The Farmer's Group report on safest cities actually came out in early July, not January. Sorry.

A downtown parking garage, in my opinion is not the answer to downtown issues. The Olympian has been telling us about how unsafe downtown is and how that will be solved by the Downtown Ambassadors Program. In reality, downtown is not unsafe at all. Early in January of this year, the Farmer's Insurance Group rated Olympia the third safest city in the US. So when people say "downtown is unsafe", to me that sounds like they want us to think downtown is unsafe so that we'll go along with whatever the ODA says. The ODA wants a parking garage, perhaps to improve the "shopability" of downtown, but most likely because key members of the ODA, including a certain former president and current city council member and candidate, name rhymes with "ire", would stand to make money from this. Instead of spending money on a parking garage, maybe the city should consider passing a moratorium on Diamond Lots, open those lots to public parking, with meters, and see what that does first. I'm no finance wizard but I have a feeling that this would cost less than a huge parking structure. Diamond Lots are spread out evenly throughout downtown, which would give life to more than just one area, and this would provide just as much parking as a parking garage. The city would have to buy these lots, which they could someday develop into mixed use housing/retail as long as there was a provision that the parking was replaced - perhaps upper level parking. No matter what we need to continue to talk about these things, and take our discussion to the council. Otherwise, they are going to continue to decide what our "best interest" is for us.