Category: Olympia City Council (Page 4 of 9)

Via email, her response to a constituent who asked her about the incident:

I appreciate your concern. There is much more to the exchange between Mr. Segal and myself than is apparent to the public. I have a history with him. He does not like me and I hold him in low regard as well. I think he is a man who engages in politics as if it were a blood sport and I have little patience for that. I also believe he came to the first meeting after the election to gloat because some of the people he supported won. His comments were entirely politically motivated and wrong. He was wrong on the facts and he was wrong in his demeanor. I called him on it. For that I will not apoligize. Rather he should apologize for using an issue as important as how much money the City of Olympia spends on social services as a ploy to dig at Joan Machlis and Doug Mah. This is an issue very dear to my heart. I want to spend more money on the poor and hungry. Mr. Segal almost certainly knows that. He also knows I have advocated for two years to build a dog park. He coupled those two issues in his remarks to insult me along with spewing his venom for Joan and Doug. We don’t deserve that sort of treatment from anybody and I just won’t sit quietly and take it from Mr. Segal who doesn’t even live in Olympia but comes to our chambers regularly to engage in his sport.

Olympia spends $3.76 per citizen to fund social service agencies as recommended by the Human Services Review Council (HSRC–which is the interjurisdictional board that has, for the last 18 years, has been the place we all come together to provide some relief to the homeless and hungry). Last year, Thurston County, eliminated its funding to HSRC. This year, Commissioners have indicated they may be able to spend $50,000. If so, that would put them at 36 cents per citizen. That’s not all county citizens either, that’s just the ones who live in areas unincorprated by any city. Stephen Segal is such a citizen. He lives in unincorporated Thurston County. I really believe that if his concerns for the poor were genuine, as are mine, he would be leading a public effort to get Thurston County to increase its level of social service funding. Who better to fight for it than a person who enjoys political engagement and has strong speaking skills? Why would you not do that if you really cared about poor and hungry people more than you cared about hammering a political opponent you had just bested in an election? But, there he was coming before the Olympia City Council after election day to wag his finger at us. We are people who work hard for the City of Olympia and are already doing much, much more than anybody else to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens. His words were repugnant, his motivation transparent, and his manner disrespectful. I won’t apologize for responding to him as I did.

As for Ms. Gates, her concern for Mr. Segal’s welfare may have been genuine. Perhaps she really sees him as a victim and thinks him incapable of fighting his own battles. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and did not respond to her remarks. I can’t imagine why you think I would owe her an apology. I did suspect at the time that she was using the podium to launch her 2011 election campaign, but I kept silent on it. Mr. Segal was in the chamber long enough to watch Ms. Gates make her comments. He did not speak for himself but stood in the back glaring at me while his advocate, who was visibly nervous, spoke on his behalf. Ms. Gates strikes me as a woman deeply committed to her community and I respect her for that. But she is wrong about the interaction between Mr. Segal and me. I was not unprofessional, I gave him all the respect he deserved, and I will do it again if he brings his game back to the Olympia City Council Chambers.

On a positive note, I look forward to working amiably with my new colleagues on the Council. I have already met privately with two of them and have pledged to do my best to help them be successful in their new roles. I have offered to meet with the third and hope to do that soon. The citizens of Olympia deserve our best effort, not more political gamesmanship. I only wish everybody understood that.

Sincerely,

Rhenda Iris Strub
Olympia City Councilmember

It does sort of support my original point, that Rhenda may have been pointed with her original comments. But, if Segall was in the room when Janine was talking Tuesday night, he should have stood up for himself.

I’m just going to throw this out, but maybe Rhenda should bring cookies to the next city council meeting. Just a suggestion.

Janine Gates’ thoughts about how Olympia city councilmember Rhenda Strub can be a meany sometimes are posted up at Olyblog early this moring. Here’s the important part, I’d say read the whole thing too:

…I feel compelled to comment on Councilmember Strub’s inappropriate tirade against a Mr. Steve Segall who testified before you last week. It doesn’t matter what he testified about, but in this case, he was giving his viewpoints, with the best of his knowledge, on homelessness issues and dog park funding.

Ms. Strub, as we know, it is hard enough to get people to come to city hall and get up the nerve to speak publicly about anything. Your verbal attack toward him personally, and against his testimony, as I watched it live from home on TCTV, was shocking and unwarranted.

I would like to thank Councilmember Joe Hyer for immediately expressing his opinion that Mr. Segall had every right to speak to city issues – if he hadn’t, one could think that Ms. Strub spoke for all of you.

Here is audio of the actual exchange.

Ok, maybe Rhenda was being a bit pointed, but you can’t at all argue with her logic.

