MEETING AGENDA
- 6:30 – 6:50 Agenda presentation and Report from Neighborhoods
- 6:50 – 7:05 Update from Councilmember Gilman
- 7:05 – 7:45 New Police Chief Recruitment Input – Jay Burney, City Mgr
- 7:45 – 7:50 Five Minute Stretch
- 7:50 – 8:20 Parks Presentation – Laura Keehan, Parks Planner
- 8:20 – 8:25 Prior meeting minutes approval (September) – Larry Dzieza
- 8:25 – 8:30 Agenda Ideas for next month Ideas
- 8:30 Adjourn
Meeting Handouts:
Urban Forestry Consultants June 2020
City Maintained Street Trees Map
Council of Neighborhood Associations (CNA) Minutes
Date: Monday, November 9th 2020 Time: 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Location: Zoom virtual meeting
CNA Meeting Minutes – November 9, 2020, via Zoom, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Present: Council of Neighborhood Associations Officers: Larry Dzieza (Nottingham) – Chair, Melissa Allen (BHNA) – Vice Chair, Mark Toy (SWONA) and Jim Rioux (ENA) – Co-Secretaries
Members: Judy Bardin (NWONA), Bruce Coulter (NWONA), Bob Jacobs (GSNA), Jenn Wulf (DNA), Darrah Johnson (Wildwood NA), Martha Worcester (Redwood Estates), Jenn Wulf (DNA), Bob Schoorl (South Capital), Sal Munoz (Cooper Crest HOA), Dana McAvoy (Eastbay Drive), Helen Wheatley (CRANA)
City & State Representatives & Presenters: Jay Burney (City Manager), Lydia Moorehead (Community Planning), Clark Gilman (City Council), Laura Keehan (City Parks)
AGENDA
6:30 – 6:50 Agenda presentation and Report from Neighborhoods
Jim Rioux (ENA): Just looking forward to the holiday season again in that Forestry group we used to have some caroling, events and some other winter events and those are sort of challenging. I think we’re looking at some somehow highlighting a map of displays. Other than that, looking at sidewalk issues following up on some comments that Mark Russell made in response to Roger Horns comments at council.
And I just thought I would mention that Halloween was kind of cool up in the Eastside neighborhood. There are a couple of places that did some really cool displays that were on a map. We had a whole bunch of pumpkins on our porch. It was kind of a fun surprise on a nice night . Hopefully we can have something similar going into the Christmas Holidays and Thanksgiving.
Larry asked if Roger could come in and talk to us about sidewalk issues later. It might be good to maybe put it as a future agenda item? Larry will put that on the on the To Do List.
Melissa: Larry, I can probably comment somewhat on it because both Jim and I are on all the emails that are flying back and forth about it because it’s a united effort started by East Side, but Northeast is joining in because we’re real focused on walkability issues. So we’re getting ready to do some things.
Darrah Johnson (Wildwood): We are looking forward to our planning for 2021 events. Putting stuff on the calendar and trying to be flexible with what will be possible.We have almost a full board we have five out of our six positions filled right now. We just had some elections.
And then as far as events go, we had on Halloween a fall photo booth. So we had some bales of hay and some corn stalks and some little signs with a festive festive backdrop and then encourage folks to come by and take photos and socially distanced while doing so. So we got some submissions there, did some pumpkin decorating for the kids, and then we have an ‘I V’ (?) pull at Trillium Park coming up this Saturday and that’ll be in partnership with Governor Stevens neighborhood as well. So that’s what’s going on here.
Bob Schoorl (South Capital):South Capitol neighborhood all quiet right now. We haven’t had too much in the way of protest. We had a little one after election, of course.
Uh, we had a good Halloween. It was kind of fun because we actually did Halloween for the neighborhood kids in the night before with all the social distancing I think in part because we, our neighborhood, is always one that everybody drives to to see the Pumpkin House and the Pirate House and all that stuff. There were people that came on Halloween but we took care of our kids the night before, but now a couple dozen houses really stepped up. We’re having our annual meeting on December 3rd. Our keynote speaker is Clark, who I will touch base with later when we get a little more information on what the neighbors want to hear, so that’s it. Hopefully everybody will have a reasonably good Thanksgiving.
Bruce Coulter (NWONA): Pretty quiet in the Northwest neighborhood. We’re waiting for the Arts Commission (Stephanie Johnson) to announce the beginning of the installation of the art that’s going to be on West Bay Drive. Unsure of dates, but that’ll probably be the next big event that’s going to happen in the Northwest neighborhood.
Bruce expressed concerns about situationon Deschutes Parkway over to Tumwater. He was going on southbound the other day and a couple of guys came out of the the homeless encampment (two young thin guys with cotton flannel shirts on and jeans) and each of them had an aerosol paint carry in each hand. They weren’t trying to hide him or anything, so I don’t know if if that means anything, but it made him wonder if the police ever go in there and do any kind of Recon or any kind of looking around.
Larry: Well, we got a great opportunity today to talk with with Jay Burney about the hiring a new police chief. That might be one of the issues you want to talk about.
Mellisa: There’s a lot going on right now on West Bay Drive. Does your neighborhood have any comments you want to make about that?
Bruce: That’s the Oly Ecosystems reclamation of the West Bay Woods and Daniel Einstein and Oly Ecosystems have gotten significant loans and and grants to clear the Woods and create an outfall for I think it’s Schneider Creek. The city’s also got a project coming up in there they’re just starting it to create an aquaduct of water coming off of the lower part of the neighborhood and going down through that area and they’re going to turn it into a stream with a reflecting pool is going to be quite a thing so that’s on going.
Sal Munoz (Cooper Crest HOA): All is quiet on the Western Front. We had our first zoom annual meeting and in spite of the perceived convenience of doing things by zoom, we didn’t get a quorum unfortunately. So we weren’t able to conduct any significant business, but we did give the opportunity to our folks to vent as they like to do.
Melissa Allen (BHNA): Let’s see, we are moving ahead with distributing our neighborhood walking Maps, which was the core part of our presentation.Not justBigelow Highlands it’s from the entire northeast area which we call ONNA (Olympia Northeast Neighborhoods Alliance) and so we’re distributing those maps neighborhood by neighborhood but it depends onhow we’re going to do it. That’s always the thing because we had these grand plans for walks, guided walks and oh prizes and things for people to get but now we’re trying to do some different things about passing him out from house to house and whatnot because we don’t have enough for everybody. We’re just trying to engage people.Working with, as Jim said, Eastside Neighborhood Association. Eastside took the lead in this presentation around walkability, but other Olympia Northeast neighborhoods joined in with them, and Peter Gutcheon was there, and Jim Sweeney and Roger and whatnot.
We are trying to make some specific recommendations for hindrances to walkability in our neighborhoods, and so Peter Gutcheon has access to GIS mapping application so he’s trying to put together something that we individuals can download to go around and map their streets, which I think is real interesting. I have not a clue how to do it but will learn more about that.
Dana McAvoy (East Bay Drive): Yeah, on the East Bay Drive it’s been pretty quiet.Not much activity in the neighborhood is just.And by we’ve been monitoring the RV situation along these Bay Drive, I think we’ve gained one additional in the last couple of weeks.So we just watching that pretty close to see what’s going on. Another now we’ll just, you know, make it through the Holidays I guess.
