Lucky to have Sarah Blossom on Council

I sent this letter of endorsement to the Bainbridge Review this week.

Dear Editor:

I enthusiastically support Sarah Blossom for city council.

I got to know Sarah when I was chair of the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force and she was one of our city council liaisons. She brought the same independent thinking and hard work to that role as she does to all of her council duties. She came to our meetings prepared and ready to work. She offered honest analysis and a passion for problem solving. She is committed to the difficult work of finding realistic strategies that will protect the natural environment while increasing housing options for people of all races, cultures, ages and incomes. She has abundant patience and extensive council experience which serve her well in the island’s sometimes contentious debates.

In contrast, her opponent, Michael Pollack, has a track record of lackluster performance as an elected official. As a current member of the Parks board, his embarrassing 50% attendance record merited an article in the Bainbridge Review. Worse, he has been making careless and untrue statements about housing and the environment, both on his website and at the recent candidate forum.

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Draft Comp Plan pushes reality-tested affordable housing idea

It’s been six months since the Bainbridge City Council voted to develop the Suzuki property with an emphasis on affordable housing, and picked Olympic Property Group as the developer. With the housing crisis raging on throughout the Puget Sound region (see, e.g., here, here, and here, and the island’s Housing Needs Assessment, here), Bainbridge Island has made little progress toward easing its affordability problems.  And that lack of progress comes after more than a decade of inattention, as I wrote in March, when I noted that since 2003, the island has increased its income-qualified affordable housing stock by only 66 units.

But maybe there’s some good news after all. While progress on the Suzuki property has been bogged down in the particulars of an ecological study, the drafters of the Housing Element of the Comprehensive Plan update have done some promising work of their own.

The drafting committee has come up with concrete programs with a track record for helping to alleviate the housing cost burdens embedded in a community where the median single-family home price exceeds $750,000 and rental vacancies are near zero.

Among the ideas: amend the City’s development rules to encourage innovation such as tiny houses, micro units and cottage housing; expand opportunities for infill in Winslow and the Neighborhood Centers; and allow the creation of small lots and smaller footprint homes.

One idea in the draft Comp Plan has been especially popular in other communities: the Multi-Family Property Tax Exemption (MFTE) program. Established by state statute, this program allows local governments to exempt multi-family housing developments from property tax for 12 years if at least 20% of the units are rent-restricted for income-qualifying tenants. This program has been adopted by cities across Washington, both large—Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Bellevue—and small—Bellingham, Moses Lake, Yakima, Shoreline, Bremerton.

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Suzuki: Council chooses Olympic Property Group, but much remains unclear

The City has sent out the following press release about last night’s Council decisions on next steps in the process to develop the Suzuki process:

The Bainbridge Island City Council has established a path to move forward with the development of the Suzuki Property, including completing an ecological study of the property and identifying a development team, the Olympic Property Group, to begin negotiating a development agreement.

At their Regular Business Meeting on March 23, the City Council laid out a path to move forward with an ecological study of the Suzuki Property. The citizen advisory Environmental Technical Advisory Committee (ETAC) will work with City staff to identify information already available regarding the property, and will identify additional information needed to establish an ecological baseline for the site. Once the additional information needed has been identified, ETAC will make a recommendation to the City Council as to the best path moving forward to gather the identified information.

The Council also voted to direct the City Manager to move forward with negotiating a development agreement with the Olympic Property Group. During their next meeting on Tuesday, April 12, the City Council will discuss the scope and parameters that will inform the City Manager during these negotiations. The exact details of the development contract including requirements for affordable housing, types of community amenities, etc., will be decided during these negotiations. All Councilmembers have already expressed a strong desire that the developer be required to carry out an extensive public engagement process as a condition of the development agreement.

 

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Tollefson recommends Olympic Property Group for Suzuki development

Bainbridge Mayor and Council member Val Tollefson has posted the following memo on the City’s website:

To: City Council; Doug Schulze
From: Val Tollefson
Date: March 21, 2016
Re: Proposal for moving forward with the Suzuki property Background.

There appears to be majority Council support for selecting a developer and moving forward with development of the Suzuki property. At the same time, there is unanimous support that if any development is to happen, it must be in the context of protecting the important ecological attributes of the property. Finally, there is strong sentiment among some on the Council and within respected members of the community that before any development activity proceeds there should be an ecological assessment of the property, to establish baseline information and ensure that there is no compelling but currently unknown reason to abandon development efforts before any substantive development takes place. There is also some opinion that such assessment should be done by persons or organizations without ties either to the developer or to the City, in the apparent belief that an unbiased assessment cannot otherwise be expected.

Following are my views on these issues. I hope they will help us have a productive discussion tomorrow evening.

Baseline Ecological Assessment proposal.

