Citizens’ oversight is more important now than ever | Letters | March 19
Published 2:49 pm Friday, March 19, 2010
About 60 years ago, an islander named John Nelson gave some Winslow land to the city on the condition that about an acre of it be set aside for use as a park.
A few years ago, the city traded this land to a local developer in exchange for the Strawberry Plant parcel. However, the original agreement with Nelson stipulated that the park had to be on his property.
When the trade occurred, the parkland agreement involving the Nelson property was highly publicized.
The new owner of the Nelson Park property recently submitted a short-plat application to the city. The first step of the process is for the applicant to meet with city staff to find out what the major issues and hurdles may be.
Apparently, the notion that any portion of this land should be set aside for a park was never discussed at this meeting, as the property owner followed by submitting his plan to subdivide without setting aside land for a park. (Yet this application was immediately titled “Nelson Park Short-plat” by the city).
Several months later, after a concerned parks department employee got wind of the application and spoke up, the planning department began to acknowledge that, perhaps, a park should be set aside in this subdivision.
Over the years I’ve read that Winslow residents desire more parks in town. The folks in the planning department must be aware of this and were aware of the original agreement with Mr. Nelson.
Yet, city staffers seemingly encouraged this development plan without inclusion of a park.
How many times must we watch as city staff gives away our valuable resources with lack of consideration for public interest?
Time after time, we have seen staff push projects through with the appearance of back-room deals and process shortcuts, followed by the public erupting in anger over legitimate concerns that public interests were ignored or basic principles of fairness were not upheld.
The city then promises to do it better next time only to have it happen again and again.
At a recent meeting on the contentious Island Gateway project, council member Bill Knobloch said the council should have some oversight in major planning decisions.
In reply, interim Deputy City Manager Stan McNutt said it would be counterproductive for the council to become involved in every development.
For a city employee to even imply that having our elected representatives involved in planning decisions would be counterproductive is surprising, to say the least.
I would argue that this type of oversight is extremely productive, and Mr. McNutt needs to think about the role of government and the priorities our city employees should be adhering to.
Despite my criticism, I believe city employees are good, hard working people. But they have suffered for years from severely poor management, which apparently has not yet changed even with our new form of government.
Now our council is considering leaving the vacant department head positions open to save money. Staff members support this, claiming they don’t need leadership.
In my opinion, this is a huge mistake. If we are to see any real change in the way business is done in this town, we need new competent department heads who understand the role of good government in a democracy.
Finding budgetary savings should be done in less important areas.
Steve Keller
Eagle Harbor Driv