Mark Toy (SWONA): I sent a note last month but it’s not on the minutes about what we were doing, but we got a group together and we did maintenance on all the graffiti on the mural on Olympic Way NW. SWONA apparently had an agreement with the city from 2012 to maintain that, so Lydia reminded me and we got a group together and we did that maintenance and as of a week or so ago it hasn’t been tagged. Also, we had a meeting with the Unity Church on Fern Street. They are going to do weekly mobile shower there for local homeless. And they were in the running for temporary shelter for those people being evicted from the 2828 Martin Way site but it doesn’t sound like they got that assignment, but I’ll check with them after the meeting and see what’s happening. Other than that, we have a quarterly meeting December 17th I think. And I I’ve got to get a meeting together with folks to decide if we’re going to do anything around the Christmas Holidays. That’s about it.
Bob Jacobs (Governor Stevens Neighborhood Association). The big thing on the horizon for us is a proposal for rezoning our neighborhoods. In fact, all neighborhoods could. (Bob goes over chart – see attachment). So I think we all know that the comp plan targets ncreasing housing density throughout the city. Most of it going into some high density nodes downtown and one corridor on the Eastside and one on the Westside, but also increasing densities of housing in neighborhoods.
We spent a lot of time talking about the missing middle proposal a couple of years ago. That’s been determined to be illegal and is now at least temporarily dead. But the new proposal is called housing options and very quickly I’ll just go over our current situation and a very very skinny version of what’s being proposed.
In the R4-8 zone, which is the least dense of our zones and is what most of our neighborhoods are in there are seven different kinds of housing that are currently allowed under current law, and they are listed here. Single family houses, townhouses, accessory dwelling units, Tiny houses, Manufactured houses, College Housing and Co-housing. That’s where we stand now.
In an extremely simplified explanation, what’s being proposed now by the Planning Commission actually goes far beyond what the planning staff suggested and some of you may know about it from past times. But the Planning Commission acted about a week ago. In R4-8, newly allowed would be duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. Those are items that are not in that list of seven now. These will be added.
What’s very interesting about this is because of a quirk in the way the state law reads, these would all be allowed on much smaller lots than were allowed in the past.They will now, according to the recommendation, be allowed on a 4000 square foot lot with a 45 foot width minimum.
That’s a very small lot for that kind of structure, but it certainly can be done. I can go over a lot more and there are a couple other charts that go into a lot more detail, mostly put together by Judy Bardin, but I’ll stop now. That’s the very brief version of what’s being suggested.
Larry: OK great I can. I can share this with the group too and I think there was something that maybe you sent me or Judy’s me from the city that has a kind of a layout of what the city’s Planning Commission recommendations are too so I can share that with the group.
Bob: Right there are total 5 sheets. The one is up there now. I put together with Judy’s help. The two charts that Julie put together and I helped a little on. And then there are two pages, one of which is a chart from the city. I just found that the city’s display was not as understandable as a simple chart and so Judy and I worked very hard over the weekend to get this thing together and we have it now.
The reason to be getting on this right away is that we’ve been told that this is likely to go to Council for Action in December and it’s possible that it will go to council and be acted on before our next meeting. So if neighborhood associations want to have any input on this to the Council, this is the time to be getting organized and thinking about it. Remember that as we said earlier, these kinds of changes will not be appealable. You can’t wait until somebody’s going to get a building permit for a Fourplex in your neighborhood on a 4000 square foot lot and appeal it because the state law forbids appeals. So this is the time and lobbying the Council is the way. Whether you like it, love it, or whether you don’t love it, get involved. It’s a democracy.
Marty Worcester (Redwood Estates): We were kind of having a crisis in leadership in that our president was going to step down, but I talked to him recently and the board will all hang in there during this Covid year and and work on things. So that’s really good news. And I got in touch with the Neighborhood Association next to us called the Elements and I’m hoping I can convince them to come on board with our group there. They have about 90 houses adjacent to Redwood Estates, so I’m hoping that maybe they’ll come to one of our meetings and I can get them to join. Other than that, there’s really no news.
We aren’t having a meeting putting it off for a bit and contacting people by email president isn’t into zoom, so I tried to talk him into it but it didn’t work. So that’s what’s going on in our neighborhood. Nothing really astounding going on where a pretty quiet neighborhood. We had a nice Halloween. Kids went around, but we had ways to help them social distance and keep everything clean and sanitary so the kids were out pretty much. And there are a bunch of cute ones.
Larry: Really, yeah we had the same thing over here, socially distant Halloween and we had a board meeting and we set up our annual meeting. We’re going to be zooming all of that.
Helen Wheatley (CRANA): Yeah, pretty quiet in CRANA too. Tonight, actually, right now there’s a meeting about the Olympia High School Stadium. The issue being whether to open it up for community groups to use so there’s not much to say about that at this point, because it’s going on right now.
Other than that, with us the big thing is the food project. The next collection date is on December 12 and the big thing about the food bank these days is that they want a very limited number of items. It’s not just go to your pantry and figure out what you have at this point there. I can tell you what they’re really looking for is canned soup, family sized mac and cheese, cup of soup or ramen, and canned chili. That is what they really, really want. It’s partly an issue of not having enough people to be able to sort at this point. Not having enough volunteers and also just consistency in what they give out. So those are the four big things.
6:50 – 7:05 Update from Councilmember Gilman
Yes indeed, but I appreciate all the updates and I’m going to look forward to reading through the sheets that Judy worked on over the weekend with Bob’s assistance.
I promised last week at the Council meeting that I would take a walk in the LBA Woods and I spent the morning on Wednesday in the park. And I’ll give my brief impressions. I think that ecologically, it looks more like a big vacant lot to me. I’ll be honest. There’s a lot of invasives across the place, so it’s a big project. But as a Regional Park, it’s clearly loved. There were seven dogs, 5 of them off leash. There were two joggers that went by and one kid cutting through the park to get to the other side of the neighborhood on a rainy Wednesday morning. So as a park it’s loved. I’m really encouraged by the the park’s advocates and the neighborhoods participating in a planning effort for what sort of restoration might be done to that parcel an I’m really impressed with 1500 hours of volunteer labor that’s already gone into the part, so that was it was nice to spend a morning there.
I can’t help it I think that every meeting I’ve been in the last little while has been a little more subdued, and I think we’re all kind of – hopeful but also waiting to make sure that a civil war isn’t starting up. And I would just say, you know, offering grace to folks having a little a little patience with people who are frustrated and venting. And hopefully we won’t have anymore fistfights in the middle of Capitol, Way, you know, as we’re sorting this out.
The LBA Woods reminds me that Engage Olympia is a is a tool that the city has that we haven’t showcased here for awhile but I think I just want to make sure that everybody is aware that on the Engage Olympia portal we have each of the current projects the City is working on, where we’re seeking public input and that we’re working towards. Right now the LBA Woods Trail development is on there. The Landlord Tenant Regulations work is on there. The Yelm Highway Spooners property Is on there and the presentation that we’re going to hear next about the police chief search. There’s a request for your input into that, so I just want to point out that the Engage Olympia portal is alive and thriving. In Covid time we’ve been getting large numbers of comments and participation through that.
