Tear It Down! Signature deadline looms for initiative to unmake the mistake

author : Janet Blanding topic : Olympia Capitol Park Foundation

by Janet Blanding

Jerry Reilly is the temporary chair of the Olympia Capitol Park Foundation. This newly organized group has begun to gather signatures on an Initiative Petition that may eventually lead to the creation of a new park on the isthmus between Capitol Lake and Budd Inlet. If established, this park would require the demolition of the Capitol Center building, sometimes referred to as the “mistake by the lake.” The Initiative petition requires the City Council to undertake a feasibility analysis to investigate the acquisition and development of a part of the Capitol Lake-Budd Inlet Isthmus as a public park. The proposed park would not include the Bayview Market, the Yacht Club, or the Oyster House restaurant.

Works In Progress: Isn’t this the first initiative at the city level in Olympia?

Jerry Reilly: No. I’ve lived here since 1981, and it’s the first one I had known of, and the city clerk did not know of any, either. But I have since learned that there was a least one other initiative. It was back in 1955 when the City Commission wanted to log off the Watershed. Citizens put together an initiative ordinance to prevent that, and apparently while the initiative was pending, the City Council was proceeding toward logging the area. The Supreme Court of Washington in Shamley v. City of Olympia enjoined the city from taking action during the pendency of the initiative. It’s an interesting parallel, and as it turned out, the initiative did pass eventually, and the watershed was changed to a park. I hadn’t known about this until an old timer wrote me an email, and I looked it up in Wikipedia and found out there was a court case. In those days, Olympia had a commission form of government, so the rules were slightly different. Initiatives required signatures of 25% of the people who voted in the last mayoral election. Now we need 15% of all the people who were registered at the last general election, whether they voted or not. So we need around 4000 signatures.

WIP: Can you give us an overview of the initiative process?

JR: The City of Olympia has a very helpful link on their website about initiatives, so we started there, then we looked at the state statues, and talked to some people in Lakewood who have an initiative on the ballot there regarding casino gambling. The power of initiative is fairly limited -- it can’t be used to affect city budget decisions, and it can’t be used to affect comprehensive plan amendments. That’s outside of the scope of what you can do by initiative. What you can do by initiative is affect general legislative policy of the city. We think that by initiative we can ask the city to seriously analyze the option of use of the isthmus as a park. It’s necessary to follow the prescribed format that’s in the state statute, and draft it as if it’s a city ordinance. We have a preamble and the two operative sections. Signatures have to appear in a specific format, and there has to be a warning on the petition. When we’ve gathered sufficient signatures or believe we have, it’s turned in to the city clerk. The clerk then goes to the county auditor and requests verification of the names on the petition. If the auditor says we have sufficient names, we’re past step one. If we’re short, then we have ten days to pick up additional signatures. Once we’ve met the threshold, it’s back in the city‘s lap. Once they have a validated petition, they have a choice. They have 20 days in which to simply pass it, or they may decide to put it to a vote of the people. If they put it to a vote, the city attorney prepares a summary of less than 200 words saying what the initiative does, then the stakeholders get a chance to discuss that, but assuming everybody agrees and is happy with the description, it goes to the county auditor, and the auditor schedules an election. It has to be to the county auditor by December 12. Our goal is to have as many signatures as possible by mid-September [when the City Council holds its hearing on the rezone]. We don’t really need to complete the process until the end of October, legally, but obviously the sooner the better.

WIP: So the City has a choice as to whether they just pass it or put it to a vote?

JR: Yes. But they can buy a lot of a feasibility study for the cost of a special election. According to the County auditor, a special election would cost about $100,000 dollars.

WIP: If the initiative passes, and the proposed amendment passes as well, what happens? Can the City Council proceed with the rezone if the initiative passes?

JR: The initiative does nothing to the rezone process directly, but will affect the atmosphere in which the City Council is making this consideration. If we have 4000 people in Olympia expressing the sentiment that the council ought to take a serious look at using the isthmus for a park, moving in another direction doesn’t seem logical, but this initiative does not preclude them from doing that. It can’t directly affect the comprehensive plan amendment.

WIP: So is the initiative process more political than legal, then?

JR: No. A mere petition is political, with a lot of people expressing a sentiment. The initiative forces the city to make a legal choice: either do the park feasibility study on their own, or pass it on to the voters. It becomes a legal dilemma that the city then has to deal with.

WIP: Are you hopeful of getting enough signatures in time?

JR: Absolutely. There are two kinds of hopeful, there’s hopeful by mid-September, and there’s hopeful by the end of October. It will be difficult to do by mid-September, logistically, but I think we may have a substantial number by then. This weekend [August 23-24] the Olympia Capitol Park Foundation, as well as the Friends of the Waterfront, the League of Women Voters, and People for a Participatory City will be collecting signatures at various locations. We’re also gearing up to do precinct by precinct doorbelling. Many people I did not know before are sending emails asking how they can help. [Ed. note: As of 8/28/08, _____ signatures had been gathered.]

WIP: How can our readers sign the initiative petition if they haven’t actually encountered a canvasser with a clipboard? Is the petition available online?

