I want to say again that this rezone proposal and the related vision for Larida Passage violate my own concept of "real progress." I know that I am not alone on this. Real progress to me means treating all people equally.

Real progress does not mean putting up a massive super-structure building, affordable only to those with the specific financial means—while at the same time denigrating sweeping views for everyone else..

Real progress does include denser urban housing. But real progress also includes utilizing a real public process to decide where to put the housing. For example, real progress would include listening to the concerns of so many hundreds of residents who voiced clear and reasonable objections on so many fronts, including the placement of the development in a flood-zone given predicted sea-level rise (just one amongst a long list of reasonable complaints.)

A park on the isthmus would represent real progress.

Secondly, vocal minority? Peter, where do you get off with such an idea? It is clear that there is popular opposition to this rezone and the proposed luxury condominium development. I can only imagine the outrage if we had a public interest editorial writer at The Olympian.

Real progress is service to the public interest.

Maintaining the status quo of growth economics and special access/ special privilege for society's wealthy and powerful is not in the public interest, and it's not real progress.

We can argue until the cows come home about vocal minorities. But StevenL effectively ended that argument by pointing out the fact that it is pro-rezone advocates who oppose a referendum advisory vote—and anti-rezone advocates who support an advisory vote. Without a vote there is not way to truly know. However, even in the absence of a vote, common sense dictates that the majority would be opposed to this project as it represents special interest influence over government, a problem that the majority of American People are aware of and concerned about. Most Americans don't want special interests meddling in public policy. It's common sense.

Perspective is funny.

Apparently that majority of people with such busy careers and fulfilling family lives that they don't show up to hearings to weigh in their support for the isthmus rezone are also too busy to find a stamp and vote, huh? Who's the vocal minority now?

Is this "vocal minority" really that, or the tip of the iceberg? Or is there, as President  Nixon liked to say, a "Silent Majority"?

You could settle the whole thing by a public vote. If the legal battle looks like it has the potential to be expensive anyway, then simply use that money to hold an election on the matter. 

See, here's the risk. It is one thing to say you trust your elected officials when they support your views, but quite another when they don't. When public servants do what we want, we can call them "Progressive" and "Courageous." But one person's Progressive politician is a Babbitt to another.

I prefer public decision-making by one-person one-vote democracy rather than by a republic on big choices like this. Why not let the people of Olympia decide the issue? It is important enough to warrant such an action. Other than the expenditure of holding an election, what other problem is there with this idea?

 

 

 

 

(Almost all the time, any way.) People collecting signatures generally said something like "This initiative would make the City Council do a study of what it would cost to turn the land on the isthmus into a park instead of rezoning it for high-rise condos, and of ways to get the State and other parties to help doing that." And people said, "Sure, I'll sign that."

Of course, that does simplify the issue dramatically, but I don't think it does it in a "deceitfully polarizing" way that "grossly oversimplifies" the issue. I don't know if Peter's ever worked on an initiative campaign, but that's about as much as people want to hear when they come to the door or pass you on their way into the market. And I think it gets to the heart of the issue quite honestly. People don't want the view spoiled, and except for the development community, some downtown business owners, the well organized lobbyists from Oly 2012, and a relatively small portion of ordinary people who'd like downtown to be more like Bellevue, people don't particularly care about whether there are 141 condos for millionaires right there. (If they have thought carefully about the complications, most of them think those condos and the benefits they're supposed to produce could go equally well in a lot of other places, including the almost identical 150 condo development Triway's now requesting a height boost for on the West Bay waterfront, and the almost 7 acres of East Bay Waterfront the Port's opening for mixed-use development.)

Obviously, Peter and I have very different estimates of the sense of the city at large about this issue! (And with all due respect to Peter, whom I like and think is a generally good guy - I think his rhetoric, as usual, is a lot more "divisive" and "polarizing" than anything Friends of the Waterfront or I have chosen to say so far.) We think raising the heights to 90 feet is illegal under the Shorelines Act, and the Park Foundation is prepared to litigate if the Council does that; they have a well-known land-use attorney who's committed to doing the litigation pro bono and a couple of distinguished shorelines attorneys who have volunteered to help with research and legal strategy; we've said litigation might take five or six years to be finally settled. Those are facts, not "antics" or "scare tactics", and this is what the Shorelines Management Act was passed for by a citizens' initiative - to keep local governments from giving away the public's access to and enjoyment of the shoreline in response to well organized and well funded pressure from developers and their allies. In Peter's rhetoric, this becomes "their antics have included threatening legal action such as endless lawsuits...." (Etc... see above)

Frankly, I don't think Peter and the Oly 2012 steering committee could even get the volunteers to run a serious initiative campaign in town, let alone get 4,000 valid city voters' signatures supporting the rezone - whatever they told people. In any case, this seems like more beating a dead horse; we really don't have to spend any more time going around about aspects of this issue we've already discussed at length here, and I'd rather not. It looks more and more as if we'll have some actual votes to count next November to settle the question of how the city feels about Councilmembers voting for the rezone.

