Saturday, December 17, 2011
Mission Accomplished: The Final Column for Neary-Sighted
The 2010-2011 Lakewood City Council: from left, Don Anderson, Claudia Thomas, Mike Brandstetter, Walter Neary, Mary Moss, Doug Richarson and Jason Whalen.
Today I publish the last column for Neary-Sighted. It’s job is done. It’s time to move on to a new mission.
Neary-Sighted began as a column in the Lakewood Journal weekly newspaper in 1994. It ended when I left the Journal in 1997, and picked up again when I ran for City Council in 2003. Neary-Sighted’s final column today takes place in 2011. So it seemed only right to make the final column a letter to the guy who started it all in 1994.
December 2011
Mr Walter Neary
Rigney Road, Steilacoom
Located in the year 1994
Dear Walter,
I hope you are having a good time in your temporary home. What I know now, 17 years later, is that your wife and children will finally relocate from Salinas, California, and you’ll find a very nice first Lakewood home down the road from Lake Louise. First off, to answer your most important questions: your kids are going to be healthy and fine. You’re still married to Cindy, who is still as wonderful as ever. Your mother and father will die in 1999 and 2000, but death is what happens in life. You accept this now.
Let me remind you why you are here in 1994. You were hired to edit the Lakewood Journal newspaper, serving four very different communities: Lakewood, Steilacoom., DuPont, and University Place. You were hired because a person or two thought you wrote pretty good editorials. You were hired because the cityhood campaigns had been losing in Lakewood. The people who wanted a new city were trying all sorts of different things, including new campaign tactics. Their wishes dovetailed with those of the newspaper publisher, who had many reasons to want Lakewood to be a city.
The main reason for these cityhood campaigns was because Lakewood needed to govern itself. An enormous amount of authority and money rested with the county government in Pierce county. To this day, county government has a disproportionate amount of money and power compared to the real needs of Pierce County citizens. That’s because its county executive practically has the authority of a Roman emperor, and its supervisors are elected in such large districts that no community except maybe Tacoma can be protected from the wishes of the supervisors outside the community. That of course makes places like Lakewood, Steilacoom, DuPont and University Place pretty much road kill.
That of course on default setting makes places like Lakewood, Steilacoom, DuPont and University Place pretty much road kill. The way they get any influence is to cooperate with other communities and the county to share dialogue and interests..
The same is true of many other places, of course, but you are not their editor. You have taken the most dramatic move of your life and uprooted your family to Washington state to provide whatever incremental help a newspaper can in building community. And you are going to crusade for cityhood for Lakewood.
You do this two ways. First you point out that change isn’t always bad, and that an awful lot of citizens have chosen to live in cities so they can govern themselves. Second, you crusade against the bullying and outrages of other governments. So, for example, when the county ignores a dangerous hotel complex so that drug addicts and others can die, set fire, etc., your newspaper starts a countdown listing the days before county government acts. You become a bit of a smartass, Mr Newspaper Editor.
Back then, Lakewood’s only ‘governments’ were a toothless advisory council and Lakewood United, a group of folks who meet for breakfast Thursday mornings, representing civic groups, local businesses and schools, or just themselves. So many of these people will be dead by now, Walter. You had no idea then, of course. I hope you appreciated the time you spent with all of them. I know you wanted to. As you might remember, we never saw county government paying attention to any of us. Remember that. It’s key to this letter.
The big signature outrage back then was that the county government had decided to dig up Lakewood streets for a sewer project without actually notifying anyone. The legal notice had been placed in the Enumclaw newspaper, because back then, county government did what the hell it wanted. Dealing with Lakewood as anything more than another field to grow tax revenues was pretty inconvenient. It was a handy place to dump strip clubs and such, and certainly its citizens had no say in local governance.
All this was on your mind as you joined a small army of wonderful people to campaign for cityhood. And cityhood won in 1995.
One thing that you have no idea of, Walter, is that in 2003 you’ll get elected to the City Council. You never had any political aspirations because no newspaper reporter or editor ever should when they’re in that role. You left newspapers, and the opportunity opened up, and you ran for office.
So I’m not going to give away any more surprises. Let’s talk about Monday night.
Monday was my last scheduled official City Council meeting. I sure hope it’s the last, because the only reason we will have a meeting in the rest of December is if there’s some disaster. So let’s hope for the best and call it my last. Let me tell you why it was unusual.
This was the second joint meeting of three City Councils: Lakewood, Steilacoom and DuPont. The first was last summer in Lakewood. We have begun talking about regional issues in a way that’s never happened before. As you might imagine, some of the regional issues involve helping Joint Base Lewis-McChord and possibly re-routing train traffic through populated areas. The main item on the agenda was a proposed flood control district that the majority of county supervisors want to create. They want to tax the whole county to benefit flood prevention projects along the Puyallup River and Interstate 5. The county tried to create this tax last year but Lakewood’s city government led the legal and political charge to stop how they were doing it--without proper public notice. It was the 1990s sewer project all over again, but this time, 15 years of community leadership by hundreds of people made a difference.
At this meeting Monday night, we actually had the county executive Pat McCarthy present. Pat’s no more a Roman emperor than what her job demands of her. She showed sincere interest in what the councils had to say, while defending creation of the district. And there were two county council members present.
Having three powerful elected officials from the county is unheard of at a Lakewood council meeting even if it's a joint meeting with others. This was history. It was a powerful sign to say, today your communities matter..
Think about it, Walter in 1994. Seventeen years later, you’re going to see the fruition of all that hard work by all those wonderful people at Lakewood United, at your newspaper, at so many Lakewood organizations, and by so many wonderful people in Lakewood, DuPont and Steilacoom. County government may not make the decisions we like, but they have to talk with us first.
I drove home from DuPont that night. I traveled under the same bright lights over Interstate 5 that you saw that night when you drove up from California, looking around in wonder.
You will live to see something wonderful happen, Walter. You will live to see a community form, and matter.
That was the purpose of all that work back then, and of Neary-Sighted the column and Walter the editor. Monday night brought it home to me that we’ve arrived at the destination you wanted in 1994. That’s why in 2011 you got that tear in your eye as you walked through the front door.
So you’re going to do something else. But it’s time for something new, and a new name.
Because Neary-Sighted has finally … seen. Wonderful things.
Sincerely,
Walter in 2011
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