary-Sighted

The Lakewood Police deaths had all sorts of implications and results, ranging from an abiding sadness that is still present in City Hall to the rocketing of certain people into the limelight. Among those who would wish at their very core for a different Nov. 29, 2009, would be Sgt. Brian Wurts, president of the Lakewood Police Independent Guild.

Everyone is sad at what happened, but when you talk to Brian, you know this is a guy who lost the equivalent of family members in this thing. He was already a pretty intense person, and now he's got some missions. One of them is encouraging people to support various bills that seek to address issues related to the horrible shootings. What I do today is share Brian's list of some of the bills that he is watching in the 2010 legislative session. I don't mean or want to replace any list that he puts out, but I saw some of his comments and wanted to share them.

First though, if you have the time, here's how you can see the passion fill out the discussion during early hearings on Jan. 18. You can hear from three relatives of the slain Lakewood police officers. The women start testifying at about 20 minutes into this program. Slide the timer over to 20 minutes to hear them. It's incredibly moving, of course. You can then hear Brian right after, or about 36 minutes into the presentation.



The next day there was another hearing, and more chance to hear from people concerned about the Lakewood crimes. You can hear from Brian again at about 26 minutes in. Not all the voices are unanimous, of course, and you can hear from the American Civil Liberties Union at about 40 minutes in. Brian returns at about an hour and 20 minutes into it.



Anyway, here's a partial list of some of the bills they are tracking:

HB 1203 - Modifying the definition of relative for purposes of the crime of rendering criminal assistance. (O'Brien)

HB 2625 - Addressing bail for felony offenses. (Kelley)

HB 2626 - Modifying violation provisions for offenders. (Kelley)

HB 2781 - Imposing a sanction for offenders who violate sentence conditions by committing an assault against a law enforcement officer, employee of a law enforcement agency, or department of corrections employee. (Hurst) This relates to the Lakewood case because the guy who killed our officers could have been held for longer for assaulting a prison guard than at present.

HJR 4220 - Amending the state Constitution so that the provision relating to bailable crimes by sufficient sureties is modified. (Hope) This bill allows a judget to deny bail to someone who threatens public safety and who may be going to prison under the 'three strikes' rules.

PSSJR 8218 - Amending the state Constitution so that offenses that may result in a mandatory life sentence upon conviction are not bailable by sufficient sureties. (Carrell/Juliana Roe).

SB 6293 - Changing provisions relating to rendering criminal assistance in the first degree. (Brandland/Kimberly Johnson)

HB 2519 - Addressing duty-related death benefits for public safety employees. (Green/David Pringle)

The tragedy showed there are some iniquities in how benefits are paid out to families whose loved ones are killed in the line of duty. You can watch a hearing about this matter below. If you slide the timer to about 35 minutes into the hearing, you'll hear the Lakewood police representatives, Chief Bret Farrar and Skeeter Manos, a board member of the Lakewood Police Independent Guild. His testimony is pretty moving, and starts at about 39 minutes in. I'd challenge you to listen to his thoughts about what would happen if he got killed in the line of duty, and not be moved yourself.

As Brian noted later, you can watch how the committee voted right after Manos's powerful presentation to move the bill along, rather than sit on it awhile as previously planned. Well done, lawmakers.



Just as a final note, I'm no expert on how to track large swaths of legislative bills. If you have a suggestion on practical ways that people can seek to influence or track this legislation, I'd love to hear 'em, do 'em and/or share 'em. Let me know.
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The results of this blog have been 50/50 on whether to give people a lot of notice about something big coming up in the life of the city. Some people see text in print when government is involved and fear decisions have been made and outcomes predetermined. They can get very excited about that. So let me just say up front I'm not posting this update to scare or motivate anyone. This is strictly early notice of something there is plenty of time to learn more about.

You'll hear this topic come up a lot in conversations through the coming months, even into 2012. Actually, it's more likely to come up in conversation with the people in the 350 households that live around the shores of Lake Steilacoom, or people who live around or care deeply about other local lakes. The process will also involve people who live directly above Chambers Creek.