As Bob Jacobs pointed out, the Housing Options infill housing codes are returning to Council with a recommendation that came last week from the Planning Commission. So you already spoke to that. I’ll be looking closely at the whole package, but specifically at the the changes that the Planning Commission made from the staff recommendations, including going to larger size four-plex and six-plex units, be considering the lot size recommendations and then getting clear again on some elements. Of those changes are requirements that if we do it at all, it has to carry some some descriptions that come from the State language. The enabling legislation, like the not restricting ADUs properties to be owner occupied, so that’s coming back to us. And then I just wanted to briefly run through the overlapping efforts for reimagining public safety and police accountability. As we’ve got on the Agenda, City manager Burney is going to speak to the new police chief recruitment. We’ve just kicked off an ad hoc committee on police accountability, where Council will be working with a staff team to look at the systems and make sure that in the conversation about broader philosophy and what’s happening around the country, we’re also coming to an understanding about how we handle bail, how we handle handle the transfer to Thurston, all those those specifics. What happens to an individual from the point they get arrested, to the point that their sentenced so that so that we can figure out where there might be interventions along that way.
The Diversity and Equity Commission is going to launch with an addition with an initial core of people to help them shape the initial form of that Commission and to recruit the first round of applicants that we will interview and select for the Commission and then beginning in the second quarter of next year in about April, we’re going to start a process much like the homelessness one with community listening sessions around public safety and police accountability, and run a variety of both public forums and more narrow focus group sorts of sessions with different groups of people from particular interests.
So we’ll have those overlapping efforts. Oh, and one other piece we’ve done is to reinstate the police auditor contract. We’ve hired a law firm who’s done quite a bit of this kind of work, and was really well versed in in all of the sort of the current reforms about making public safety more of a guardian and less of a warrior, more of a social worker in less than a soldier kind of model. We’re hoping that in the years when there’s not a terrible incident that they have to do, their police auditor work around will be able to have them use their expertise to dig into our policies and procedures with an outside experts’ eyes. The last piece was we just appointed 6 community members to be available as a pool to be to serve as citizen eyes and ears on any use of critical force, Use of Deadly Force investigation that comes to the police.
Jenn Wulf: Can you provide more detail on what the police auditor will do when not responding to a terrible incident?
Clark: So in the description in the request for proposals we talked about having them do more, a broader look than about just a particular terrible incident, but to look at our statistics more broadly, we had a specific question we thought they could help us with, and that’s about the process for filing a complaint about action or interaction with the police. And they thought they could put some time and energy into sort of what is a complaint? Where could you register a complaint and how would that complaint be received and acted upon by the city? So that’s what we’re seeing as the very first project for them.
Carol: You said that there would be some public forum in the spring?
Clark: Yes. It will be more oriented towards broad listening to the public both in large, hopefully large public gatherings. I guess we’ll see maybe large zoom gatherings but we’ll be in listening mode. The Police Chief selection process is going to have some of that same listening and city manager Jay Burnie is going to speak to that next on the agenda. But we will have opportunities starting with this imagine Olympia portal and continuing with a series of public meetingsto get to receive public input, to shape that recruitment and hiring process.
7:05 – 7:45 New Police Chief Recruitment Input – Jay Burney, City Mgr
Jay Burney: Well thanks everybody for those of you that haven’t met me. I’m Jay Burney. I want to say I’m the new city manager and new feels like so long ago in this world of Covid, but I took over as Interim City Manager in right about this time last year when Steve Hall retired and served as an internal capacity and Council formally appointed me in May of this year. I have been out to make my rounds, but I look forward to a time when I can actually come to CNA outside of zoom and meet all of you in person. I’m ready to launch your recruitment for the next Olympia Police Chief.
And I want to talk about process and then see what questions you have about process and then we can dig into getting some feedback from you in terms of candidate profiles. But process wise right now I’m gathering information to build a profile in a recruitment for this position. I met with every employee in the Police Department to get some feedback from them about what they’re looking for in their next chief. And now I’m working with external groups so this afternoon I met with a group of our nonprofit providers in the area and got some input from them. I have met with the Olympia Downtown Alliance. later this week. I’ve got the chamber board. I met with a group known as Amplified Voices, which is a group in our community that’s really interested in racial, social justice and I’m going to say, defund, but that’s not really what they mean by it. They just mean they’re really interested in looking at how we police in our community and I met with that group and got some feedback from them. I’m here with the CNA tonight. And I’ve got a few other external groups – Hispanic Roundtable, Black Alliance that Thurston County – still to go. And then I’ll wrap up all of this and I’ll take everything that I’ve heard both internally and externally and put together a position profile that really speaks to candidates to say here’s what we’re looking for in Olympia and here’s what I’m looking for in a police chief that meets community needs and expectations, and I expect to wrap this up and launch that recruitment in December. With the goal of hiring the next police chief within the first quarter of next year, and that’s significant because Councilmember Gilman went through all these efforts around conversations in the community, particularly around public safety and police accountability. It’s really important to have a new chief on board so they can participate in that process, rather than have an interim position, do that and then kind of have to hand it off. I really want a police chief to be here that can own the work that we do with the community and champion that work moving forward.
So there’ll be an interview process sometime in the first quarter. I’m still working on what that’s gonna look like, but there will be some components of community input so I may reach out to CNA in the future to see if you might have representatives. It might sit an interview panel, but as I get closer to that I’ll reach back out, but for right now I’m focused on getting the recruitment out the door and then I’ll turn my attention to the interview process. So before I start digging into traits and characteristics that you might be interested in, anybody have questions on just the process moving forward?
I think Lydia sent out in your packet a series of questions for all of you to think about this in advance. But there’s kind of four main areas. I’m looking for some feedback. One is just traits and characteristics that you would like me to consider and that you think are important for our community in terms of what the next police chief needs to bring in and then maybe to narrow that down from a neighborhood perspective, are there particular attributes or skills that you think are more important than others? I’d love to get some feedback from you on kind of what’s working well from your perspective and then leadership opportunities that would face a new chief from your perspective. Things they need to focus on right away. So with that, I’ll open it up to your thoughts on traits and characteristics you’re looking for in a police chief, and I’m going to capture all this as you speak, so feel free.
(Larry shares screen with questions)
Melissa: I want to be sure that first out of the gate would be the group that met last Sunday that I missed because I thought it was this Sunday.
Larry: Sure, well many of them are here, they can if they want to jump in, they can go jump in. Or I can talk about the highlights that I that I extracted from the discussion. There’s a wide range of opinions about what a police chief should have. Of course the basic characters characteristics of a calm law abiding professional who is there to do law enforcement and not to be a somebody who’s a media hog, to be really down to Earth person involved in law enforcement is important, but we have specific issues by neighborhood and so neighborhoods realized different experiences from law enforcement and that I remember. Jenn was going on about how downtown, especially, has experienced the public protest in many different ways. People are getting chemicals and gases in their homes. There’s questions about use of force. When I want to run from there. Jay, what would you like us to talk about? You can see the list as well as everybody else, right?
Jay: Yeah, I can definitely see this. A lot of this has come up in the other meetings that I’ve had with other community groups. You know, if is there anything that when you think about you know I’m thinking about traits. I got the down to earth visible, not a media hog. I think we can cover some of these other things as we move down the list, but when you think about again traits and characteristics, you know I’ve heard from other groups about someone who’s really transparent and open, and that moves us more in that direction as a Police Department. Those are the kind of traits and characteristics I’ve heard from others. But are there other things that you would add to that list?
Hellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s something I would definitely add to that and that is someone who is really interested in working with other agencies around mental health, you know somebody who really understands that dynamic. How to do that? Not somebody who is real insular about how they think about the Police Department and what we really need. I think is somebody who can be innovative around what kinds of programs they might be able to introduce and who can be persuasive too. I mean, even though people say they don’t want somebody who’s a media hog that kind of thing at the same time I think it’s important to have somebody who can exercise affective leadership around moving in a direction that is more oriented towards community health and well being. I think that is just absolutely essential.
Jay: I like the focus on Community health and well being, thank you.
Marty Wooster: I really think it needs to be somebody who really is able to bring together groups around issues, to really facilitate communications. I think about the fact that you know we want somebody who can educate policemen. We want somebody who has big mental health abilities and interfacing with those communities so they can actually bring those people in on emergencies to be there at the sight of officers who are trying to enforce. And I think the how to’s demands that their education has background in training people who have worked with diversity in the past. I mean the person may not necessarily have to be someone who’s from that community as much as they are really able to bring those people to the table so that they can work out processes that are not just from their own thinking that this is gonna be a good thing, but that can take all those into account and then put together policy well for the officers to be able to feel secure that they’ve got the support they need when they need to call other people in that know better how to understand how to handle people that have mental Illness problems or even officers who need to be able to be trained in diversity and can bring people alongside and work together. And I think I, I think this is kind of weird, but I think they need a sense of humor to be able to help people lighten up when they need to in a in a group. That’s my input.
Jay: Thank you and I will say it being relatable; a sense of humor is all about being relatable to people, right? And there’s a big piece of that to have a conversation with anyone in the community and feel comfortable in that setting.
John Glenn Show from South Capitol neighborhood, I would like to see the police chief actually more visible in our neighborhoods. I don’t think we’ve ever seen the police chief in our neighborhood. I mean, even to have some other police officers occasionally be visible to the people in a neighborhood and can understand what we are facing ’cause everybody in every neighborhood has a different problem or challenge but have a police chief that will get out of the office and actually come out and talk to the people.
Jay: Yep, that’s good.
Jenn: Yeah, I was gonna say that we talked a little bit about this in our inner meeting this last weekend, but then I’ve been talking about it with the downtown board. Really putting a police chief that really puts emphasis on de-escalation. I think that’s super important, especially in downtown, because there’s so many things that could get escalated and do get escalated super quickly. We have several homeless encampments that are downtown. We have people who are in crisis all the time, and it’s the hot spot for protests and riots and having somebody that values de-escalation over escalation is super important. Because if we can de-escalate a situation that is the preferred outcome,
Jay: absolutely.
Sal: Well, yeah, I think in general. I would like to see some somebody who is a progressive thinker. Well, you know that’s a very general term, but what I mean is someone who is going to be thinking of new ways to police consistent with the issues that are raised in the community over the last number of months, as we’ve seen in this country, so not afraid to try new things in policing. For example, in our previous meeting, that special meeting we had on Sunday, I suggested that it would be good to have police March with protesters instead of forming a line in front of protesters so that the individuals who are protesting number one would know that there are eyes watching them and people that are inclined to engage in bad behavior will be more immediately visible. Number two that they would feel like the police are part of them and caring about their cause instead of opposing their cause as an appearance of the phalanx of police officers at some arbitrary line. And so I’m looking to see a police chief who has these kinds of progressive ideas that is willing to implement them, or at least try to accomplish some social objectives that that maybe we need in this country.
Jay: Thank you.
Larry: I started reorganizing some of these bullet points here because they seem to have a common theme. This came up during our conversation. So it seems like these 4 bullets over here connect with the way the Police Department works with the Council works with the city manager and operates within the broader or lack of integration with the broader city government culture. So I’m wondering there looking at these, I know you just hit these things cold. If you could react to some of these. I mean it started with people saying that the police tell them we’d like to deal with that issue, but our hands are tied by the City Council. Or the communications from this from the City Council is being sent through the city manager, ’cause you’re the boss of this police chief right? And so if you could just talk about that, that’d be helpful.
Jay: Yeah, I’ll say a couple of things. One is Council sets policy and the city managers job is to bring that down through staff. My job is to ensure that that policy direction is followed down through the department’s. The other piece, I’ll say around this is there’s a lot we need to do around communication, and that’s both that there’s an internal component of that as well. This comment that I’ve heard in the community for a lot longer, probably as long as I’ve been even Assistant City manager, is this issue of hands are tide and it’s the Council’s fault that we’re not doing this. You know, I haven’t heard that, but that’s a conversation I’m going to have with the new police chief that if that’s being said, it needs to stop being said. Now we are all one team as a city organization and we row together as an organization with council with me and with the community and if there is confusion about direction, then that’s on me and I need to provide that direction and make sure it’s clear and so a lot of that has to do with the communication component that I think needs work, and it’s certainly a conversation.I’m going to have with the new police chief.
And this last comment. You know I want the Police Department to not only feel like it’s just part of city government and not superior to it. It’s part of our community. All of our department’s are part of our community as much as their part of city government and one of the things that I really want is I want government to feel less like government and more to feel like a tool to serve our community. And the way that our security needs to be served and with the feedback that they’re giving us.
You know Council has a tough job. I don’t want to speak for Council. They have a tough job they hear from lots of different constituents on lots of different issues and they do the best job they can to give me policy guidance too. That goes down for me to law enforcement, but at the end of the day, the decisions we make are the decisions we make and we all need to support him. And that again, that’s a conversation I’m going to have.
Sal: Say what is it about the police contract that we currently have and that we may move forward with in the future that prevents there from being, well, if there is anything prevents there from being sufficient accountability for officers that misbehave or use excessive force etc. In particular, for example, I’ve read that most police contracts contain provisions in them that allow this. So called cooling off period, which can be as little as a couple of days to as much as a couple of weeks, during which time, and obviously that’s involved in a controversial action, cannot be questioned by investigators. Yeah, I think that’s a bad provision, and I think we should start moving away from there. So I’m wondering, do we have that in our current police contract? Are you receptive to moving away from that and encouraging the same kind of thinking from the new police chief?
Jay: Yeah, we do have that provision in our contract and I’ll talk from it about why it’s there, why it’s historically been there, when the reason it’s in the contract historically is. Let’s just take a shooting as a use of force shooting. If you think about from your perspective, also is a very traumatic experience both for the person who had to pull the trigger obviously, and the person who was a victim of that and there is trauma that is created by an act like that. Any use of force and what’s behind that is, is that studies have shown that people that have been involved in a traumatic incident don’t always recall or don’t always think clearly in the moment and the idea behind the cooling off period is to give them time to collect their thoughts and get over the trauma of the moment so they can give a clear recollection. Now that’s the theory behind why the 48 hours is there. I know also there’s a lot of conversations that are happening on a national level and I suspect we’re going to have it on a local level about whether or not there’s still a time for that, and what the science says about that, and whether or not you know is it 24 hours? Is it, 48 hours? Is it no time? And I suspect that again, that’s the conversation that I’ll have with the new police Chief, and I want to learn more. I need to learn more about that as well.
