PT Free Press is expediting publication of this council report in hopes of minimizing community confusion arising from inaccurate Leader reporting that PT City Council OK’s long-term streateries program. The opposite actually took place, as can be seen by viewing the May 2 meeting.
Here follows my emailed response to The Leader and city staff:
So for the second meeting in a row, The Leader completely misrepresented the decisions made by the Port Townsend City Council regarding streateries. Rather than okaying the program, the council spent much of its May 2 meeting reconsidering permanent streateries in thoughtful response to a tidal wave of near-unanimous negative public comment.
Ben Thomas kicked off council discussion by expressing that streateries seem to have gone from being a good thing to a touchstone for public process concerns, since a lot of people came out of the survey not feeling they were heard. The pushback was significant enough for him to move to table the ordinance for permanent streateries until a permanent parking plan could be developed.
Monica MickHager seconded, having grave doubts before last meeting related to the city not having moved on a parking management plan for 20 years. She’s thinking about alternatives like sidewalk cafes or restaurants with space in the back, given that downtown is just two streets with limited space between cliff and water.
Owen Rowe appreciated the public input and concurred that tabling the whole thing makes sense and was worth discussing. Riffing on putting the cart (streateries) before the horse (parking), he noted the argument that streateries don’t connect to our Victorian heritage, when sidewalks were mud with carts and horses so no one wanted to eat on the streets back then.
Libby Wennstrom agreed that a parking study should have come first, but was concerned that tabling now would just kick the same questions down the road, leaving us with multiple years of tents in the interim. Aislinn Diamanti was likewise inclined to let the few businesses wanting to invest in streateries move ahead with them at least uptown, but maybe removing downtown ones.
Mayor David Faber spoke about how before tonight’s meeting, he’d thought the council could still move forward with this program, taking responsibility that originally he (not staff) had wanted to fast-track streateries because he’d heard nothing but positive feedback about them so didn’t want to push this off. But now hearing every single public comment but one expressing massive frustration against the streatery program, he’s trying to give space to those opinions by maybe going forward with just uptown streateries at this time, or delaying permanent streateries until parking enforcement improves.
The council discussed pros & cons of tabling the ordinance versus amending it so that no streateries are allowed in the downtown historic district at this time, eventually coalescing on the latter approach, after which Thomas withdrew his motion to table. The council proceeded to brainstorm draft language for 5 amendments to address every point under discussion, which staff was encouraged to tweak as needed.
Rowe moved to approve staff bringing back a third reading of the ordinance with amendments to various paragraphs as discussed, Faber seconded, and the motion carried unanimously.
Since permanent streateries would not be approved this meeting, the next issue was the imminent expiration of temporary streatery authorization. Wennstrom noted that temporary streateries combine the worst of both worlds, since they’re ugly and sit on the street surface instead of platforms, while still negatively affecting other businesses and parking; Thomas said he was more worried about permanence.
MickHager moved to approve a resolution extending the special event authorizing temporary streateries, waiving special use fees, which carried unanimously.
Permanent streateries in the downtown are off the table now. The city council will revisit an ordinance allowing permanent streateries uptown and in other business districts at its upcoming May 16 meeting.
Stephen Schumacher graduated with honors in Mathematics from Harvard College and programmed funds transfer systems between Wall Street banks and the Federal Reserve before moving to Port Townsend in 1983. He has served as an officer for various community organizations such as the Food Co-op, Jefferson Land Trust, and the Northwest Nutritional Foods Association. He co-created The Port Townsend Leader’s original online newspaper and programs ship stability software used by naval architects.
They’ve certainly earned their Misleader nickname this time. Could this have been intentional? Or was it accidental based on misunderstanding of the meeting proceedings? I can’t decide which reason is worse.
It appears that the May 4, 2022 Leader article could have been written based on the May 2, 2020 agenda bill included in the agenda packet for the May 2, 2020 council meeting.