The subject is something that the state requires, a Shoreline Management Update. When you see something like that in capital letters, you know it's a big deal. The update is something that the state Department of Ecology has told the City of Lakewood to do. The state requires shoreline master plans. The state also requires a huge amount of public outreach and discussion, which is good. We would do public outreach anyway given the number and important of lakes in Lake-wood.

The project is probably two years away from completion. So that's why I say you don't have to do anything now, and you don't have to worry about anything now.

The state is so determined that there be public outreach that it requires the city to submit a public outreach plan. The Lakewood City Council approved the plan for our update process last week. The idea is to have several meetings open to people who live on or along American Lake, Lake Steilacoom, Gravelly Lake, Lake Louise and the various creeks. There will also be outreach to people interested in Waughop Lake in Fort Steilacoom Park, and I will be interested to see how that is handled.

So if you live in these places or care deeply about them, just tuck it in your head that you'll have to chance to get involved.

Now having said that, it would not be proper to talk about this issue without being honest about things that might come up. The idea of the plan as mandated by the state is to balance use and protection of the lakes. So topics that might come up are topics people in these areas care a lot about: docks, boat lifts, and expansion of homes around the lakes.

So ... that should be a lot to talk about.

The plan is to begin outreach this spring with the first meetings. If we follow this plan, you will have to burrow underground and stay there to not hear about this thing. And of course if you were going to do that, you'd bring your laptop, so you'd find out about these meetings anyway through my blog. So you will get notice of these meetings and the ideas that are being considered throughout preparation of the plan.

There will be an informational website, more meetings in the fall of this year, discussions with the City Council about what's been said so far, meetings, preparation of draft restoration plans, more discussions and by the time this thing goes to the Planning Commission it will be late 2011. And then it would be going to the City Council in late 2011 or early 2012. Even after the plan is approved, there are opportunities to comment to the state.

So ... there's plenty of time to stay involved. One of the folks at the Department of Ecology looked over our plan for outreach and feedback and called it "probably the best public participation plan I've seen to date."

Tuck it in your head perhaps that these topics will be coming up, and we all hope for lots of participation.
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The Lakewood City Council came out unanimously against the Point Defiance bypass as it is presently designed, without grade separations and other safety and traffic measures. Heck, we'd be happy if the state even studied those issues by following the proper process. Take a look at the wording of the resolution and you'll see what I mean.

The vote to demand further study was Monday. The city just put these materials up on the city website, and I share them with you. This sure beats the old days when I was putting up city documents on Yahoo to get them to you.

The truth is, though, what will make or break the Point Defiance Bypass is the state government and the federal government. Your Lakewood City Council has little clout if any with the state Department of Transportation, Gov. Gregoire's budget office and the federal officials deciding on stimulus funding for this project.

At the end of the day, all the community protest is great, but the fate of the project will really rest on all of you asking candidates for Congress and the state Legislature, "Hey, do you think the people of Lakewood should be railroaded?" Hold the incumbents and other candidates accountable for their answer. If enough people do that, there could be safety and justice for Lakewood.

If you are interested, here's a link to my previous post about the railroad proposal.
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Inspired by reading other City Council people around the country who blog, I have made a point of writing much shorter and readable blog pieces for you.

That ends today ;) Well, just for today.

I wanted to report out on the retreat the City Council took on Friday and Saturday at the Oakbrook Golf and Country Club conference room. I suppose a really artful blogger would do 10 separate pieces over time about the retreat, but since there was no other media and only one member of the public there, I feel a certain responsibility to report quickly.

EXPERIENCE: First, an overview. One thing I'd not thought about is the very wide range of experience we have. On one end, you have council members Doug Richardson and Claudia Thomas, members of the original Lakewood council. They have about 28 years experience on the council between them.

Then you have Don Anderson and me, with two years and six years respectively. That's 8 between the two of us, 20 years less than the combined experience of Doug and Claudia.

And then you have Mike Brandstetter, Mary Moss and Jason Whalen, who are new to the council.

In general, it's good to have a broad range of experiences on a council. There's a learning curve to elected office. There's a learning curve to public governance. There's a learning curve to Lakewood as an elected official conducting public policy here. It's ideal to have people who are experienced AND people with fresh eyes and new ideas. One thing you have to say about this council, we sure got some pretty broad ranges.