Best,

Thad

...

Well Peter, I guess I can sum up my feelings about your complaint that folks are too activist in Olympia with the following sentiment, "Tough shit". 

I think that plans to "develop" the stinking landfill that folks call the isthmus reeks of nothing but greed and shows a serious lack of concern for both history and the future.

 

Peter,

To mention the perpetrators of the vandalism and hate mail in the same context as Friends of the Waterfront and the Olympia Park Foundation -- as if there is some relationship between the two -- is the most sleazy and disgusting thing I have read in 15 years of involvement in Olympia politics.

And before you deny it, yes, you are implying a relationship. You carefully tried to create deniability by refering to them as separate groups of people, but everything else you wrote suggests that vandalism and hate mail are just a more extreme version of the "scare tactics" of litigation or recall elections. In reality -- and it is sad that I even have to say this -- the former are criminal acts and the latter are petitions to the government for redress of grievances [see: Constitution, Amendment 1].

Your post is pathetic and shameful.

Matthew

Peter Stroble's post is so inflammatory and so unnecessary in light of the virtual certainty of the rezone passing on the 16th, that I have to wonder if his real purpose is to divert attention from topics which genuinely warrant public attention. (Yes, I expect to be accused of being a conspiracy nut by the same guy who makes that accusation about once per thread, but I don't really care.) I have asked myself, and I ask you, is there a matter pertaining to the isthmus rezone which perhaps is being overlooked as we all gasp in horror at the insinuation that those nice folks in the Friends of the Waterfront are a bunch of homophobic vandals? I would like to know what other people think, but one idea has occurred to me.

The Planning Commission recommended that there be a development agreement between the City and Triway as a condition of the rezone, so that the City would be assured of getting the high quality housing Triway has led us to believe is his intention. I believe this was in response to the suspicion that Triway might resell the rezoned property at great profit, and the city could end up with a less desirable project in that area. Making a development agreement a condition of the rezone would remove some of the resistance to the rezone, from people who suspected Tri Vo might not produce a project like those pretty pictures he's shown us so many times.

However, at the November 25 council meeting, Jeff Kingsbury proposed that the ordinance be drafted so that rather than having a development agreement, the oversight for the project should be left in the hands of a hearing examiner. I am told that this arrangement, which is less encumbering, would make the resale of the isthmus parcels easier and potentially more profitable. This version of the ordinance was the one adopted, five to two, with the five councilmembers who are most gung-ho about the rezone voting in favor of it, and Hyer and Messmer preferring an ordinance including a development agreement.

Yes, I realize that all this talk of hearing examiner versus development agreement is far less stimulating than defending Bonnie Jacobs of hurling bricks through downtown store windows. But I am wondering, as we enter the final stretch here, why the council is so willing to make so many concessions to Triway without even a nod towards what’s in the public interest.

The rich, society's wealthy elite, are a minority. A minority that is undeserving of special governmental protection and pay-out.

The rich have taken much from society, and much from the planet. When they give away 5 or 10 percent they are heralded as great philanthropists, without so much as a question about the harm incurred by their wealth amassing activities (wars, environmental degradation, etc.).

That being said. I want to ask a very serious question about your assertion, Peter. How do you know that it is a minority that opposes the rezone? Do you have evidence for that?

Because it seems to me that the real minority is those who are in favor of this rezone. Are you sure that this notion that the opposition is a minority is not a figment of your imagination?

Yes, there may only be a small number of vocal people who oppose this rezone. But have you stopped to consider that for every one of those vocal people, there might be 10 or 20 or 30 or more people who agree with them? That the isthmus should not be sold off to the highest bidder so that only the richest among us can access an area that would be better off with equal access to all?

A vocal minority? — Not in my opinion.

Think - maybe it's a vocal element of a sizable majority.

And that with The Olympian acting as a virtual Larida Passage sales representative. - Imagine what public sentiment if we had a fair and balanced presentation from the local daily.

Finally, Real Progress? Come on Peter. You know that we have been over this. Building luxury "up-class" condos for the richest people in society is not real progress. It's a theft from the commons.

Rich people ought not be rewarded by a government bending over backwards to afford them the best views.

So much of the wealth that exists in America is the end product of destructive economic activity. Whether it is resource extraction, or the debt industry - much of today's wealth is the product of activities that do harm. People are being hurt while some other people reap benefits and supposed rewards from the hurtful activities. It's got to stop.

Luxury condominiums are the opposite of real progress for me.

And I think you would be surprised by how many people agree with me. Truly.