Written by Dear world,
Tonight I’m going to make a motion that Renton City Council pass the following resolution. Our Council Liaison is actively working to notify other council members, but I wanted the rest of the world to know as well….
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‘It is moved that Renton City Council Adopt the following position by resolution:
The Renton City Council continues to be committed to the revitalization of the Highlands community, especially the sub-area that has been the focus of the City’s attention most recently.
Because a good deal of negative attention has been focused on the State’s Community Renewal Act, particularly the portion that allows for the potential use of eminent domain, Council recommends that the administration continue working with the community on redevelopment opportunities, through appropriate rezoning of the area, without the use of the Community Renewal Act, or eminent domain, to achieve these goals.
Council also supports the use of an aggressive code enforcement effort to target those properties that violate city codes and are a public nuisance and a police enforcement plan that will result in reducing overall crime problems in the community that have been identified by the administration.
It is recommended that there be additional meetings of the Committee of the Whole, in the upcoming weeks, to finalize a rezoning of the area that will meet the needs of current property owners, while also providing new opportunities and encouragement for developers to make an investment in this community.’
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Tonight’s meeting is not a scheduled public hearing, so anyone who feels the desire to comment on this matter would need to do so in the Audience Comment section at the beginning or end of the meeting. The staff has not had time to prepare for large crowds, so I’m not necessarily encouraging you all turnout, but you may want to tune into the meeting and/or make sure enough folks are attending to represent your interests.
I’ll let you know how it went with an entry after the meeting!
Best Wishes,
Randy
from Inez: Council reborn after C section, I mean session
Tonight was a landmark evening at the Renton City Council. First, Council President Randy Corman made his Highlands Resolution, there was debate and I was getting worried that the City Attorney would find a way to gum up the works, but after some hagling, the vote was YES. But Councilman Clawson had to comment after the vote that there was nothing that prevented them from bringing back the Community Renewal Act later.
My heart was so filled with gratitude, I went to Safeway on the way home and bought some red vines to celebrate. I’m excited for the Council to see what the HCA is preparing for them–an ambitious project comparing “as is” and current planned Comp Plan, Zoning, Text Amendments, etc., which is the baseline for the HCA recommendations. We will inform them like they’ve never been informed before.
That is why I wrote to the Council about having a way for citizen groups to make presentations at the Committee of the Whole. The “5-minute at the podium” way of getting citizen input just isn’t sufficient on an important matter such as the Highlands Redevelopmenht.
Before I go onto to the piece de resistance, I need to comment that Terri Briere and Dan Clawson worked for a year on the Highlands redevelopment; and at a May workshop on eminent domain, she apologized to the rest of the council for not keeping them up to date during the year. Now that you know that, I can go on to the piece de resistance.
Terri Briere and the mayor have been working for a year on the City’s new website. It wasn’t broken and was really very practical and easy to navigate, so I couldn’t see a need to redo it just for the sake of redoing it, but that is what occurred.
The other day, Terri Briere presented her prototype to Randy, Don and Marci. They were surprised to see that Terri had replaced the City’s logo and the City’s motto, “Ahead of the curve,” without any pre-coordination with the rest of the Council. That overflowed into tonight’s city council discussions, and I am so proud of Marci Palmer for holding her ground, for Don’s comments, Toni’s, and Denis Law’s too. Clawson withdrew early on and indicated he would abstain from voting, which he did.
A long and frustrating conversation took place, and the mayor and Terri Briere were back peddling and inferring that the new logo wasn’t replacing the current logo, but in the meeting with Randy, Don, and Marci, they have talked about a replacement plan, so this new logo was just that–a new logo decided upon by Terri Briere and the mayor. Shades of the Highlands Redevelopment plan, right?
Both Terri and the mayor indicated that putting the current logo on the new website would be a major hold up, which it isn’t if the company they hired used frames and not tables. And if this company used tables, then the money to redo the website was really wasted.
Several of us in the audience knew that changing a graphic on a navigation page of a frames-based website is a piece of cake. It was hard to sit quietly
from Inez: Council reborn after C section, I mean session
continued . . . I must have hit the wrong button.
Several of us in the audience knew that changing a graphic on a navigation template of a frames-based website is a piece of cake, so it was hard to sit quietly and let the conversation run its course.
The back peddling from Terri, and the actions of the mayor were classic. “If I can’t get my way, I’ll take my toys and go home.” This was the mayor’s reaction; and wasn’t it reminiscent of her saying she wasn’t going to spend the $1.5 million on streets, sidewalks, and alleys in the Highlands, since the HCA put a clinker into her “vision for a urban village.”
What the audience saw tonight was the first flexing of the Council’s muscles to regain its power to fulfill its rightful place in legislating for this City.
Hooray for the City Council tonight. It was reborn after a C-section, I mean C session . . . Council session. I’m sure we’ll see more opportunities to take back lost power in the weeks to come.
And don’t forget to look for the Renton Reporter on Wednesday. Who knows what they did with the mayor’s Q&A about why she didn’t take a lie detector test. She needs to take one, and so do Terri Briere and Jay Covington. This is part of being accountable to the Citizens.
Some of us are talking about starting a recall petition, if they won’t voluntarily take a lie detector test to settle Lipstick Gate.
Good summary of the logo debate!
Inez must have written this at the same time I was working on my blog on the logo above. I have to say she captured the discussion extremely well.