Letter to the Editor: Shoreline City Council, Position #1
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
To the Editor:
The defenders of the incumbent for Shoreline City Council, Position #1, Keith McGlashan, refuse to acknowledge, much less discuss, his very serious and obvious ethical problem. McGlashan is a real estate broker helping to make land-use decisions for our city, decisions that could directly affect his personal income and business opportunities. Personal integrity would require him to recuse himself from participating in these discussions and decisions, but this has not happened.
McGlashan played a significant role in the adoption by the council of the radical rezones in 2015-2016, in the neighborhoods of the planned transit stations. The provisions in the relevant ordinances were outrageously favorable to developers, but terrible for the families living in the rezones.
Ask these thousands of families in the two radical rezone areas how their lives have been upended by the decisions McGlashan made, despite the hundreds of residents who came to testify against the rezone plans, multiple times.
These families did not ask to stop all rezoning in the relevant areas but simply to reduce the affected areas to no larger than required by the Washington State Growth Management Act. They were met with total intransigence by McGlashan, who rejected anything less threatening to their middle-income, single-family, long-time established neighborhoods.
Jin-Ah Kim brings a far more enlightened and compassionate attitude to governance. Kim does not want to impose unwanted and unnecessary changes on any neighborhood. She understands the healing value of apologizing for errors, of treating differences of opinion as just that, rather than as battlegrounds where enemies go for the kill.
We need Kim’s commitment to seeking what’s best for our residents without being beholden to any special interests. A vote for Jin-Ah Kim is a vote for improved community harmony and responsive city government.
Elaine Phelps
Shoreline
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6 comments:
THANK YOU! This is exactly why I will not vote for Mr. McGlashan. He ignored the public during the rezone votes. I remember him and Mr. Hall poo-pooing the majority of the folks speaking against those rezones.
He's a realtor? How was he allowed to vote?
It's fine if you don't support Keith McGlashan, but stop with the manufactured drama about the rezones. I live in one of the rezone areas and my neighbors and I are thrilled at the increase in our property value, and thrilled to have pockets of shops and the light rail stations headed our way. My neighbors and I wrote a letter of support to the council before the votes took place, and I bet they got tons of them. Not everyone is afraid of change!
I went to the Ridgecrest candidate forum and every candidate was asked if they supported the rezones at the light rail stations. Ms. Kim said that she supported the rezones as they were voted and would not change them, does this mean she is intransient?
The general tone of Ms. Kim’s campaign has really turned me off. Unsupported claims and exaggerated or false information about opponents that require retractions does not seem fitting of our community. I concur with the previous 2 comments in saying not everyone is afraid of growth, but it must be managed properly. I will vote for candidates like Mr. McGlashan and Ms. Chang with long term roots in our community and proven experience working on managed growth. I think there is a place for Ms. Kim as a community advocate for substance abuse, homelessness, and affordable housing and would love to see her make some headway in these areas. What I have seen from her campaign so far she is not ready for a council position. I am a long time Democrat and progressive, and I am not really sure why the Democratic Party has endorsed her for this seat.
I am in complete agreement. And, piling on, I also would argue that allowing developers to do their thing is a far sight better than allowing injection sites to do theirs. I understand that JAK has backed down from her desire to install one here in Shoreline but she brought it to the table.
I am in the rezone area, myself and my 40 or so neighbors are in no way pleased. You know how we know this? We took a poll at our neighborhood block party. Home values are skyrocketing because of Amazon, not because of the rezones. How do I know this? My brother just sold his home nowhere near a rezone area in Shoreline for 150k over asking price.
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