The Current City Council and who's pocket they're in

author : TJ Johnson topic : Olympia City Council

by TJ Johnson

Kudos to the staff at Works in Progress for the excellent articles in the May issue about the growing influence of development and real estate interests on the Olympia City Council.

During the course of my time on the City Council (2000-2001; 2004-2007) I witnessed a dramatic shift in how city staff and my Council colleagues approached development issues. While City leaders boast about their commitment to sustainability and the idea that growth should pay for growth, behind the scenes they are making every effort to fast track environmentally questionable projects, and using public money to increase profits for the development gang. Meanwhile proposals that would curtail development that would harm the environment (such as a rezone of the flood-prone Chambers Basin) or be more consistent with community values and the city’s comprehensive plan (such as prohibiting Wal Mart and other big box retail) get torpedoed by city staff or council members who don’t want to ruffle the feathers of the development vultures.

I believe there are at least four reasons for the new overtly pro-growth approach at the city. First, as noted by WIP, is the increasing influence of political contributions by development interests. Perhaps it was inevitable; as small local developers are increasingly replaced by large out-of-town firm, the money flowing into campaign coffers seems to swell correspondingly.

Second, there is a profound if naïve belief that more development will increase city revenues and benefit everyone. This is the old “rising tide lifts all boats” blather. Of course it is completely bogus, as multiple studies show clearly that increased development, especially in the form of the tacky single family homes that are increasingly replacing forests and fields, actually put further strains on already stressed municipal finances. During my years on the Council I consistently pressed staff to tell the Council whether a proposed annexation or development was a net gain or net loss to the city financially. After years of hemming and hawing, in 2007 staff finally began to admit that each new structure permitted dug the city into a deeper financial hole.

The third factor is the growing influence of The Olympian on the city’s agenda. After listening to The Olympian rage for the last 10 years about how Olympia is so unfriendly to development (falling forests, more traffic and record revenues in the planning department not withstanding), city leaders have finally bought into the rhetoric. It always astounded me when I was on the Council to see the frenzy of staff and Council activity as they prepared for the quarterly meeting with The Olympian’s editorial board. If Mike Oakland and Vickie Kilgore saw all of the effort that went into preparing for these pilgrimages to their altar it would swell their already too big egos to mythic proportions.

Now, with the creation of Oly 2012, a pro-development front group spawned by The Olympian and several councilmembers to provide political cover, city leaders can claim that their pro-development actions are consistent with community desires.

The fourth factor is that those of us that have a different vision for Olympia’s future have not successfully translated that vision into sustained political action. With so many of us distracted by the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, erosion of our civil liberties, rising food prices, rapidly accelerating global warming, growing poverty, a shredded social safety net (etc) we are fragmented and easily defeated by the forces of greed. Some have given up altogether. Others – myself included – have stepped back to reenergize and refocus. Still others lack a clear sense of how to translate emotion to action.

One thing is for certain. The development interests who now have most of the seats at the table are not likely to give them up without a fight. This was reinforced at a recent meeting of the local visitor and convention bureau when one of the leaders of the development crowd crowed about how good it was to finally have all three of the local city councils – Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia – in their pocket.

This is the new reality. The question we need to answer is obvious. What are those of us that don’t want to live in another unsustainable, faceless, corporate, sprawled-out, paved-over, upper middle-class suburb going to do about it?

TJ Johnson served on the Olympia City Council in 2000–01 and 2004–07.