Council Meetings Should Be at City Hall If At All Possible

Council meetings should be held at the regularly scheduled time and place if at all possible (by the way, the public school auditorium in Newcastle where some town hall meetings by various public officials are held is much closer to a bus line than the golf club if more space is needed to accomodate a larger audience).   Next Tuesday, July 16th, is the same date that a regular Council Meeting would ordinarily be held at City Hall, but the only apparent reason that it is being called "special" that same day is due to its irregular location and time, not accessible by mass transit.  Public meetings, without at least some unusual or unforeseen circumstances in mind, should be available to the greatest possible audience.

[revised on 7/25/13]

Working on Energy Project

Council Candidate Mark Greene stayed home yesterday from his usual outings to City Council meetings to work on his local energy proposals that he intends to make sometime this summer in front of the Council.  This included reading and writing down ideas for his upcoming speech. 

Several days ago, the issue about lawn signs noted in a previous post ("Council Approves Funds For a Full-Time Detective") was resolved as the City Manager helped by looking into it.

[updated on 7/5/13]

Bellevue Impedes Pedestrians' and Bicyclists' Right-of-Way

Who knows when a motorist must suddenly and unexpectedly become a pedestrian?  Such as when the vehicle just doesn't run for any number of reasons, like engine problems or a flat tire.  However, if a motorist must become a pedestrian on Coal Creek Parkway near the Coal Creek Culvert Replacement Project, that prospect just became considerably more risky, if risky at all before, as of July 1, 2013, if not a day or a few days earlier than that, due to a seemingly arbitrary decision by the work management there to pull in concrete slabs so close to the fence -- on the officially closed walkway (sidewalk) side -- that it is virtually impossible to walk through. So what would a person trying to navigate that area do besides walk in the street, which is dangerous, or try to walk on top of the slabs (can't figure out which one is more dangerous, but both sound like risky prospects)?  Not long before or on July 1, there was enough space between the slabs and the fence for a person to safely walk through, but that is no longer the case.  To officially close off a relatively short portion of the street to pedestrians at all (and it appears to cut off bicyclists, too) seems arbitrary in and of itself, considering the logistics of the project and that no motor vehicle of any size is similarly impacted, but that's really a side argument to the point that somebody may need to use an officially closed walkway in an emergency situation.  There should a very good reason why that should be hazardous, but there doesn't appear to be one.

[revised on 7/13/2013]

Newcastle Neighborliness

Since living in Newcastle since '05, I find that Newcastlers are generally neighborly, as they are doing things that often would be the purview of the city: volunteering for various community projects, programs (including my Democracy in Election Process program), and city commissions, picking up litter along non-residential roads and sidewalks, as I often do myself, sweeping up leaves even in areas where there is not an obvious residential dwelling, and doing civic things in general that contribute greatly to our town and wider community.

- Mark Greene, Candidate for Council
Update: the first part of this essay, since transferred and revised, has been put in the "Memoirs and Poems" part of our overall blogs.

[revised on 7/29/13]

Uncostumed

City of Newcastle, WA  -- Council Meeting of June 18th, 2013

Penny-pinching (except for roads), lame-duck Councilman Bill Erxleben, who thinks council salaries are not low enough from the already minimum wage salaries, or even the sub-minimum wage set for Positions 5, 6 and 7 next year,* was fresh back from a back-to-back meeting hiatus with a review of a play called "City Council Meeting" (the meetings in Newcastle virtually never announce why a councilmember is absent, such as for illness, vacation, a death in the family, etc., only that a member is excused, so N.P.R. doesn't know the reason for Erxleben's absences, and therefore nothing is inferred, here).  Erxleben went on to say that the play was drawn from actual City Council meetings from around the nation, and that the tone of the meetings, by and large, were dry, drab and dull.  Arguably, Newcastle's only councilmember with a bit of charisma and theatricality, Erxleben implied that council meetings in general needed to be spiced up to attract more attention and civic involvement by the community.  Mayor Rich Crispo, in response to Erxleben, joked sarcastically about "costumes," but the meeting he presided over last Tuesday evening was duly uncostumed and about as dry a meeting as attendees are accustomed to (at least, the first 2 hours of, according to a source, a 2 1/2 hour meeting).