See: Agenda Bill AB22-040
Meeting Date: May 2, 2022
Agenda Item: VIII.A
Submitted By: Steve King, PW Director Date Submitted: April 26, 2022
Department: Public Works Contact Phone: 360-379-5090
https://cityofpt.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=4&clip_id=2404&meta_id=201042
Obtained from: https://cityofpt.us/citycouncil/page/agendasminutesvideos
Thank goodness for the PTFP and Stephen’s accurate and nonpartisan reporting. I feel fortunate that there are actual investigative journalists out there, and in our town, they all seem to be right here at the Free Press. The PTFP is a community news source that is staffed by unpaid, caring community members that have provided a space for real reporting and also see the value in a allowing a forum for community discussions. Thanks.
And is anyone surprised?? The MisLeader strikes yet again,,, shocking… not
Was just wondering this morning how we can fortify PTFP and make sure it blooms and thrives. The discussions on this simple blog have outpaced and outperformed every discussion I have ever seen in either of the local papers for at least the last decade. Maybe start a Patreon? ‘Would be more than happy to participate in a little regular funding, to make sure our city has the benefit of a truly free press, to help it move forward.
Harvey Windle deserves an award:
Eight long years of documenting this insanity,
while being called every name in the book by
so-called “progressives” so full of hatred for
any ideas counter to their own, they
take potshots at the very citizens they took
an oath to serve, from their seats on the
chamber floor.
A free, effective way to help is to share our articles on all your social media, and even email to friends. Thanks for your support and encouragement.
To its credit, The Leader just posted its council report online with a corrected headline and opening paragraphs, so they now read as follows:
Port Townsend City Council to revisit long-term streateries plan
City to have third meeting on ordinance
In its Monday business meeting, Port Townsend City Council voted unanimously to amend and reconsider plans for streateries — open-air, tent-like structures located outside dining spots — as a potential long-term part of the city’s aesthetic.
One key aspect the city council will reassess is whether or not to only have streateries in Uptown, rather than Port Townsend’s downtown sector.
Never attribute malice to that which can easily be explained as stupidity.
Thank you for your fair and accurate reporting. And also for giving the update that the Leader fixed their article. I’m impressed with your sense of fairness.
A stronger Leader in no way diminishes the role of your publication. When we had our alternative paper 20 years ago we were always glad that the Leader was there to be the paper of record. That’s a thankless task. And it frees you to do some proper muckraking.
Let’s not pretend the leader is some innocent servant of this community which has not been properly thanked.
The Mullen family, through influence of the Main Street foundation and the leader, have aided, abetted, and assisted an agenda which the majority of the people in the city do not want.
The leader is not innocent, and no one here is worried about competition with the local papers. Don’t get it twisted.
Points well taken, Marc. Thank you. Are you saying that Mari is related to previous publisher, Lloyd, I wonder?
Thank you for your support and engagement, Ben. We editors would love to see the Leader live up to its name. In fact, we can thank the fact that it hasn’t and appears reluctant to do anything of the sort is why we agreed to step up to the plate here when Jim Scarantino decided he needed to be doing other things.
I’m puzzled by your assertion that it’s a thankless task to be the paper of record. Seems to me that it offers some variety of cushion, as it’s revenue they don’t have to go chasing. It certainly doesn’t prevent them from doing proper journalism. Since Scott Wilson sold the paper, they’ve descended into the very muck they’re supposed to be raking. Our work is only made more challenging by their censorship, divisive commentary and inability or unwillingness to report fairly and accurately on basic government proceedings.
Here is a history lesson. This was submitted when Lloyd Mullen was publisher and Dean Miller was Editor of the Leader in 2019. Dean actually wrote commentary such as a piece about Mary Jo Kopechne and protected folk relating to PT. He took on parking at the same time Mauro was coming in as City Manager. He mentioned blow back by “tony folk” and didn’t last long at all. Parking issues faded away.
New City manager Mauro “engaged” Port Townsend.
To time travel to 2019 click on the link. For Self-entitled disrespect needs to end. Comments are interesting. Timeless.
https://www.ptleader.com/stories/self-entitled-disrespect-needs-to-end,62356
An Open Letter To Shop Owners
In Downtown Port Townsend:
Please do not leave notes, nasty or otherwise on vehicles parked downtown. If you have seen the vehicle parked in the same area over and over over an extended period of time, that vehicle is likely owned by someone who lives downtown.
If the vehicle has a handicapped placard or handicapped license plates, that means the person has parked the vehicle where they needed to park it, in order to access their home.