While I agree that an early baseline assessment of some aspects of the property is prudent, I do not agree that such assessment should happen independent of involvement of the developer, for several reasons. First, tasking the City with contracting for such an assessment will inevitably increase the cost and slow down the process. Second, it is important to involve the developer in defining the scope of such an assessment so that the scope will not be deficient and require unnecessary repetition if the development proceeds. Third, at least one of the baseline issues that should be addressed (the impact of any proposed development on aquifer recharge and the hydrological functioning of the non‐ developed portion of the site) requires input from the developer with regard to areas subject to potential development.

I believe that any fear that involvement of a developer will compromise the process or be a de facto decision to proceed regardless of what an assessment might reveal are groundless if we take the following three steps:

1. Task the Environmental Technical Advisory Committee to act as the City’s advocate in collaborating with the developer to define the scope of an assessment, in approving the qualifications of professionals retained by the developer to perform the assessment, and to verify the adequacy and reliability of any resulting work product. ETAC will have to agree to this assignment, and to its willingness to handle these responsibilities (which should be short‐lived) on an expeditious basis rather than through its regularly scheduled meeting process. Alternatively, the City could retain a professional project manager to discharge these responsibilities, although after some research I’m not sure where we would find such a qualified professional.
2. The City will require that this assessment be completed and reported to the City Council for consideration and possible approval before any other aspect of a potential development proposal is considered by the Council.
3. The City will agree to reimburse the developer its costs incurred in performing this assessment should the assessment result in the City deciding to abandon the project.

If the Council agrees that this is a reasonable approach, I suggest that we direct City staff to implement this strategy. Although the scope of the assessment should ultimately be determined by those with expertise, I suggest that the main items that need early attention are:

1. A survey of the property, to include surveyed location on the property of trees
identified by a certified arborist as mature or old‐growth, and the outline of the
portion of the property identified by that arborist as constituting “mature forest”.

2. A report by a certified arborist identifying the species, estimated age and health of each tree located in the survey.

3. A report by a certified arborist of requirements to protect the health of the mature forest, including buffers from construction activity, or recommendations on means of construction that would avoid damage.

4. A report by a qualified professional as to the impact on aquifer recharge that would follow from development of any particular part of the property, and of the
consequences for the ecological function of the remainder of the property of such
development.

5. A report by a qualified professional as to the minimum buffer around the existing pond and elsewhere on the southern border of the property necessary to preserve the essential ecological function of the pond, and to provide reasonable screening to adjacent neighbors.

Developer Choice proposal.

I recommend that we direct Staff to negotiate a development agreement with Olympic Property Group for the following reasons, and with the following instructions:

My recommendation of OPG is based on the following factors:

1. I believe that OPG is best‐qualified financially and by experience to provide a project that will be functionally and esthetically acceptable to the community.

2. I personally believe that for a development agreement to gain Council support, it will be important for the developer to lead the development team in considering innovative ways of addressing community interests and Council priorities, and to maintain a robust and effective community outreach process. I think OPG is best equipped to accomplish this.

3. Of those members of the public commenting in support of some development of the property, there has been significant support of including some sort of Boys and Girls Club/Community facility. Such a facility would be a good fit with this development and adjacent neighborhoods, and potentially would result in less traffic impact at critical times.

Development Agreement directions to Staff.

If we move ahead as outlined above, I suggest we provide Staff with some specific goals for a development agreement. My current list includes, in no particular order:

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Council stays the course on Suzuki affordable housing

At tonight’s City Council study session, the four members who are taking the lead on the question of what to do with the Suzuki property–Mike Scott, Val Tollefson, Wayne Roth and Roger Townsend–gave strong guidance on the Council’s next steps in the process to choose a developer for the property and finalize plans for the site. By the end of the session, the remaining three members–Sarah Blossom, Kol Medina and Ron Peltier—appeared to concede to the near-inevitability of development of the property, and began to express their ideas and preferences for development.

The Council decided to come back to its next meeting with suggestions for the parameters of an ecological study to determine where the significant trees are located, what must be done or avoided in order to maintain their health, and what kind of buffer is needed around the pond. A hydrology study will also be done. Council members will bring to the next meeting suggestions for a firm that could do the studies.

They spent great deal of time debating whether to decide on a proposer/developer before completing the study. Ultimately, they decided to choose the developer and then work to revise the plans as a partner with the developer, retaining Council control and opportunity for community input at each stage of the process. Peltier and Medina argued that they should delay choosing a developer until the study was complete. Peltier further suggested that all of the developers should submit revised proposals once the study was complete, based on its findings. That idea was rejected by those in the majority, who preferred to proceed on “parallel tracks”–continuing to work on choosing a developer while the study was being done. They were not in favor of throwing out the work that has been done so far, and did not want to have new proposals submitted.

