City of Newcastle, WA -- Council Meeting of 11/6/12
Northern Pacific Report covered the first hour of the Council Meeting, but left early to watch election results on TV. The first hour basically concerned Reports and Comments from council members, city officials, and the public. City Manager Rob Wyman announced that Tim McHarg will be the new Community Development Director of Newcastle. McHarg, who has experience in city operations as a Planning Director in Bozeman, Montana, was selected over two other candidates. Wyman also praised Newcastle Police Chief, Melinda Irvine, for a job well done in handling some cases recently.
Mayor Rich Crispo is concerned about attendance by Park Commissioners, implying that attendance was shoddy and that the issue needed to be addressed. Park and Planning Commissioners in Newcastle are all volunteers.
Councilman Steve Buri expects there to be a significant increase in auto traffic on Coal Creek Parkway because of traffic tolling on I-405. Presently, it is estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles use Coal Creek on a regular business day, and this could be exacerbated in the future as Coal Creek is used as a bypass from I-405. Buri brought up the issue of tolling Coal Creek, presumably as a source of city revenue. Going by the Council's general discussion of this issue, which wasn't a whole lot in the first hour, any actual proposal about tolling, were it to come to that, would have significant hoops to jump through in getting the necessary approval from other state and local government entities. Councilman Gordon Bisset implied that tolling would be very unpopular and that he opposes it.
There was also a discussion about transferring some public parks to private entities, but no reason was given for such a possibility in the first hour of the meeting. Presumably this would be a cost-saving measure for the city, but what would be the downside? This was another subject that was only briefly discussed as ordinarily would be the case for the Reports and Comments part of Council Meetings. It was announced, however, that there would be a further evaluation of this issue by the Council. Expected council candidate for 2013, Mark Greene, does not favor transferring any public park to private hands unless there is some extraordinary reason for it.
Regional Update: the King County Executive, Dow Constantine: anti-commoner, anti-democracy, anti-poor and anti-homeless.
On Commoner: "Constantine and the Seattle Authoritarians"
General Popular Links:
Party of Commons
Mark Greene for Council (Exploratory Campaign)
"Commoner" Blog
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[revised on 11/10/12]