ATMOSPHERE: This was by far the most pleasant of the retreats I've been to in terms of the congeniality of the discussions. That's because we no longer have such abrasive people on the council. Now, you can argue abrasive people have every right to be on a council - in fact, you can even argue abrasive people should be on a council because they are very clear and noticeable when they ask tough questions - but I just note this in terms of the atmosphere.

We had a facilitator of the retreat, Michael Pendleton, so the mayor could participate without having to also run the meeting, and to add an outside perspective. Michael said something that I think is probably very true: "There's a lot of high hopes for this council."

THE YEAR IN REVIEW: If you really like Lakewood data, consider taking a look at the report the council got the from the city manager about 2009. The city will also be generating an 'annual report' soon, which I'll share or which you will find on the city website.

VISION AND OVERVIEW: After Jason, Mary and Mike feel more comfortable in what's a very unusual sort of job, the council may revisit such matters as vision, mission and goals. For now, there was general agreement that the vision and mission stay as is:

Vision: Lakewood is a beautiful community with a unique and proud heritage. We are a racially and culturally diverse city where people care about each other. We are working together with our regional and military partners to build an exciting and prosperous future for our citizens.

Mission: The City of Lakewood enhances the quality of life of our residents by providing essential services in a fiscally responsible manner, ensuring public safety, promoting economic development, and preserving our natural environment.

In terms of goals, a lot of them settle on doing what we are doing now right, as opposed to any wild new ventures. We want to make sure the sewers being added to Tillicum and Woodbrook bring benefits to the community, that the construction is done right, etc ... The subject of goals probably is worth a separate post.

PURSUING THE GOALS: We had a long discussion about how the city council evaluates the city manager as an employee. This may sound a bit obscure, but it's not. The City Council only has one employee, the city manager, that it hires and evaluates. In our system of municipal government, it's the city manager who hires the rest of the stuff and manages the people who run, say, the parks or police departments.

If you have been a manager, or even been evaluated by a manager, you know what sort of difference an annual review can make. It's an opportunity to make sure the goals that the employee is pursuing square with the goals of the manager and the organization.

What Lakewood has been using is a once-a-year evaluation on a confusing form that also doesn't fit the new model of pursuing specific goals and not just general categories of government. A subcommittee was formed to evaluate how best to hold the manager accountable for goals and support those goals. I'll be on the committee, along with Mary and Jason. This isn't glamorous stuff, but as I say, if you've ever got a badly done evaluation, or a well done evaluation, or any sort of evaluation, you understand what we are after and what's at stake.

WHO DOES WHAT: The council has individual members who serve as liaisons and informal advisors to our community groups. We decided in general to shake up a lot of the liaison roles.

Yours truly will retain a role with the Landmarks board, of which I was the original chair about 120 years ago, and have a new role I'm excited about, the transportation citizens advisory committee. There's a lot going on with roads, depending on where you are at, ranging from disintegration due to lack of maintenance to a bunch of new construction.

But more seriously, the transportation committee is the only committee that's been asking the council to raise taxes to pay for more maintenance. I am eager to get my arms around the issues here.

I was also on the original parks advisory committee, but fresh eyes are good, so Deputy Mayor Don Anderson will serve as their liaison.

I was the original advisor to the relatively new arts commission, but again, with an idea that fresh eyes are good, their new liaison will be Jason Whalen.

There are other advisory groups, but maybe that's enough of a list for now. I just wanted to point out that one thing we don't want to do is get caught in a routine, but to keep fresh eyes looking at the constant stream of opportunities and challenges.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: We discussed something that colors all conversations in Lakewood these days, the horrible massacre of four police officers on Nov. 29. We talked how as government leaders in the community, we all felt pressed to respond in different ways as the tragedy unfolded. The way Mike Brandstetter put it was, "I couldn't be as visibly affected as I felt."

It was an emotional discussion at times, and a couple folks teared up or had to take a break, and I'll just leave it at that.

We discussed what you might expect: concern about the impact on employees, on their families, on the city.

We also discussed a general feeling that Lakewood has changed and that the world saw something very grand in our response. And by 'our,' I mean 'your,' as one of the residents who made a tapestry of grief and resolve.

We talked about what comes next. When you look at how the community came together, "This is an open door to changing the climate of the city," said Councilwoman Claudia Thomas.

