Notes from Shoreline City Council Meeting August 13, 2012
By Devon Vose Rickabaugh
Shoreline Council members and Don Dudley of the Blakeley apartments exchanged compliments for working together to revise the traffic configuration off of 192nd and Aurora to add a left turn lane out of the Echo Lake Condominiums which will increase safety. Other plans are to remove parking along 192nd, add a left turn lane from Aurora into the YMCA and narrow lanes where 192nd crosses the interurban trail. Councilmember Hall recommended for future development more consideration be taken for new residents’ needs in addition to the neighbors so that construction revision can be avoided.
Councilmember Salomon said this situation “speaks to an openness in government. It’s important for citizens to feel they can come to us and not get stonewalled when what they say makes a lot of sense.”
The council directed Dan Eernissee, Economic Development Manager, to develop an ordinance to adopt a Community Renewal Area (CRA) for the Aurora Square area where Sears and Central Market reside. With A CRA a city “gains a toolkit designed to help it facilitate renewal” in partnership with private enterprise. Eerinessee says that Aurora Square qualifies as a CRA because it has vacant buildings, faulty lot layout whereby shoppers cannot walk or drive easily between buildings, acres of parking in inaccessible or unnecessary locations, ten different owners which make it difficult to “make changes at the speed necessary to respond to opportunities.” A public hearing and ordinance will be introduced at the next council meeting September 4th at 7pm.
The City Council voted to adopt the human services allocation plan to maintain and support 27 programs which serve low and moderate families such as Hopelink and Senior Services. In addition the city partners with King County to disburse federal community block grant money which can be used for acquisition and rehabilitation of housing for low-income and special needs populations. No increased funding from last year was requested.
Councilmember Salomon has a rather strange idea of open government. Open government is about transparency,about public access to government documents and proceedings. It has nothing to do with the government being receptive to citizen input. Allowing the public their say, whether what they have to say "makes a lot of sense" or not, is a matter of liberty, of free speech.
ReplyDeleteA petition with roughly 400 signatures gets Council's attention, period. Such was the case with the Blakely 'flower pot' and the funky traffic snafu at the Dale Turner YMCA. It is disingenous to cite the City's response to organized pressure from the citizens as evidence of the City's openness.