Judging from the comments in The JOLT and at the meetings, it appears the city failed to do what it knows it needed to do regarding a difficult issue like parking. The city grant application reads,
"We anticipate conducting an especially high level of public outreach around the reduction of parking requirements (Objective One) so that we can build stronger understanding of why this is an important step for meeting housing, land use, transportation and climate adaption goals along with address concerns about parking impacts to surrounding neighborhoods."
The city failed to live up to their grant proposal. Further, what was shared with the community was severely changed with no advance notice by the Planning Commission and then again by the Land Use Committee. No time for public engagement on what was being proposed.
Respecting the grant commitment and the community calls for delaying the zero parking changes while the city does the right thing – the thing they knew they should do in the first place – and build a “stronger understanding” and “address the concerns about parking impacts to surrounding neighborhoods”.
Take the time to do this right. It is foolish in terms of community cohesion to rush through a divisive action under the excuse of meeting a grant deadline.
Fact is, there is zero requirement in the Commerce grant for a zero-parking ordinance change. In fact, the Olympia Planning staff proposed reductions, not eliminations of minimums. The City Council could meet the deadline by adopting changes that are reasonable reductions, get the small amount of money that this last deliverable entails ($16,000) and continue to have a dialogue with the community about any further reductions.
As many commentators have said, a blanket city-wide application of parking requirements in the ABSENCE of a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis is not good planning or management and, as we can see, unnecessarily increases divisions at the cost of “stronger understanding”.
Please explain the inappropriate content below.