Olympia does spend a lot of money on the homeless and a lot more than the local government of which Mr. Segall is a citizen. He has every right to come into Olympia or Lacey or Tumwater to give his thoughts (and he’s obviously not shied away from coming into Olympia).

So, yes, for Pete’s sake, let’s let Mr. Segall commute in from the suburban sprawl out in the county to give his public comment. And, if he’s way off base, have a city council member correct him (maybe in a more friendly tone). But, don’t pretend that is was some major sin. Being active means having people disagree with you.

A little while ago, following some bad press that the Economic Development Council was behind on writing a big plan, I wondered whether the EDC should broaden its view to include representatives beyond elected officials and business owners.

I still think that, but I’m also wondering this morning, given Olympia intent to cut funding for the regional body, whether Olympia really needs the EDC. The economic destiny of Olympia seems to rest more closely to the economic fate of the rest of the state. And, despite the bad economy, we don’t seem to be doing all that poorly (being rated above even Seattle in job creation).

But, let me just say this. Even the president of the council should know that economic conditions can have more to do with way outside the community actions and little to do with local boosterism and planning.

For me (I dropped off my ballot this morning) this is an interesting read, but unfortunately came too late to help me make my decision.

This is especially interesting for the candidates I didn’t vote for. Take Tony Sermonti:

Sermonti in a snazzy suit. (Note to Sermonti: I think Oly is not so much a suit kinda town.) I actually felt bad for him, because he was totally off-key on the isthmus issue, and walked right into it. I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made for developing that space (and personally I don’t give a damn about the view question), but he sure didn’t make it. He came off as classist — there’s too much subsidized housing downtown, not enough that “people like me” can buy (as an aside to the aside: what makes him think he could afford one of the proposed townhouses?) — and high-handed. That got highlighted when Mark Derricott asked him a “philosophical” question, and he responded in part by saying we don’t live in a representative democracy. I’d like to think he got that sort of backwards: we don’t live in a direct democracy, but (in theory) a representative one, in which we elect people to make decisions for us. But wow…his actual response just about set the room on fire. Thankfully, C spoke up quite loudly from off in the corner of the room, and suggested that since this was the last candidate of the evening, perhaps we should break for snacks and one-on-one conversation.

I think in a way, Sermonti is the perfect anti-Joe Hyer candidate, because if there had been a good articulation for developing the isthmus, Joe would have voted for it. But, the way it was, there was a lot of passion in the against column, a few people who really wanted it but couldn’t communicate why in a way that made sense. And, people like Elaine and I that thought it might not be a bad idea, but never heard a great argument.

Roe:

…but when she rattled off a list of issues she wanted to tackle, she mentioned making parking in downtown free again. Uh, no. After “listening in” on C’s urban studies classes, I think free parking is pretty much the last thing we need. (See the work of Donald Shoup for details, or Google for “high cost of free parking.”) I wasn’t entirely sure I heard her correctly, so I visited her site a couple of days later and yes, she does want to making parking free in downtown. So my somewhat eccentric reasoning leads me to support Joan Machlis — who wasn’t there, but it was the first night of her MPA classes, so I understand.

It surprised me that I never really considered voting for Roe. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I never really heard anything from her. At one point I was just getting the impression that she was hoping for her opposition to the isthmus development to carry to her over the line. Joan Machlis, on the other hand, always seemed to have clearly articulated positions (some of which I’ll admit I don’t agree with), but communicated to me at my level.

Its hard to say that I chose a candidate based on their website, but that’s basically what I’m saying. I could agree with Joan on a lot of issues and she communicated like it mattered.

Anyway, to get back to Elaine’s point about parking, it seems like Roe picked one more surface issue that actually has deep implications to push her over the line. No serious person who understood the city’s approach to parking downtown would suggest free parking. By even approaching it shows that she’s willing to take a cheap position to score points.

It makes total sense that most of the people who weighed in on this question did so in private. Because in the case of the two Karens up for one seat on the city council, its all about personality.

Instead of responding to the post, most people found some other way to contact me that was less public. Most likely because it isn’t very polite to say “well, that one is a jerk (Rogers) and the other doesn’t know very much (Veldeer).” While people I like and respect didn’t want to say that in public, its still worth knowing so you can decide who you’re going to vote for.

Back to the original post quickly, Thad Curtz puts up a lot of good information (some rather inside baseball), but worth reading. Darkwaterkate and Chad360 also had illustrative reasons why they support Karen Veldeer as well, which both in a way speak to my broader point below.

So, here is the collected knowledge of the larger number of people who responded in private to me:

• The knock on Karen Veldeer is that’s she’s very nice, but not so well versed in city government. But, people say, she’ll learn on the job and make nice with other council members and citizens.
• The knock on Karen Rogers it that she isn’t very nice at all, and while she may be better versed on the issues, may not be willing to learn on the job or get along with people.

