When a city council plan to pass draconian new regulations on bars
and clubs ran aground on massive public opposition, the council backed
off and created the Nightlife Advisory Board. When the council couldn’t
decide whether to push forward with public campaign financing, they
formed the Campaign Public Financing Advisory Committee.
And when it came time to decide whether to renew the parks levy in
2008, they turned, yet again, to their favorite standby. Voilà:
the 29-member Parks and Green Spaces Levy Citizens’ Advisory
Committee.
It’s an approach that’s both predictable and flaccid—all the more so because a 2008 parks levy is
opposed by Mayor Greg Nickels, who doesn’t want anything to
compete with his Pike Place Market levy this November.
Also predictably, Nickels and his parks department have done less
than nothing to get the word out about the oversight committee’s
meetings, failing to mention them on the mayor’s website (which
lavishes attention on Nickels’s Pike Place Market levy), the parks
website (currently highlighting the department’s “vast and exciting
array of classes“), or Parks’ extensive online calendar. Parks has
also reportedly failed to send out any notice of the public meetings to
its volunteer list or share that list with city council staffers,
who’ve been struggling to drum up interest in the meetings.
Those meetings got off to an inauspicious start on May 12, when,
over plates of lukewarm cheese slices and cups of Starbucks coffee, a
sparse crowd broke into small groups to discuss parks needs in their
neighborhoods. Participants in these rather haphazard focus groups
talked about the need for a citywide tree inventory, requested
funding for Beacon Hill’s long-neglected Jefferson Park, and debated
the relative merits of maintaining parks versus letting them go “back
to the earth.”
But despite being billed as a “public meeting,” Monday night’s
gathering drew scarcely two dozen members of the “public.”
(Fremont resident Geof Logan, clad in clip-in bike shoes and baggy
Spandex, groused, “Only through my own efforts did I know about this
meeting.”)
In fact, more than half of the 50 or so at the meeting were
oversight committee members or paid city staff—easily
identified by their preprinted nametags. These officials tended to
overwhelm the small groups, chiming in with suggestions that
represented their own constituencies or interests. Given that the
purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to “provide residents with an
opportunity to comment,” it would have been nice if committee members
had backed off and allowed the public, such as it was, to have its
say.
The remaining parks levy oversight committee meetings are Wednesday,
May 14, and Thursday, May 15; information at www.seattle.gov/council. 