Written by A couple quick highlights from Monday’s council meeting.
We achieved agreement on the 2009 budget! This is the earliest budget agreement I’ve seen in Renton…having resolved all of the questions prior to Thanksgiving. We held the first reading of all the ordinances on Monday, and we will read the ordinances a second and final time next Monday…thus putting the budget into law.
Mayor Law, Council President Palmer, the mayor’s staff, and all the council members deserve credit for working through the issues early and productively to get this done in such a timely way.
While the 2009 budget is very lean, most citizens won’t notice a drop in service. Taxes have not increased either, although we have made modest increases in water utility fees and renegotiated the garbage contract which expires next year (and garbage fees will increase).
Also on Monday I referred the subject of tree cutting permits, and how we enforce them. This issue has been front-and-center with me since trees have been mistakenly/wrongfully cut now on two sides of my home in the last few months. I suggested on Monday that if people in the tree cutting profession or developers have any ideas for improving the situation, I would love to hear them. In the meantime, I will be working on some of my own, such as construction fences around trees to be saved in developments BEFORE grading or cutting permits are issued; Property ownership map submittal with letters of property owner permission before tree cutting permits are granted; agreement that police officers will enforce these provisions on weekends, and other ideas.
The Committee of the Whole will first get a briefing on this topic, and then we can decide what to do with it after that.
another idea
Randy, is it a possibility that we could have a Heritage Tree program? Even buying development rights to stands of significant trees, or allowing more development density where tree retention meets certain criteria would save more trees than this outdated process is doing. Vigorous enforcement of all environmental laws, and prosecution for ignoring them, should be Renton’s reputation- not the current perception that the city will look the other way.