A missed opportunity | IN OUR OPINION
Published 11:00 am Sunday, January 10, 2016
The Bainbridge Island City Council missed a great opportunity to live up to a promise made while simultaneously doing a little bit of damage control on the fitful process to decide the future of the public’s Suzuki property.
The city council agreed this week to hold multiple public meetings in the weeks to come during which the proponents of taking over the land — three groups want to develop it for housing projects, and the park district has proposed keeping it as open space — will have a chance to explain their development proposals.
One of the meetings will be devoted to presentations to the public; the four groups will get to explain their plans. After those presentations, residents will be able to stop by stations set up by each group to get more details and ask questions.
At this week’s council meeting, neighbors near the Suzuki property — many of whom have consistently raised concern over too-dense development of the land and the resulting impacts on traffic and the environment — asked that they, too, be given a table to share their vision for the property.
That idea, sadly, was rejected by the council. Some said their vision would be represented by the park district at its station.
Wrong.
Not only wrong, but it seems to run counter to the insistence by some on the council that just because the city is entertaining development options doesn’t actually mean that it will choose one of the alternatives before it.
In our mind, this potential “no action” alternative is quite different than a public park or dedicated open space. The two ideas are not interchangeable.
A “no action” approach simply moves the Suzuki debate to the back burner, where it has been for years.
The do-nothing approach is an option, and one that should be explored as vigorously as all the others. And who better to explain the value of the land as it now sits than those who live nearby and will be the most impacted by the construction of dozens and dozens of new homes on the now-forested property?
The council missed a great chance to underscore that the “no action” alternative was truly a choice on the table, but missed that chance by not giving the people who really champion that choice a seat at the table (of their own).