We are well aware that there are businesses downtown which are suffering financially at the moment. We are not the cause of your suffering. We have literally begged the city council for mercy and for some parking program which includes the needs of residents of downtown; (many of whom have lived downtown for their entire adult lives).
We are not part of some newfangled sustainable living program. We are not new “smart growth” which went in, not including parking. We have been here all along, since the 1970s. Our building has disproportionately lost parking spaces on the shore side of Taylor street since that time.
Our building is also currently under construction so there is even less parking. Previous to that, Water Street was being paved, so there was even less parking. Previous to that, parklets and bulbouts went in so there was even less parking. Previous to that motorcycle spaces were put in so there was even less parking. The parking for people in our building has absolutely been disappeared.
We have watched for years as employees of downtown businesses parked beside of our apartments so the parking spaces in front of their own buildings would stay clear. And then we are attacked when we park in front of the businesses because we have nowhere wlse to park. We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis. No one seems willing to show us even a grain of mercy for our situation.
We do everything we can to help keep the neighborhood clean and be good citizens of the mixed use community which exists downtown. We don’t dislike our shop owners, and we aren’t trying to harm anyone. We need our cars parked near our homes because we are elderly and/or disabled. Telling us to park on the hill at Washington Street is not the solution to this problem.
We have handicapped placards and license plates on our cars for a reason. The reason is that we are handicapped and disabled.
All over the city there is discussion of low income housing and lack of it; meanwhile, there is a gem of low income housing being restored downtown, and how can we who live in it believe that the city cares about us and our ability to be contributing members of this society, when we can’t even be left alone to park our cars with handicapped plates and placards in the appropriate spaces our doctors recommend, without passive aggressive and downright attacking notes left being on our cars? Do you care about low income human beings, or don’t you? Taking their parking away and telling them their neighborhood is going to be made carless, is not how you do it. Leaving nasty notes with smiley faces on their cars is not how you do it. You’re attacking the wrong people. Please find some compassion within yourselves for us. We are begging you. Please have mercy on us.
Another facet of the results of City Council and City Manager (s) abandoning everyone to work things out (OR NOT) without any guidance or consistency in the manufactured parking chaos.
I’ve been targeted on Facebook and review sites, and had people come in to cause disruptions due to simply asking a well-known restaurant owner’s employees not to block my business all day.
This is year 8 or 9 of this well documented manufactured division and damage to virtually everyone from business to residents to visitors.
With Main Street smiley faces helping.
Anyone leaving their streateries up “temporarily” are showing nothing but me first greed. I will not be referring customers who ask where to eat to anyone leaving up the ugly, divisive, not wanted by the vast majority, mess tents.
The solutions got more an more difficult as abnormal became “normal”. The City Council, Appointed Mayors, and the City Managers they enable are the root cause.
REMOVE ALL STREATERIES NOW. Lets get on with business as usual in this beautiful historic place and discard the idea that some are more special than others, and that mess tents are a special experience that draw people here. Less parking keeps people from here.
Residents are subject to parking signage, from affordable needed housing to expensive condos. It is difficult to fix the City Council and City Manager constructed confusion. Flex cars or designated shared vehicles with dedicated parking seem to be an option within a real parking plan. A county run mini bus service as is available in Kitsap County may also be an answer to offset this manufactured problem.
So many details to work out. So little real world understanding by those in control who have seeded division and conflict. Some profited.
Hear this person’s voice and the needs of older folks living here and work with them. It is a far better use of any parking places than streateries.
Harvey–
As usual, you present some good and thought-provoking ideas. I thought I would let you know that yes, there are some people in our building who have undertaken a system of sharing their cars and related expenses. It’s not easy, and I’m not sure I would say it’s recommended, but it is one of the things people in our apartments have done, to try to survive this insanity.
There was even a man in our apartments who
at the time was able to afford a storage unit he kept his car in. Every time he needed to go to the doctor or drive somewhere far, he had to take the bus up to the storage unit to get his car. It was quite a process and eventually he moved rather than continue that level of expense and hassle just to live a normal life, but this is the sort of thing some of the low income people in this building have done, to try to survive the parking situation downtown. Another man who lived down here was paying for storage for his vehicle at a cheaper outdoors site, and his car ended up being stolen from there.