We also talked about how to eventually construct a memorial that will somehow do justice to what happened. Police Chief Bret Farrar said, as most folks agreed, that it's early to ask the families of the officers about this as well, as other city employees still very much grieving.

His current suggestion is that we broach this subject this spring at a time when the subject of memorials would come up anyway, either in association with ceremonies for fallen officers at the national level or the Washington State Law Enforcement Memorial. So the city knows we are called to do something in memorial, but also know we want some more healing time to pass.

BITS AND PIECES:

- Everyone's eager to see a new master plan that Camp Murray will be submitting. Among other things, it apparently would change the entryway to the state installation. If you've seen traffic around there, that's good news.

- A workshop with translation is planned for the Korean-American community along South Tacoma Way to discuss the economy there. This is part of outreach to that community.

- There's a lot of work behind the scenes to clean up addresses for the 2010 US Census and to prepare to help make for an accurate count this year. The working theory is that the census undercounted Lakewood by about 2,500 people in 2000. If that's correct, it was an error of roughly 4 or 5 percent. An undercount costs the city in terms of its share of federal grant monies, other allocations from other governments, etc... in that we thus got that much percent less in funding.

- There was discussion of the issue of minicasino regulation. You may recall there was a citizen referendum on this matter awhile back. The short version is that the city's official position remains that we'd prefer to have authority from the state to freeze the casinos to existing operations, and at existing locations. That's what we seek from the Legislature.

Mike Brandstetter said he'd prefer to see minicasinos gone at some point, and expect this will come up during the development of a comprehensive plan for the community within the next couple years (the comprehensive plan will be another blog topic, soon) Don Anderson and I agreed we'd like to see the city find a way to phase out reliance on minicasino revenues for essential services. I can't speak for Don, but my thinking is that the citizens may someday vote to eliminate minicasinos, and if that happened it should not affect essential services.

- Lakewood collects less per capita in property tax than other communities owing to the relatively low values of some of the land around the highway and other factors. This is one reason we are pushing economic development, to add dollars for police, parks, etc.. without raising taxes. The police chief and others reminded us that our newest ventures, including a staff person to work with victims of domestic violence, are totally dependent on grant funding. If we want to keep these jobs going after a few years on our local budget, we need to see the economy grow to do it.

- The council discussed strategies to deal with the Point Defiance Bypass, a plan to route dramatically more rail traffic through Lakewood streets.

- We're all very excited about a program that will put police officers, code enforcement staff, community services officer and an attorney on teams to work on individual neighborhood concerns. I'll be blogging more about these neighborhood-centric community teams, but just wanted to say we all expect these will help drive government and community crime prevention efforts deep into the heart of Lakewood's different areas.

THE END: Well .... that was rather long-winded, and it still feels like I did not do the retreat justice. Hopefully I gave you one individual council member's snapshots of some of what he saw, and some sense of the issues.
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Just came from a board meeting of the Lakewood Historical Society. So here's the question of the week for Lakewood friends: Do you, or does your mom or dad, or your grandfather or grandmother, know the history of Christmas blue lights on the businesses in Lakewood?

People used to come from miles around to see the blue lights on the Colonial Center and other businesses. The tradition goes back to the 30s, we think, but we're not sure where the tradition comes from. The Lakewood museum may do an exhibit next November about the history of blue lights, from their origins at the Colonial Center to of course the more somber meaning of blue lights today. I'm going to dash off a note to the police department now asking if the historical society might borrow blue items that were saved from the roadside memorial for our slain.

The reason I happen to have blue lights around my house is because of the Lakewood Colonial Center tradition. I was glad I had them this year, because blue lights got to be pretty hard to find.

This exhbit would be inspired by the declaration about blue lights in Lakewood, which you can read about here. One reason for the declaration is to encourage businesses around here to stock up on blue lights, as they should be in demand in about 11 months.

Anyone know anything about the tradition? Anyone got old pictures of the blue lights in town?
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If there's any town that was eager for 2009 to end, it was Lakewood. As everyone in the United States will know, the year 2009 was when Lakewood suffered those deaths of four police officers. My broad reading of statistics is that we should have no more police killed here in Lakewood in our lifetimes. I pray hard that this comes true.