Larry: From my own perspective, well, it seems like there’s a big tradeoff there in terms of public trust, when a police officer is involved in the use of force, especially a deadly use of force. He is operating both as an employee and duly authorized with the authority, but It’s also a potential crime scene, so boy, it sure seems like a knife‘s edge in which to navigate body cams in car cams are also in are also in the contract. What are you would you? Are you going to push for body in car cams?
Jay: So I will say this, I don’t want to get ahead of Council on a policy choice like body cams and I think that we’re going to have a conversation in the community next year around reimagining public safety, and I suspect that this conversation around body cams will come up and I’m very interested to hear from the community about where they are on body cams. We have language in the contract that would allow us to move forward with both body cams and dash cams, is the language that’s in there. It does still need to be negotiated. What’s been problematic about body cams in the past, and what really still needs some work is the how public records work and clarity on public records. Because here’s the dilemma we get in when an officer shows up to a domestic violence call and their body cams on and they record, you know, an arrest and maybe even they might even record the suspect. They might record the victim. So what protections are in place to protect the victim in that crime so that their video footage is not released to the general public and the records laws are pretty silent on things like that and they need more clarity to make sure that we protect victims of crimes, and so some legislation has been introduced, we’re going to be interested in that legislation moving forward in terms of how we manage public records. But certainly body cams and dash cams are something that I think could be good tools if they’re used in the right way. But again, I think it needs a good conversation with the community because I’ll just tell you there are people that aren’t fans of them, and I think we need to hear from everybody to understand what is the right choice for Olympia.
Larry: So I’ll just say that the same characteristics of transparency and trust you’re looking for in your police chief, I think the communities want to have with the Department as a whole, and if body cams and dash cams and cooling off periods are part of the price of building trust, then that’s something that I think you need to. You know, put in your scales as you weigh pluses and minuses.
Jay: Absolutely, and I’m open to all those conversations 100%.
Sal: With respect to the, again the 48 hour provision, I would hope that as a progressive city we would not be doing things simply because they are historically because we are used to doing it. I would think that, especially with regarding the sensitivity of that that particular provision, we would look at it fresh and maybe rethink it. Because if what the studies suggest about this trauma you know immediately after an event, well, we don’t provide the same kind of protection to a private citizen who has the same trauma. Suppose I’m defending my home from an intruder and I have to shoot that person may maybe even kill him. I’m not provided the 48 hours I get questioned right away, presumably by a police officer who shows up at my door when I call 911, so I think we have to, you know, rethink this issue, because in a large part of the community, that particular provision is viewed as an attempt to allow for getting your story straight. So we say doing everything properly and so we need to work on that, that perception, and if there’s some truth to it. Then we need to change the provision because it has a problem historically, just as the provision is in the contracts historically.
Jay: And that is certainly something I’m going to be communicating with the new police chief and one of the things that I will have them look into. That’s come up a couple of different times.
Judy: So I just want to say that we were told by the presentation we have two community policing officers. One signed to different parts of Olympia, and I think that’s really great to be able to have an officer to contact about community concerns. So I think one of the attributes of the police chief is the ability to be able to listen to the community and really understand their concerns, and I’d like to echo sort of what Larry brought out with these different themes, was how police interface with other City Department’s. For instance, you know code enforcement in the community and the police community policing. Like if there’s a house that’s a repeated problem in terms of noise or excessive number of cars. Or perhaps like consideration that it might be a drug house. How does that interaction go on? Could there be more collaboration, perhaps between like code enforcement and the police?
Jay: Yep. Thank you Judy. OK.
Jenn: So I have another thing I’d like to bring up, kind of along the transparency aspect that we were just talking about. And the traits we’d like to see in in the future chief of police. I hope I don’t step on anyone’s toes, but we’re talking about police, so we had this incident with the police. The police officer earlier this year who took that photo with the militia, and then they were given an award for being the Officer of the Year, and there was a whole thing about it, and it’s upset a number of people in the community and I have heard many things about why that is, and timing of when that award was given, and I’ve heard many things about that, but it’s upset many people and I feel like I already didn’t have a lot of trust in the police before, and I feel like I have less trust in the police now because of an incident like that and there’s less transparency because of something like that, and I feel like a trait I’d like to see in the police chief is to have more communication with us about things like that, because that really shook our community. That was a big thing that happened here.
Jay: Yeah, you know Jenn, one of the things that you know as I’ve been my first my first year as a city manager boy, it’s been a doozy with Covid and everything else, but one of the things that I have really learned through this experience is we’ve got to do better at crisis communications. We haven’t done as effective a job as we need to be out in front of the stuff and social media is a new you know it’s something that we didn’t have to pay attention to, you know, five years ago, and so the stories get out there almost immediately. And if we don’t get our story out, then the stories come out ahead of us. And then we’re constantly on the defensive and it’s just not a good place for us to be in. I’d rather see us be a lot more transparent and part of that is being up front and out there with communication early. There is a story behind the photo and the officer of the year. I won’t go into it tonight. There is a story there, but to your point, the way it all came about, we control that communication. I think we fell down. In some of those spots, and we gotta own that. And we gotta do better at it. And that’s certainly a conversation that I will have. And it’s one of the top things on my list with the new Chief is crisis communication with our community.
Carol: I have a sort of planner related question. I just would like to follow up on one of these little bullets. It’s sort of related to what we were just talking about, but the whole notion of making sure white supremacists are not hired, which is like pretty easy to say and may be quite difficult to do and not to mention that you already knew police Chief will come in there will be a whole staff full of Police and everyone of them will have some biases that they either are or are not aware of. So it seems like one of the characteristics that needs to come forward from this from the new Chief is the ability to kind of look at that and to not sugarcoat it, but to, you know, step in so that photo was just so tone deaf. And yes, when I read all of the study, the story behind it, it was like, OK, I could see how, I can see both sides of that, but as you said, there’s a lot of communication that needs to come in, but my comment is really about hiring and bringing in maybe some new traits in new police officers that are brought on board that are in line with what the new police chief is asked to do, and then a characteristic of the police chief is going to have to be to bring in, bring along some of the staff he’s gonna or she’s going to inherit. Because some of them won’t be amenable to the new things that they are are gonna put forward. Maybe that’s just leadership.
Melissa: Anyway, this whole accountability thing I would like to ask a candidate for the Police Department about their own development in terms of recognizing their own unconscious bias. What journey have they been on? Because this is so key because most all of us act just fine in ordinary life, but when we perceive a threat, we revert to instinct. It’s a whole different scene and we expect our police officers (God bless ’em) to be able to somehow cut through their bias and recognize what’s going on. I’ve been here for 30 years and it seems that most of the accountability questions have come up and we’ve been well communicated with in terms of process, but it doesn’t seem that it ever changes that sort of innate response, which is often very problematic. So maybe having a police chief who has some sort of internal process that he or she is going through could be a good step.
Jay: Thank you.
Bruce: My comment relates to an incident at the junction between the northwest and the Southwest Neighborhood Association. I think it’s Rebecca with the Police Department sent out a memo to the northwest and I don’t know if Mark you got it as well about a SWAT team exercise that was gonna be going on at Black Lake and 5th. And you know, we responded to that. So what I was gonna say, Mark is what happened was the request was from Rebecca to go ahead and mention it to the neighborhood. And the feedback that came back was immediate and profound and they cancelled it. So my comment is why did they even think that was a good idea? And the second thing is good job in canceling it.