And, on the issues, they’re about the same, so when it comes down to it, its about whether you want someone who doesn’t know how to treat people (Rogers) to someone who may be a way more humble, but will work to fill her role on the council (Veldeer).

In my final analysis, I’d rather see where the nice person ends up than see where the not so nice person fits themselves. So, I’m voting for Karen Veldeer.

City of Olympia by Dreamjung at flickr:


I’m technically violating the rules over at facebook by pointing this out, but someone tore down Tony Sermonti’s billboard Thursday night. From what the Sermonti posted up on his account last night, the police are investigating.

Which gets me to the point of a post that I’ve been meaning to write since I started noticed those “they can’t govern us” posters around town last February or so. The sentiment in those posters, the same that tore down Tony’s billboard this week, is the same that infects the so-called Tea Baggers.

One of the most interesting parts of the primary election cycle in Olympia for me is the difference between the folks that vote in the primary and those that vote in the general a few months later.

While I was really wrong about my original assumption about low turnout during this primary, its still interesting to look at what precincts will provide more votes in November.

The primary two years ago had a classic example of this shifting primary/general electorate. Rhenda Strub got through the primary with 3,000 votes (39 percent) but won the general with over 6,000 votes (55 percent). Her opponent barely improved here vote total in the primary, picking up less than 1,000 of the more than 4,000 available new votes.

So, there are a handful of precincts in Olympia that compared to the general in 2007 (the only comparable primary because it was the only one also held in August) voted in low numbers during the 2009 primary. The map below shows the 10 precincts that had less than 65 percent of the votes they had in 2007.

View under vote precincts in a larger map

Just a few thoughts about these precincts:

1. Most are on the edges of town. You could assume that these, then, are people who spend less time downtown and might shop in Lacey as much as they shop in Olympia.

2. 4 of the 10 are in SE Olympia. These are newer, probably more conservative (by Olympia standards) areas.

3. If you care about downtown, you voted in this election. I haven’t mapped the anti-Larida Passage candidates by precinct, so I don’t know if they did particularly well in one part of town. But from the low turnout in the non-downtown focused areas, I feel safe to say that Larida Passage brought people out for this one.

4. On the other hand, there will be people voting in November that don’t care much about Larida Passage. Turnout is going up in November, especially in these precincts. The question is who is going to speak to these folks who stayed out of the primary?

A much better answer to the question Rob and I raised earlier:

WIP: There’s been some discussion on the local blogs regarding your faith, and the possibility that it will affect your position on equal benefits for city employees with same sex domestic partners. Could you put this in perspective for WIP readers? What is your religious affiliation, and what influence will it have on your policy positions? And specifically, what is your position on same sex partner benefits?

KV: I support the city policy for equal benefits for same sex domestic partners. I am a member of the orthodox Presbyterian church and my religious faith will have no bearing on the decisions I will make as a civic leader on the Olympia city council. I believe in a separation of Church and State. Further, the state of Washington provides over 200 civil rights, many of which are very important to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered communities, and I support these laws as well.

Which, of course, she never says that being gay isn’t a sin, just that her faith doesn’t inform her political beliefs.

Just to be clear, I disagree with my church (up until recent months I was receiving communion at St. Mike’s Catholic Church and have been raised Catholic) on their position regarding homosexuality. Karen may very well believe being gay is a sin, but still support gay rights.

For the candidates that are carrying a sort of isthmus vote around with them this year (Amy Tousley on the planning commission, Jeff Kingsbury and Joan Machlis), its probably important to address the vote in a way that puts them past it. Machlis makes a good effort in her piece this morning on growth:

I want to acknowledge that feelings about land use are some of the strongest that emerge at the local government level. I am not satisfied that as a community we have found the best ways to discuss our differences concerning land use. As these differences will continue to occur throughout the community, I will work to improve the public process and the quality of these discussions.

This is the kicker for me:

The Thurston Regional Planning Council estimates that to accommodate 120 units of housing in Downtown with structured parking it takes 1.4 acres, while the same amount of housing would take 11 acres in the South Capitol Neighborhood, 39 acres in a suburban area, and 580 acres in the rural area zoned at 1 unit per five acres.

Its a good explanation of the facts and the dire situation we really are in that forces the kind of hard decisions that Joan and the rest of the council had to make. I’m certainly not proud of the decision, but I supported it, it was the best of a bad situation.

If there’s anything wrong with the post, its the formatting. Its on the long side, so changing up the formatting (section headers, bullet points) probably would help the reader slog through the entire piece.