N.P.R. Makes New Push to Increase Circulation

Northern Pacific Report, where objectivity is our standard, will be making a new push in the coming days to increase the circulation or readership of this blog.  Anything that our current readers can do to help with this endeavor would be appreciated.  To those who would like to help, N.P.R. would suggest recommending us on your internet social media contacts (Google, to date, lists us on the first page under "Northern Pacific Report," but make sure that the URL is listed as http://commonsnorth.blogspot.com).  Word-of-mouth to your relatives, friends and acquaintances would also be very helpful.  If the weather is fair in late January and February, N.P.R. will be passing out fliers to, mostly, King County residents. 

Mark Greene's anti-annexation (regarding the recent Council discussion of a 2-city merger, which would result -- God forbid -- in Newcastle being reduced to pauper status at Bellevue City Hall)  Council candidacy, Pos. 6, is well underway.  This may be an "open" seat since the pro-annexation incumbent (Erxleben) is not listed on the PDC registry of candidates to date and may choose not to be a re-election candidate, but some pro-annexation candidate may decide to run even if it's not Erxleben, which would be sort of like the Texas quasi-secessionist governor, Rick Perry, running for President, and we suspect there will be a few other candidates on the ballot in August as well.  Greene's campaign will be a grassroots effort.

[revised on 1/19/2013]

Previous posts: "Lemmon's Vision: 1910" and "Tolling Pains"
                                                                                                                                                                       

Lemmon's Vision: 1910

(updated at 6:10 P.M.)

City of Newcastle, WA -- Planning Commission meeting of January 16th, 2013

 

Planning Commission Leadership: "We Like the Bedroom Community Aspect, But We're Not Going There."

 

As the Planning Commission works on the new Comprehensive Plan for Newcastle, a state obligatory vision of the physical and economic development of a municipality that is set every 8 years, the commissioners discussed various aspects of their vision for Newcastle.  Former Planning Commission Chairman (but now just in the rank-and-file), Rob Lemmon, just about bowled over at least one other commissioner and N.P.R. with the astounding admission that he thought Newcastle was too urbanized and he firmly placed himself on the side of those in the community who thought Newcastle should go back to its bedroom community roots, as if the city was no longer a bedroom suburb.  Lemmon suggested that the small-town community aspect of Newcastle is what attracted a lot of Newcastlers to the city in the first place, and implied that he wasn't fond of all the apartments in the downtown core -- and one would have gotten the impression anyplace else in Newcastle.  Commissioner Tom Magers apparently disagreed with Lemmon as he didn't deny that he rolled his eyes at Lemmon's comments when Chairman John Drescher made this observation of Magers.  Drescher, himself, nonetheless, concurred with Lemmon's points, at least generally, as did Vice-Chairman, Allen Dauterman, but both suggested that reminiscing about a bedroom community was off-point, or as Dauterman put it, "diverges from the master plan."

 

Lemmon had earlier in the meeting gave his "vision" for Newcastle and questioned, in so many words, whether the vision of the founding fathers of incorporated Newcastle worked, and would people still want to live here had they been able to foresee what the future had wrought.  After Commissioner Karin Blakley pressed Lemmon to be more specific about what he was talking about, Lemmon seemed to suggest that apartments cast the biggest pall over Newcastle.  Lemmon's version of "1910" (more about the year 1910 a little later) seemed inconsistent with his statement that Newcastle needed more economic development for revenue purposes, but N.P.R. is not certain whether that was more a question than a statement, or perhaps both.  Magers counteracted Lemmon's comments in a jovial way by saying this isn't 1910.  Magers also said that Newcastle didn't really have a wide variety of small businesses, but is seeking a wide variety.  N.P.R. chuckled at Mager's reference to 1910, not the least because that's the year that the editor's late maternal grandmother was born.

Blakley asked, generally, whether we (Newcastle) wanted to attract more businesses or be more of a bedroom community, apparently not convinced that the bedroom community era was already a part of a bygone era, but there seemed to be no concensus among the commissioners of what the definition of "bedroom community" was, not that anybody attempted to give a flat-out definition.  If there was the slightest hint of a definition, it was that "bedroom community" meant low density and the fewer the apartments the better as opposed to high density and more economic development.  However, there seemed to be some tension as to whether low density and economic development could go hand-in-hand, and the indications at the meeting, especially by the leadership (Drescher and Dauterman), were that they could not, even though they seemed to wish that they could.