JR: Yes. There is a download of the petition available at www.olycapitolparkfoundation.org. People can download it, copy it double-sided, then simply sign it, maybe get some friends to sign it or sign it just by yourself, then send it to me. You can’t email it to me, it has to be mailed or dropped off. The address is right on the form.

WIP: Some people have argued that the mixed used high-end buildings Triway wants to build on the isthmus would improve Olympia’s tax base, and a park would not. How do you think making that area into a park would affect Olympia’s economy?

JR: We think the view corridor from and to the Capitol, from the Capitol from the Law Enforcement Memorial, out over Capitol Lake and Budd Inlet and on up to the Olympics is one of the natural wonders of the country. We haven’t always thought about that or appreciated it, particularly because of the eyesore in the middle of it. But there are few vistas like this anywhere. What’s particularly unique about it is the framing, with Cooper Point to the West, Boston Harbor to the east, and Mount Washington and The Brothers 50 miles to the north. It is just a national treasure. Preserving the most important natural treasure of Olympia is, in the long run, very beneficial to the financial stability of the city. As we become more and more intensively developed throughout the country, these magnificent sites are becoming more rare and more valuable. It’s not an accident that folks want to develop this particular site for expensive condominiums. The precise reason they want to develop this site is the reason why. Instead, it should be developed as a great public space.

WIP: I know it’s a bit premature, but could you speculate about some of the possibilities for securing funding to make this park into a reality?

JR: The basic concept is looking for a series of partnerships between the city, the state and private contributions. That’s why we’re in the process of setting up a nonprofit foundation that is capable of receiving gifts. We’ve already had offers of significant gifts, but we’ve had to say wait, we can’t accept them yet, we’re not completely set up yet. With respect to funding, there are four parts: local, state, federal and private. There have been numbers stated by some folks that this is not feasible because it’s too expensive, and I’ve hear d people say it would cost $100 million. Where they come to that number, I have no idea, because if you look at the assessed value of the four parcels in question, right now they’re worth about $ 15 million, that’s the assessed value. Then you would have the cost of clearing the property, and the cost of developing the property. But all of Heritage Park cost the State of Washington $16 million. The city paid for the fountain block, which was in the ballpark of a million dollars. Everything we’ve got to date cost around 17 million. Developing those additional areas on the isthmus doesn’t look to me to be a $100 million proposition, but that’s what this feasibility study is designed to determine.

While you’re considering doing a feasibility analysis, if you rezone, you immediately increase your costs, because there’s high value in that rezone. So it’s not logical to increase the ultimate cost of an option under feasibility review by changing the status of the land.

WIP: Do the Former Planning Commissioners come at this issue from a different angle than other community opponents, due to their perspective as planners?

JR: The genesis of the group was former planners, but we had forty people at our first meeting, so it’s a much broader group at this point. It began when Jeff Jaksich called together some former planning commissioners who had concerns about the rezone. We wrote the Op-Ed for The Olympian laying out reasons why it was not a good idea. Then we thought maybe we could be FOR something. We have all seen the debate about the height limits happen several times. A lot of us have intuitively felt that the highest and best public use for that area was a great public space, but we hadn’t organized to start the process to have that seriously considered. So we thought we should see if the public was in favor of a different vision for the area, and that would eventually include people saying they would be willing to pay more in property taxes to help support this effort, and we think people ought to be given that option, rather than just assuming they won’t. Some of us think they will. You get the cost down as low as possible by enlisting partners. Most of those original six commissioners are active in the foundation, but now many more people are involved. We hope to eventually have a foundation with a governing board, but a membership was well, including people from all around the state.

WIP: Do you think your status as a former Planning Commissioner, and the status of other members of the group as former planners shaped your perspectives, so that you might see the issue in a different way from other groups that oppose the rezone?

JR: I don’t know, I just know about my own perspective. I don’t have concerns about development per se, I just think it needs to be in the right place and on the right scale. I think it would be a good thing for Olympia to have what they call market-rate housing in the right place in the downtown area. I think it’s important we have a sufficient number of subsidized housing units as well. There are many sites that are preferable to this one in terms of balancing the needs of the whole community. A number of us think that the vision being offered by Olympia 20/20 Vision needs also to be taken seriously. This would mean taking a real comprehensive look at the whole downtown, involving the public at large. Skeptics say “we’ve done this before,” but we haven’t done it with this group of individuals. Sometimes you have to re-do planning efforts because things have changed, and you need buy-in from new groups of people.

The other thing people tell you is that this is an impossible dream. But in 1983, Heritage Park was an impossible dream. In 1955, Watershed Park was an impossible dream. In the 1980s, the wonderful Farmers Market was an impossible dream. I remember when the Farmers Market was just a few tables down on Plum Street.

Registered voters in the city of Olympia can help make the dream of an isthmus park a reality by signing the initiative. Volunteers will have initiative petitions available for signature at the Farmers Market (near the ATM machine) on Friday, August 29 from 10 a.m.–3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 6 from 10-3, Sunday, Sept. 7 from10-3, Saturday, Sept. 13 from 10-3, Sunday, Sept. 14 from 10-3, and at Harbor Days on Sunday, August 31 from 5 to 7 p.m. . The petition is also available online at http://www.olycapitolpark.org