By 7 - 0, the Council unanimously passed a Transportation Improvement Program by Public Works Director, Mark Rigos.  Financially speaking, the plan has a $400,000 hitch to it, according to Finance Director, Chris Olson, a shortfall not expected to take place until the year 2019, which concerns project T-028, which concerns sidewalks and bikeways on Newcastle Way.  The plan for this year includes a number of pedestrian and road programs, which includes engineering studies on geologic hazards, traffic hazards, speeding and intersection evaluations, among others.

Snow removal was brought up as part of a discussion about sidewalk maintenance.  There was some back and forth, among the Council, City Manager Rob Wyman, and Community Development Director, Tim McHarg, about who was responsible for removing snow on city sidewalks in front of private property in the event of a major snowfall, and the consensus seemed to be that both the City and property owners were responsible, although not equally, with the onus mostly on property owners (City Attorney Dawn Reitan cautioned the Council against being one-sided in favor of the City having very much less or no responsibility).  Property disputes between neighbors also came up for discussion, but if there was any contention among the councilmembers about any of these issues, it wasn't readily apparent at this very agreeable, "uncostumed" meeting.

*Note:  Council Candidate Mark Greene agreed with Councilman Erxleben about last year's vote to reduce salaries of councilmembers, but for different reasons.

[revised on 6/21/13, 8:00 P.M.]

Spring Lull Over

As some readers may have noticed, N.P.R. had a little end-of-spring lull from posting from the 6th of June to now, and our page views suffered as a result, going from over two thousand views per 30 days to around 1600, today.  Remember, it's very important to Council candidate Mark Greene's anti-annexation campaign for supporters to pass the word through social media and old-fashioned word-of-mouth about this blog (URL: http://commonsnorth.blogspot.com).  We need to make this blog popular in Newcastle with your help.  Thank you.

[revised on 7/11/13]

Council Approves Funds For a Full-Time Detective

City of Newcastle, WA -- Council Meeting of June 4th, 2013

By a unanimous vote of 5 - 0 (Deputy Mayor Lisa Jensen and Bill Erxleben were absent), the Newcastle City Council voted to approve funds for a full-time detective (Christy Marsalisi)
for the Newcastle Police Department.  Police Chief Melinda Irvine told the Council that this would be a good step to take after she made a summary of the responsibilities of a detective and noted an overall increase in crime in Newcastle over a period of years, particularly an acute increase in burglaries.  The current part-time detective would now be phased into full-time over a period of about 6 months, which means she should be a full-time member of the Newcastle Police Department on or before New Year's Day, 2014.

By a vote of 4 - 1 (Carol Simpson dissenting), the Council approved a resolution for a public participation and work plan for the Comprehensive Plan (now, called Newcastle 2035) update as recommended by the Planning Commission.  Simpson's reason for dissenting appeared to be on a technical point, not on the general resolution.

Other business discussed or scheduled for the June 4th agenda was the 2014 - 2019 Transportation Improvement Program as introduced by Public Works Director, Mark Rigos, and the evaluation of a proposed sidewalk extension on 129th Avenue.  [N.P.R. did not stay for the entire meeting.]

At the beginning of the meeting, during public comments, Lee Strom asked the Council to look into the possibility of having bike lanes on 88th and 89th streets similar to those on Newcastle Way and 116th street

City Manager Rob Wyman said he would look into the matter of Council Candidate Mark Greene's lawn signs being taken down, unauthorized, and apparently, according to Greene, by a certain work crew.

[updated on 6/6/13, 1:00 P.M.; revised on 7/16/13]