The Council talked about what kind of affordable housing would be included in the development. Medina suggested that they can’t pick a developer until they have identified specifically what kind of affordable housing the island needs.

To that, Tollefson replied, “We need it all,” adding that this development will not be able to fill to all the needs. The final plan could be all rental, all owned with affordability deed restrictions, or market rate units that are so small they are affordable. He believed that as serious discussion proceeds with the chosen developer, those decisions will come naturally.

One of the biggest surprises of the night came when Tollefson said he had already begun to form an opinion on which developer he might choose. He said he didn’t think the Blue team had the financial capability to do the project and as a result, wasn’t in favor of that proposal.

Tollefson also asked his colleagues for an indication of whether they are interested in the possibility of a Boys and Girls Club on the site, as envisioned under the proposal known as the Farm. Medina said that although he is against developing the site, if it is developed, he would be in favor of the club, or some kind of community center. Peltier wondered why the Boys and Girls Club can’t remain at its current location at Coppertop Business Park. The others did not express an opinion.

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Greenwashing Suzuki

This was posted on Facebook today, and was posted last week on the Parfitt Way Blog, the blog of Parfitt Way Management Corp., owner of the Harbour Public House, Pegasus Coffee House and Harbor Marina. The entire blog post is here.  Parfitt Way Management is owned by long-time islanders and business people, Jeff and Jocelyn Waite.

As I listen to the competing arguments for the preferred use of the Suzuki property, I am disappointed by the discussions.

In many respects, this is a bizarre story of a geographically exclusive city that prides itself on being environmentally conscious, whose city council can approve the construction of yet another 10,000-square-foot vacation home with a heated outdoor swimming pool, and simultaneously decry as an eyesore the “ugly” multifamily developments where working class people live. In other respects, this is a familiar story of America’s continuing clash between people of differing economic classes, who rely on each other, and yet cannot figure out how to live with each other.

Bainbridge Island’s service sector is teetering on the edge of unsustainability for one reason and one reason alone – lack of available workers. Historically, to maintain our two restaurants’ doors open we have required some 60 – 70 persons in our work force per year. That nets out to about 35 full time equivalents (FTE). We are just one employer on an island that continues to demand a vibrant and healthy downtown. Each year we watch as our available labor pool shrinks and the number of staff miles driven to get to work increases. In my many years on the Chamber of Commerce board of directors, I have heard a common refrain from the island’s employers. How is that good for the island and our island environment?

For those who are taking issue with the Housing Resource Board’s (HRB) proposal based on environmental concerns, please take pause. If Bainbridge Island is a defining place that embodies the best of environmentalism, then much of that movement becomes wed to the condition of the privileged. Privileged environmentalism is not progressive politics but a politics of the rich and comfortable that only claims progressive ideals. That brand of environmentalism becomes entirely consistent with – and is a close cousin of – class exclusionary politics.

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Local teacher priced off island: “This is simple economics”

I received this letter yesterday, in response to my post “Fair housing or fair weather ideals?” The writer teaches English, film studies and composition at Bainbridge High School.

Hi Althea,

I just read your article on affordable housing and the Suzuki property and wanted to thank you for raising such an important issue

If you are interested, there is another side / consequence to the lack of affordable housing on Bainbridge–a significantly diminished ability to attract and retain teachers and administrators for Bainbridge schools.

The school board recently repealed the requirement that administrators have to live on the island. While that’s both a compromise and a recognition of our housing problem, it’s certainly not a solution.

Other organizations such as the Housing Resources Board and the Marguerite Foundation make laudable efforts to address this issue. Unfortunately their income and experience rules often wind up excluding more experienced teachers.

This is an issue that’s both immediate and near and dear to my heart. Last year, my wife and I divorced. I was lucky to find a one-bedroom apartment I could afford on Bainbridge so that I could stay near my three children. When my kids come over, they sleep on air mattresses in the crowded living room. It’s not ideal, but we’ve made it work for the past year. However, a couple of months ago, I found out that my landlord intends to sell the apartment at the end of my lease. As you are probably aware, while the housing market is tight on the island, the rental market is even tighter. After going through the loss of my rental myself and seeing it happen to two close friends, I decided it was time to stop renting and start shopping for a house.

Despite having lived and taught in this community for 11 years, despite being at the top of my pay scale with zero debt and a credit score in the 800s, I, as a single teacher, literally cannot afford to buy a house in the community I call home. I’ve done everything I can short of working a second job–and there are many teachers who do just that in order to make ends meet. I’ve pursued and received my National Boards endorsement, I advise an after school club. For years, I served as department head. Despite these pursuits, I simply don’t make enough to afford even a modest house on the island. Consequently I am moving to Poulsbo in two weeks.

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