Jay: You know to the to the first part of that question. You know SWAT teams do need to do their exercises so they can be ready when the time comes if they need to be but the timing of this one with everything else that’s happening was poor and I think things like this. It’s different when we do ’em. Somewhere out you know, a lot more remote location then in the middle of the neighborhood, and I think the other thing that you know it was not just a timing issue, it was a communication issue. It needs to be more than a hey by the way, yeah, right. I think there should be well in advance. For example, to come to a group like this to say, hey, we’re considering doing an exercise. We have some thoughts. We have a location and to get that word out in a different way to get some feedback. Again, it comes back to my bigger point. Is around just the work we need to continue to do around communication, and I think there’s that’s just the place we need. We need a lot of improvement so that again to me it’s about being relatable to the question that came up earlier, and we’re not relateable when we show up out of nowhere and create this sense of kind of fear, and that’s not what we want in the Police Department.
Helen: I guess right now I want to comment that I don’t want my earlier comment to be miscontrued. It was not mainly about being relateable, it was about mental health services. And that my question, it was a question that is more about your process. You talked a little bit about groups that you’re reaching out to and I’m wondering, you know where in the social services and medical services spectrum you’re looking for advice. And I’m also wondering about your how are you going to put out your recruitment announcement? You know what is your process for that? Are you going to try to broaden your net a bit beyond you know, what might you might think of as just the usual search? You know the usual headhunt for this kind of position.
Jay: Yeah, so on your first question. So the group that I met with earlier today was some of our social service providers. Some are mental health providers. In the community I met with some of them today to get some feedback directly from them about kind of traits and attributes. I’m going to also reach out to Capital Medical Center and Providence to get some feedback there as well before before I’m done and then on the search process I have hired a recruiting firm. It’s Karras consulting. Some of you may know Karras consulting. They are a local Olympia firm they know Olympia well. They were involved with recruitment of a lot of our Department directors. I am going to do a national search out there and part of why I’m spending so much time on the upfront meeting with external groups in particular is because I want to launch a different kind of recruitment and I need to learn more about what the community is looking for, which will help me work with Karras is to make sure I’m getting the candidate pool that I want to see that that matches our community.
Helen: Can I can I just follow up with that real quick and say you know, maybe you’ve made your commitment to Karras already, but I would just plead that you reconsider. You know, just look around a little more and see if there are other folks you might contract with. I mean, it seems like they’re always the go to. The results are not always great. Just my 2 cents.
Bob: I’ve always been concerned about the efficient use of officers time. Police officers fully loaded, probably costs $100 an hour. It’s a lot of money. Every minute they’re out there and we should be getting as much as we can for that. There’s not so much concern when they’re responding to a call. It’s those times in between when they’re not responding to a call. What do they do with two or three hours during a day when there there’s no call? You know what’s the most is the most good that can be gotten from different kinds of activities. You could drive around neighborhoods in your cars. You can get out of your car and walk into stores or offices. There are lots of different things officers do and to instill in the officers that notion that when they’re on the clock, they need to be producing the most they can per minute. Thank you, OK.
Sal: My quick comment is this and following up on Melissa’s very insightful comments as part of the recruitment process that day. I think that social media ought to be looked at for the potential candidates to discover some of these you know, possibly hidden biases and the police chief ought to also use hidden time in social media to find out those hidden biases in his own officers and whether they’re existing or being newly recruited. I just want to suggest that.
Jenn: I just wanted to ask if you’ve met with family support Services ’cause they see the homeless and everybody else in the community.
Jay: Trish was supposed to be on my call I had this afternoon and she wasn’t able to make it, so I’m gonna circle back with Trish Gregory before I’m done to get her input. I want to thank all of you for I know we will over on time and I appreciate it and I know there’s somebody still have input. Looks like you want to give. Please email me or give me a call if you’ve got something that went unsaid today that needs to be said or you didn’t feel comfortable saying it here, but you want me to hear it. Please call me or email me and I’ll include that everything I get is confidential. I’m not going to be sharing out to the community “I heard this from this group or this from this person”. I’m, you know, I’m going to sum all this up in a way that protects the input that I’m given. So again, please send me anything if you have any last thoughts and thank you again for having me here tonight.
Larry: Thank you. We’re going to take a 5 minute break. Let’s return back at 7:55.
7:45 – 7:50 Five Minute Stretch
7:50 – 8:20 Parks Presentation – Laura Keehan, Parks Planner
Laura Keehan (City Parks): Yeah, thanks for having me here tonight. My name is Laura Keehan. I’m the parks planning and design manager for the City of Olympia and I was requested to come here tonight and there were five specific questions that were given to me, so I went ahead and put that on the presentation, first slide here. And so yeah, I’ll just kind of try and go through these five questions, and then we’ll also have time at the end for any other questions you might have that are parts related. I can give a shot at answering.
So the first question was give a very brief briefing on the Parks plan update. We have just launched our parks plan update. Councilmember Gilman actually queued this up very well. Because of Covid our main way of communicating with the community during this current parks plan update we are going on line almost exclusively and we’re using the Engage Olympia platform to do that. If you forget, you can also go to the city’s main city website and there’s this really colorful little engage button on the left hand side and you click that and you’ll get to this first page.
And you’ll see there’s featured projects and all three of them that were featured on the day that I took this screenshot are actually parks related and wanted to make sure you’re also aware that we have a regional Aquatics Facilities study it’s a feasibility study that’s happening right now, and there’s a survey online, so you and your neighborhoods may be interested in weighing in on what might be contained in a future Aquatic Center and the types of uses you would like to see in that, so I definitely encourage you to go online, take that survey and share it with your neighborhood.
Also wanted to bring your attention. Sorry this is a little bit of like since I have you I’m going to mention we also have another big project happening. The Yelm Highway Community Park masterplan and there’s an upcoming meeting actually a week from today it will be hosted online on Zoom, and if you’re familiar with the site that we bought about two years ago. It’s the site where there’s a Spooner Berry farm stand. So we had purchased that site because the city is in dire need of rectangular fields. We don’t have any in the community. Well, the Olympia School District, shortly after the pandemic started, contacted us and asked us if we would be willing to co-locate on that site with a high school because they are identifying some needs for an additional high school in Olympia, so no decisions have been made about whether to to move forward with that or not. But we are having a meeting next Monday at 6:00 o’clock over Zoom and their details in the link are in this this project. If you were to go to the website, you can get the link and join us next Monday if you can’t make it next Monday, but you’re still interested in the project we are going to post a recording of the Zoom meeting on this Engaged page the next day as well as a online survey that anyone can take and let us know your thoughts about whether we should co-locate a high school in a park together on the site, or if your preference is only for a park at the site. (discussion of navigating website)
There’s a video from our director Paul Simmons, our parks director. It’s just a few minutes long and it does a really great job of kind of giving an overview of what we’ve accomplished since the last parks plan as well as talking about what the types of updates were going to be doing in this current plan. As you look toward the bottom, you’ll see there’s a survey. This actually just closed last week. We had our first online survey, but there will be other future surveys, so keep checking back and we also have what’s called the Ideas tab and here’s what it looks like if you go to that and this is kind of another way to engage with us about the types of park amenities, facilities uses you’re wanting to see. We’re posting a different kind of topic question every two weeks and soliciting ideas, and you can see so these are all from people in the Community, and I took screenshots here so I can’t Scroll down. But if you were going to go, you could actually see a lot of different ideas. It allows you to post a photo of what you’re talking about, a sentence or two to explain your idea, and you can also comment on other ideas that you like. So this one was pretty broad. It was what are some of the elements you’ve seen in parks and other communities that you wish we had in Olympia, so we got some kind of fun ideas and this is more of a brainstorming type of tool and that is basically how we are using Engage at this point in time. We’re just starting the process and the parks plan takes about a year and a half to update. We are required to have our update done by March 1st, 2022. So you’ll be seeing quite a lot more on this as time goes on, but this is the very beginning.
