The PBIA was created just a few months ago, and now all of the money is gone. "Where did it go?", you might ask. The answer: nobody knows. Thus far, Jeff Trinin and the ODA have not been able to produce any documentation showing exactly where the money was spent, regardless of the budget committees' requests.

The PBIA recently had an election for their board. The result? A bunch of members of the ODA were elected. In fact, not a single person that hasn't been a member of the ODA was elected. This is not proving to be an entity that represents the community.

The ODA has voluntary membership, the PBIA is mandatory. When the bills went out for the PBIA there was a check box that you check if you DO NOT want to be a member of the ODA. I assume that many business owners decided they might as well be members, after all, the ODA has no dues, and will be deciding how the PBIA works. I can imagine that the ODA's membership numbers have grown significantly since the start of the PBIA. Well now, because of possible mismanagment of funds, they are reinstating their membership dues. So all those PBIA members are going to be charged another $180.

One of the city's goals for this year was increased transparancy in government. Given that, I believe it is the city's responsibility to audit the ODA and PBIA to find out exactly where the money went. They also need to audit the PBIA board election, rumors of colusion have been swirling. Laura Ware even raised the question of the ODA "harvesting" nominations at one of the budget meetings I attended, drawing a long winded "no comment" from Jeff Trinin.

The thing that irks me the most is that the city is not asking us what we want. They are taking the "I'm an elected official, I know what's best for you" approach. I really don't believe that Olympians want to live in a city that caters to cars. All of the trends that I've seen since moving here indicate that people's minds are thinking of a walkable Olympia with an amazing transit system. Olympia is quite as walker friendly as it could be, but, for a city of our size we have an amazing public transportation system.

In conclusion, I don't think the ODA has proven itself to be responsible enough to be in charge of our downtown, and I think we should let the council hear about it. If they won't listen, let's replace them. We are at a point where we have to keep moving towards sustainability, if we allow current trends to continue we are going to end up living in a city that is not ready for an uncertain future. It's all hands on deck time!