We should all pay attention to outbursts of truth from our politicians. They are so rare, and so revealing.
Take last week, for example. On a single day, we learned that Mayor McGinn feels entitled to listen only to his cronies, and that one of them thought it was OK to pass the word to his fellow cronies on a crony-packed advisory committee to make sure to hide their deliberations from public view.
I’m not kidding. Both of those things happened. No wonder our leaders and their friends are usually so reluctant to say what they think of us. Once we know, we just might return the favor.
It all went down on May 23, when a City Council committee met to consider zoning changes proposed by McGinn and a group of well-connected property developers – and not in that order, by the way.
That morning, The Seattle Times reported that McGinn had packed a “regulatory reform roundtable” with a bunch of builders. They acted just as you’d expect them to: They cooked up a self-dealing zoning scheme. Much of it would apply to Capitol Hill, Uptown Queen Anne, the U District, and any neighborhood with a light rail station or “frequently served” bus route, but some of the worst provisions would cover the whole city. When the Times asked about it, McGinn defended his cronyism.
“I do have the discretion to ask some (people) to be closer than others because I’ve worked with them or dealt with them and feel like I can get good advice from them,” McGinn told the Times. “I feel entitled to do that.”
The newspaper also caught the head of the roundtable, a former city bureaucrat named Roger Valdez, telling one of McGinn’s staffers to remind the rest of his cronies to use “a non-City channel for more confidential stuff.” When the Times asked why, Valdez explained that he had wanted to avoid Washington State’s open-government laws.
Yep. That’s what he said all right. Right there in the morning newspaper. It was a moment to cherish: the mayor and his crony openly and brazenly admitting that they prefer subterfuge and government by insiders, and that there’s nothing wrong with it. How often do our public officials directly tell us how dumb they think we are?
So let’s have a look at what McGinn, Valdez, and their closest friends came up with behind that curtain. By the way, they called the following proposals “modest.” I call them exactly the opposite. See what you think:
• Eliminate parking requirements for new apartment buildings, hospitals, and businesses in a much bigger area of the city than exemptions now allow.
• Allow commercial enterprises in single-family neighborhoods. Your next-door neighbor wants to convert his garage into a restaurant with an outdoor patio? How about a marijuana “dispensary,” or a nail salon, or a tidy little check-cashing outlet? Or a bakery, complete with two five-ton trucks, not counting vans that show up with the next thousand pounds of flour? Beep! Beep! Beep! That’s the back-up horn. Yum.
• Exempt new apartment buildings from state environmental review unless they have more than 200 units, compared to 30 units now. Same for stores up to 75,000 square feet. Howdy, Wal-Mart!
• Extend temporary use permits from six months to 18 months, and ban appeals except those made before the variance is granted to begin with. That guy who wants to “temporarily” park a bunch of construction equipment in the middle of the block? Once he’s there, good luck getting him out.
• Dramatically expand the size and nature of “mother-in-law” apartments by raising their height limits, and by allowing them to be used for commercial purposes.
Not all of the changes applied city-wide, but some would: the environmental reviews, the “temporary” appeal revisions, and the mother-in-law height changes. So, while Magnolia wouldn’t have seen its single-family zoning effectively destroyed – not just yet, that is -– we could easily see larger “accessory structures”; lose our rights to prevent disruptive “temporary uses,” and be forced to stand by while gigantic new buildings are built in the Village and elsewhere here.
Capitol Hill residents, alarmed at the idea of mid-block “bodegas,” rebelled, and on May 23 the City Council backed off of the whole package. For the time being, that is. But Council member Richard Conlin, perhaps the developers’ best friend there, made it clear he’ll be back. So did Mayor McGinn’s poodle, who goes by the name of Mike O’Brien.
How about Roger Valdez, the mayoral crony who ran the “roundtable” that came up with the “modest” plan to cut the heart out of the land use code? When not trying to keep the proceedings of a quasi-governmental bureau secret, he has trashed, in his online writings, the following neighborhoods: Roosevelt, Capitol Hill, Laurelhurst, and Magnolia. Put it this way: If you happen to have sunk your life savings into a single-family house, and have deep roots in your community, you are not likely to find yourself on Mr. Valdez’s Christmas list.
The City Council’s “Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee,” which was all set to rubber-stamp the developers’ wish list until Capitol Hill and the Seattle Times shined a spotlight on the scheme, meets again on June 13. This columnist will be there, and he hopes some other Magnolians will pay attention to those men behind their curtain, and their “Council Bill 117430.” It’s been amended, and sits on a side track for the moment, but with some highly damaging sections intact. It’s not “modest,” and it could come back to haunt us all.
There is much more to say about the issues raised here, and the people and ideas behind them. I think Magnolia residents might be surprised, to put it mildly, to know what the mayor, much of the City Council, and their best friends have in store for us. Stay tuned.
You can reach Magnolia Mencken at magmenck@gmail.com.