So the second question was around where our proximity to parks. Here you see a 10 minute walk map from parks so everything in green darker green is the city of Olympia Park. Some of that like lighter green is a State Park or Evergreen college and then all those little red dots are considered entrances or places you can actually publicly access the park. And we do have a goal in our park system too to make sure that everyone who lives in Olympia is within a 10 minute walk to a park or open space so we’re doing pretty well, but the orange color on the map shows the spots where we currently do not have a park within a 10 minute walk. So when we’re looking at buying a piece of the property for parks, we look at this map and we do update when we buy a new piece of property. There we do have some areas on here that I think I would probably argue. I’m not sure we’re ever gonna get a park in the auto mall or SPSCC. You know those areas are orange. I’m not sure that necessarily we need to be prioritizing putting a park there, so I guess what I’m saying is we might never get to 100% but we should get pretty close.
Sometimes it’s not just about buying property, it’s also just about making sure there’s a public entrance where it already adjoins a park. Here’s a good example. This park right here is Margaret McKinney Park. It’s located in kind of in a subdivision neighborhood. Where Allen Rd comes down here. It’s a dead end road and you know, we unfortunately we don’t have a way for the folks on Allen to just walk down Allen and get into the park. Legally, they might have a place, you know, an agreement with their neighbor that they can walk through the persons yard, but we don’t have a public way to do that right now. And we have talked to some of those neighbors that are there and at that time they were not interested in giving us an easement, but we do continue to have discussions like that to try and find maybe some pathways so that if you lived on Allen Rd you wouldn’t have to go up to 18th. (more back and forth conversation about access)
Helen: Have you tried a map that’s more population based?
Laura: Update will address.
Melissa: Just one other thing about the McKinney Park we live North of it and we have a very dense neighborhood of kids and they can’t cross 18th. I mean it is a major thoroughfare to get to the park and we have nothing on our side. The kids play in our traffic circles. So when you’re mapping, if you’re looking at main thoroughfares and where they are in relationship to that, but there’s nothing no parks on our side of 18th. So it’s a real hard place for kids to find any place to play that lots are extremely small, but they built over there. Nothing in yard space whatsoever. (more back and forth conversation)
Laura: OK, so the third question, the outlook and process for developing those neighborhood parks that have been acquired but not yet developed. We do have a lot of parks that have not yet been developed yet. The last parks plan had a policy direction in it that the community wanted us to focus on acquisition. Now land is more available rather than development, and so that has been our marching orders. And really, where we’ve been putting more of the money has been in acquisition, so you’ve probably notice there are a lot of undeveloped parks. With this parks plan update, we’ll be asking the community through some of these survey questions. If that’s changed or not, will check in on that and whether the priority should still be. You know 80% toward acquisition, 20% for development? Or should it be more 50/50? Or the other way?
The process for how to determine which of the undeveloped parks would go first is also something we are looking for some direction from the community in this parks plan update, will be trying to find out what the prioritization and kind of criteria are. And then using that we can put the undeveloped parks through that filter and help determine which one should go first. You know, for instance, is it somewhere where there really aren’t any other parks around? Is it an area that maybe has more children is in an area that’s more low income? So we’ll be kind of proposing some ideas and getting feedback from the community about how we should prioritize them? That’s an open question right now.
Number four thoughts about how the importance of parks may be changing in the context of our pursuit of increased densities and decrease lot sizes so as a city as we grow we are getting more multifamily housing and more population that does point toward the importance, especially for like an apartment building type of situation, to have parks close by to help meet those needs that maybe somebody who has a single family house with a backyard might be able to meet some of their recreation needs in their own backyard, whether that’s you know, with a small place that or even just alone for their dog or for their kids. However, you know there are certain needs that you can never meet in your backyard like hiking trails or pickleball courts, and those are something that you know Community wide we provide in our system and are always looking to find that right balance which. Is one of the things you know. One of the questions that we keep asking are we meeting your recreational needs and do you feel like the facilities are overcrowded? So far we really haven’t been hearing too much about overcrowding, but there have been new recreation trends or needs that come up such as pickleball courts and we just recently were able to put in for dedicated pickleball courts. There’s something that’s come up in recent years, so we’re always trying to continually have conversations with the community about how to meet their needs.
The plan does have something called the level of service and hopefully this isn’t getting a little too technical for you, but these levels of service are specifically used to make sure that as population grows, we are building and developing the parks at the same rate so that they aren’t becoming more overcrowded. The city charges new residential development and impact fees, and those can only be used to develop new facilities or acquire new land. So that’s a major way we fund that.
And then #5 whether the city would ever consider using eminent domain for Parkland acquisition when no private sector options are likely to be obtainable. I wasn’t quite sure about this question. I’m guessing that it meant you know if there was a situation where there wasn’t a willing seller on a piece of property, would we ever use eminent domain? That would very likely be a very last resort. That’s a very difficult process to go through. We do have the legal right to do it, however. That’s a council decision. It would be definitely a last resort. We’d like to work with willing sellers. We’ve been pretty successful at being able to do that so far, and we are acquisition needs and goals so you know, I don’t have a crystal ball to know what the future will hold to say it absolutely would never happen, but it would definitely be kind of a last resort type of situation, and I’m not sure that it would ever happen for parks. It’s something typically more you see in sort of road transportation situation at a local government level. Hopefully I answered the question you were asking and I’m happy totally to answer any other questions you might have about parks in general.
Melissa: I know it’s every different for everybody as you think about a planning process, I’d like to be sure that you recognize that certain parks, and more parks or whatever increase community safety issues risks. The park near me is regularly filled with drug sales, for example, and I I’m curious as to how parks interacts with, say, the Police Department to be sure that they have the capacity to respond. You know parks are about the only place that drug deals can go down easily, at least in my neighborhood, and so they do things like close the bathroom and things like that. But oh Lord, what a mess.
Laura: Sorry, could I ask which neighborhood or park?
Melissa: Bigelow Neighborhood park
Laura: We do have Park Rangers and they work seven days a week. First you know these things tend to kind of cycle where people are in one spot and then they go to a different spot so they make different. You know they kind of go where people are and engage with them. If they do see illegal activity then they contact the police. You know some of this stuff is very hard to regulate, just end up, you know profiling someone which is not something that they would want to be doing so. But they try to make their presence known.
Melissa: And my question is not about how it’s managed now, but in planning. How do you try to anticipate the additional resources that are needed when you create more park space? You know it’s in other words, Parks Department doesn’t exist just by itself.
Laura: So you’re asking, like how do we determine how many Park Rangers we have on staff for the number of Park Acres we have?