The comments by the Community Development Director, Tim McHarg, were about the development of a new school and the redevelopment of Mutual Materials (a brick plant), among other things.  McHarg seemed to think that both were coming along as planned -- no hitches.  Associate Planner, David Lee, spoke about the Comprehensive Plan Periodic Update.

Mayor Rich Crispo, who was in the audience, spoke from the public podium, and noted the difficult job that the Planning Commission had in relation to setting the Comprehensive Plan, but he cautioned the Commission to be ambiguous enough so that the Plan could adapt with the times, including the possibility that there could be a different Council than the present one in a couple of years.

Councilman Gordon Bissett, also speaking from the public podium, gave his "2 cents" about the bedroom community business, adding that Newcastle couldn't just do whatever they wanted in regards to housing, reminding the Commission that the city was once sued by the City of Renton for not providing enough affordable housing.

Council candidate, Mark Greene, also spoke, and said that he was dismayed by some of the comments at the meeting (referring to the bias against apartments expressed by Lemmon, and implied by others) and emphasized the word "city" in the City of Newcastle as opposed to a village.  Greene also expressed his vision of Newcastle as that of the city one day becoming a green energy center.

 

 

 

Tolling Pains

City of Newcastle, WA -- Council Meeting of January 15th, 2013

Mayor Rich Crispo said that tolling (charging drivers a fee for the use of a road) on major thoroughfares (like I-90) will be coming to pass and that this will be the wave of the future in paying for public transportation costs, and implying, especially so in states with no income tax, like Washington.  The mayor noted that the State of New York has a lot of tolling, but also has an income tax, and neither, acccording to him, brought much improvement of road infrastructure there, but the implication was that things could be worst.  Councilman Steve Buri started out the discussion on tolling by acknowledging that I-90 will probably be tolled in 2015 through the likely approval of the state and federal governments.  Highway 405 was also brought up in the overall discussion about roads and tolling, but it seemed that the Council believed there would be so-called HOT lanes on 405 rather than conventional tolling.  HOT lanes stands for high-occupancy tolls; an acronym for road fees that give single occupant vehicles access to high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes.

In other Council meeting news, a City of Bellevue official, Bruce Jensen, made a 20-minute-or-so presentation about the Coal Creek Culvert Replacement Project.  This and various Coal Creek Parkway road repairs are expected to slow down traffic on Coal Creek to some degree later this year, particularly when both projects are being done at the same time.  The culvert replacement project is expected to last from April to November.

The Council voted unanimously 5 - 0 (Deputy Mayor Lisa Jensen and Councilman Bill Erxleben were absent) to approve a Proclamation (of achievement) for Mandy Schendel of Newcastle, Miss Washington of 2012, and a 2013 Miss America contestant who was one of the Top 10 finalists.  Schendel won the Lifestyle and Fitness Award at the traditional event.

Council candidate, Mark Greene, spoke from the public podium twice:  firstly, he noted global warming and climate change as being one of the central crises of our era, and that the world community must take decisive steps to confront it.  Greene proposed a 3-person "Global Warming" committee to be appointed by the Council that would make suggestions on what Newcastle could do to tackle the problem.  The committee, which Greene said he would volunteer for if enacted, would make suggestions to the Council, which in turn would act on its own or submit plans to Governor-elect Inslee and the State Legislature.  Greene pointed out that the power of incrementalism could do a lot and implied that every community in the world had a part to play.  In his second trip to the public podium, Greene said that public officials had an obligation to study the health effects of wireless electronic (communications) infrastructure before implementing it willy-nilly, particularly in light of the Council's earlier discussion about a pending franchise agreement between the City of Newcastle and Zayo Group, LLC which relates to the installation of a fiber optic/telecommunications system.

Note:  Mark Greene is less concerned about health concerns regarding fiber optic installation than other types of wireless electronic communications infrastructure for various reasons which N.P.R. will discuss later.

[revised on 1/18/2013]

Update

N.P.R. mistakenly put an anti-environmental site in one of the links to the right side a few days ago, wrongly thinking that it was a pro-environmental site discussing global warming and climate change issues.  It was immediately removed when I realized the mistake.  A respectable site about global warming will be in its place, soon.  Human-induced climate change is real and one of the most important issues of the 21st century  -- somewhere in the Top 3.

Regarding outside links, in general, N.P.R. does not necessarily agree with the opinions in their content.

- by Mark Greene, Editor of N.P.R.