Thankfully, another year is here to carry us away to new possibilities. Here's to a happy 2010!

We just finished the first City Council meeting of the year. Here's your handy summary of what we heard, or did, or will do:

- We welcomed new council members Mike Brandstetter, Mary Moss and Jason Whalen.

Thanks to shutterbug Phil Raschke, a member of the Lakewood Arts Commission and a zillion other good groups, here's a photo of the council getting ready for our official group pic. The lot, from left to right, includes council members Jason Whalen, Mary Moss, Doug Richardson, Claudia Thomas, Don Anderson, Mike Brandstetter, and some hack writer who snuck onto the podium but is, now that I think about it, awful good looking ...

Now, speaking of that fellow, the 'old' Walter who was blogging in 2005 and 2006 would have gone on for pages about the internal politics of Lakewood. I'd go on for screen after screen about how great it is that Jason, Mary and Mike are aboard. But you know what? Given the caliber of the candidates and debate in this last election, I don't see a need for navel gazing right now. The three are here. They believe in good governance. They ran for office for the right reasons, not because of grudges or a need to tear things up. So let's be thankful. That's enough.

Unless you beg for more political analysis ... (*Walter listens, and hears crickets, and smiles*) Excellent! Let's proceed ...

- The council unanimously re-elected Doug Richardson as mayor again, and Don Anderson as deputy mayor.

- The council approved a grant from the state which will apply an additional staff person and other resources to what we do to help victims of domestic violence. As we've discussed here before, the rate of domestic violence is growing in Lakewood (which is bad, but even once instance of domestic violence is bad enough).

Our police force applied for a $95,000 grant from the Department of Commerce to help the Special Assault Unit. The money will pay for work directly with victims and resources for victims. The city puts up $31,000 in matching funds, but that's a bargain ... hence the unanimous vote of the new council to accept the deal.

- The council unanimously voted to encourage people to support the Clover Park Schools bond election. The vote is Feb. 9. The citizens committee supporting the bond has a Facebook page here.

It was nice to see elsewhere that the Lakewood Police Independent Guild also agreed to ask voters to support education and this bond. The vote is an important investment in our schools and our youth.

I can't avoid adding a personal note. These last two items refer to the police. It's good that we're starting to talk about about something other than the shootings. Life will never really be back to totally normal, not to those of us who remember those shootings and their aftermath. Yet thankfully, life goes on, police protection goes on, schools go on, the fight against domestic violence goes on. We shall persevere for the sake of our community.

- The council heard an update about efforts to clean up a mobile home park at 12623 Bridgeport, in the Springbrook area. The city will advance $61,000 to remove several unsafe buildings before any more people can live in them, and then recover the funds when the property is sold or under other conditions.

There's a lot of stories about this property, but this sentence from the staff report kinda says it all: "These structures, including one mobile home contaminated from the manufacturing of methamphetamine, were being vandalized and children in the park were playing in and around them." Among the building that will be torn down is a shed ... that was apparently being rented as a home.

So yeah.

That needs to be cleaned up.

There are several other homes that are in horrible shape, but we heard that there's no place for the people who live there to move right now. This is a tough situation, and will take a phased approach. Right now, the simple thing to do is raze the empty buildings.

- The council has two other meetings this week. Tuesday morning, tomorrow, we meet with at least three of our area's state lawmakers to talk about the legislative agenda and how it might affect Lakewood. Given that the legislative session is Monday, I suspect I'm not the only person who wishes we'd scheduled this meeting for earlier. Hopefully sometime in fall of this year we can meet with the legislators to discuss the 2011 agenda.

- The 'new' council meets both Friday and Saturday for a retreat at Oakbrook Golf and Country Club. The idea is to share knowledge and to share visions for the future.

Among the topics: Organizational overview, council process and working agreements, goals and priorities for the city, and policy issues (specifically listed: gambling, economic development, the Point Defiance Rail bypass) and the process by which the council evaluates the city manager. To explain the latter, you have to remember the council is a bit like a nonprofit board of directors: we hire the CEO, and then he or she hires the staff and manages the city. So evaluating the city manager, in all the sense of supervising the council's only employee, is an important responsibility.

Discussions should be pretty productive with this group. I'm looking forward to it!
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