Melissa: Yeah, or knowing what the patterns of law enforcement issues are in neighborhoods and being sure that there are resources there to support safety in the parks. I know it’s a very amorphous thing, but I’m just interested in how collaborative parks are with other city departments.
Laura: I work in the planning division so I am not very tight in with the Police Department. Park Rangers are in much more contact with the Police Department. We are working toward the goal of having a park within a 10 minute walk of everyone so that’s where we’re buying the new parks and we have three full time Rangers right now.
Melissa: It’s really not about current enforcement, it’s about how you plan. Do you build in potential to increase resources? Outside the Parks Department, you know.
Laura: Outside the Parks Department, no, I don’t have control over that. Something might be happening at the director level and the chief level that I’m not aware of. But it’s not something that I’m involved in that I can speak to.
Bob: I’m very concerned about the neighborhood part standard and the way you presented the possibility of using eminent domain. There is no question that we are getting denser and denser in our our residential situation. Whether that’s multifamily housing or now we’re talking about fourplexes in low density neighborhoods. The neighborhood parts are really important and they really need to be within a half mile of every residence where they can be. My neighborhood never will be because we were built too early and there’s no way to get a neighborhood park here. That’s, you know, that’s the way it is. A couple of times you’ve said a park within a half mile of every residence, the standard is a neighborhood park. Because, you know, Trillion Park does not do the same thing as a neighborhood park, playground equipment and so forth, but that goes there and to say that that we use it as a last resort is of course correct. But to say we use it as a very, very, very last resort and send a message like almost we’re going to give up before we do it. I think is wrong headed and the reason, I think it is wrongheaded is, you’ve got to think about the long term. If we don’t get the land now, it gets developed and that means forever. Hundreds of years. Residents in that part of town will not have a neighborhood park. Are we willing to give up the quality of life in that area for those people for hundreds of years because we are unwilling to use this legal authority that we have to provide a very necessary kind of facility for the public? I would urge you and the rest of the staff to think about it in those terms, because that’s really what’s going on here. And living with the people with small kids in my neighborhood, fortunately have large enough lots that they can do a lot in their yards. But the new housing is not going to be that way, and I just want to lobby you to think about this more broadly and more long term – 7 generations. Thank you.
Laura: Yep, I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing.
Melissa: Quickly dog parks. Are they a part of your planning?
Laura: Yes, actually we’ve been working on opening 3 dog parks, and the idea is we will open them all at the same time. One is not going to go before the other, so nobody gets overwhelmed. They’ve been in permitting for over a year. The final dog park public hearing is tomorrow, so hopefully that will go well and then we could open them in the summer of 2021.
Larry: So I’m gonna ask the last question here so we have a little neighborhood park thing near me. You know where you’ve seen these around like this, right? You know parks and pathways, little blocks, and it’s on. It’s on your map so. What is the best way to say when we’re done with our acquisition phase and we’re into the development phase? When does this happen and the second part of my question, is there any public-private partnerships with the neighborhoods might get together and try to help? I understand maybe this will become an issue for the city later on, but is there anything thought about accelerating through public private partnerships? And what’s the prioritization process once we get with our satisfactory level of acquisition?
Laura: Yes, so that’s what we’ll be asking in this current park plan process. The direction in the last plan was that we focus on acquisition, so now we’re going to be checking in over with our engagement activities over this next year. Do we need to shift now and start focus more on development because it’s a judgment call. Everybody feels differently about that. As I said, we’ll be putting out some different ideas for ways to prioritize which of those go first, and some of those ideas could be things like where it might be more dense, or there might be a more density of children or lower income or on a bus route. So lots of different parameters we could use and we’ll be putting those out with this park plan process to the community and finding out how you all think we should use those criteria. And hopefully I mean we’re trying to get these this GIS kind of dynamic mapping that Helen was kind of alluding to to be used as a tool for that. It’s a pretty heavy lift because it kind of brings together a lot of datasets. But if we can pull it off, yeah, it will be very helpful. Gosh, where do we have the most pockets of kids or? Some lower income pockets and density? Where is density higher, lower right now?
Larry: Sounds very rational, makes a lot of good sense. Is there ever in a public private partnership deal where the neighborhood says, hey, you know, let us build the playground equipment. You guys just maintain it.
Laura: Um, not so much with the playground equipment because we do have what’s called a Pima certification. It’s a special safety certification that our lawyers and liability insurance requires us to have. So not with playground equipment. But the gentleman who spoke earlier about the West Bay Woods and all the ecosystems. Daniel Einstein. That group. That’s a situation where we have partnered with a local nonprofit group and we’ve purchased two parcels over in that area they’ve purchased. I think about five or six now and we go out there with our volunteer stewards and have work parties on that property and partner with them in a stewardship capacity and with some trailbuilding, so that definitely happens. And boy they have really kind of taken that to a next level. I would say over on the Northwest area.
Larry: Yeah, I see Bruce nodding his head vigorously, OK, any other things before we wrap up here. Thank you. That was a great presentation. I appreciate it and I’m excited about what about what’s going on with parks.
Laura: OK great, well thank you for having me and I appreciate you communicating with your neighborhoods too, about getting the word out on any of these Engage Olympia projects. If there’s any way you can email or post it on your websites. Thank you from me and in the staff so appreciate that.
8:20 – 8:25 Prior meeting minutes approval (October)
Larry: OK, moving on to the agenda we have minutes. Which I obviously have not done correctly, so I forgot to put in Mark’s contribution to it with that amendment to be posed, or anybody have any comments about the Minutes?
Mark: What is Sounding Board? When I when I checked it was about there was something to do with the EIS on Capitol Lake. Is that the same thing?
Larry: I think Sounding Board is DES Department Enterprise Services is that there’s a meeting tomorrow to talk about the parking along the Deschutes Parkway, which became a discussion about homelessness and about the RV’s that are parked along there. Although there may be some spill over, no pun intended, because one of the reasons they pushed out some of the RV’s was because of pollution of untreated septic.
(minutes approved after more back and forth)
8:25 – 8:30 Agenda Ideas for next month Ideas
Melissa: Yeah, I just wanted to comment that we talked last month about doing a quick tutorial for everyone on how to use the information on the CNA website. Minutes, addresses, phone numbers. All that I think that would be really useful.
Mark: Let’s see, I’m looking at the calendar here December. Yeah, the follow up on the City Council meeting on the zoning. Yeah, ’cause that looks like December 8.
Larry: And now that, well, that will will. It’ll won’t be the follow up yeah before teams our next meeting on the 14th so we can follow up with that.
Jenn: Yeah, I’d love to spend some time. Maybe not as an agenda like that main topic, but just some time as CNA members brainstorming some ideas for like membership retaining during Covid. I think that’s something we’ve all expressed issues with In the past, I think that would be a good thing for us all to just spend some time talking with like as an item.
Larry: Alright, so it is now 8:34. Four minutes overtime and if you have any other ideas as the week move on and things pop up and you want to add them to the agenda just send me a quick note. An email doesn’t have very detailed. I think today’s meeting went pretty well. Um, I was glad to hear from you know both the city manager and parks people. I think there’s some real real exciting things happening in the city. I’m glad we have a chance to participate in it.
Melissa: Thanks Larry and everyone.
MEETING ADJOURNED
Council of Neighborhood Associations 