We are people who generally need some sort of assistance from society in order to survive, yet we have people who can barely eat, spending money on storage units for their vehicles.
Why should elderly and disabled people have to go to these lengths to keep vehicles they use to get to doctor and therapist appointments with?
These are people who built this society; veterans, mothers, people who in their youth,
managed these beautiful old hotels downtown. People whose families built this city. People who sacrificed their youth and their health to serve this nation, and this is how they are treated??? “Thanks for your service old man, but you can’t park down here for more than two hours, and if you don’t like it, leave.”
Worse, we endure all of this as we watch the people who are actively creating the problem, continue to park in parking spaces downtown, and then blame employees of the shops as well as people who live down here, for creating the problem that they themselves, the city council and main street members created and continue to create. They could just as well be leaving their cars in storage and riding the bus downtown.
Oh, but it’s a hassle to ride the bus. If the bus runs late; then they are late to the council meeting! What if the weather turns bad during the meeting and they have to wait for the bus to get home, in the rain? Oh, they didn’t realize the rain bounces up from the sidewalk inside the bus shelter? They didn’t realize that when a car drives by on the street, the water from the gutter splashes up into the bus shelter? Oh. Yes, it’s very uncomfortable. But that’s part of riding the bus! What if they needed to get some groceries on the way home? What if the meeting runs late, past the time of the last bus? It’s so easy for them to tell other people to ride the bus. It’s easy because they have no idea what it’s really like, day in and day out, without a car.
Recently Mayor Faber said they were going to have some sort of wellness week where they were going to get together and do some cycling. I have a better suggestion. The entire council lives without their cars or anybody else’s cars,
for one week. If they are going to work on an agenda of making downtown carless, they need to prove to us they understand what it’s like to live without a car. One week. I did it for nearly 5 years as an immune-compromised cancer survivor with lupus and autism. I didn’t do it because I wanted to, I did it because I couldn’t afford parking tickets and there was nowhere for me to park my car. If I can do it for nearly five years, they can do it for a week. Then we can discuss “carless downtown”.
The truth is, many lives have been made miserable by this carefully constructed chaos.
You the shop owners of downtown deserve better. Residents of downtown deserve better. Commercial landlords downtown deserve better.
The only people being served by this mess, are the people creating the mess.
Everyone involved in trying to solve this problem first needs to educate themselves regarding the full breadth of the problem, and how to shut it down and get us back on track to being a city of engaged and informed human beings, making decisions for ourselves to create a city which welcomes and inspires everyone, not just a select few.
If you’re wondering how Glamping, FWPDA, Poplars, the Cherry Street Fiasco, and the downtown mess-tent/parking chaos are related, there is an answer. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not a right wing freak out. It’s not a left-wing freak out. It’s something important that needs to be understood and addressed by people who care about our society as a whole and about our city as a home for us all.
See:
http://missionviejoca.org/pdfs/rug_2004.pdf
EK White, I accept your carless week challenge for the Council.
Regarding resident parking downtown, it seems to me that there is a lot of sympathy for those of you who live downtown, especially those with mobility issues. But I also think it wise of you to continue to engage the Council on this topic, especially once we get to working on a genuine parking plan. The messages that you been sending to Council have gotten through. You bring a great perspective and good points to the table.
E K White, a Very good article Though I might add. when the powers to be stand to wait for a bus people to do it in the winter when the wind blows, it’s cold and raining.. Lite that’s going happen! They’ll be holed up in their nice worm home after driving there in their fancy “have everything” cars. .To go on the record, I wear a Vet’s cap and many people, including other Vets tell me “Thank you for your service.” I do appreciate it and tell them “Thanks”. However, if one of the (I can’t say it here) does it I’ll go up one side and down the other telling what I feel about them. They are the sorriest bunce of leaders I’ve ever met. It makes me happy to be in Chimacum where I only have to go to Port Townsend occasionally to eat and then only to select places. The Roadhouse and the Hilltop Taven both come to mind. Oh, on parking, they ran out of volunteers to give out tickets. Why not give them a small stipend for the tickets made and paid.. I know I’d be happy to do it.
Ben (And anyone else considering some
bus rides in the near future,)
Some words of advice on using the bus to get everywhere.
It’s a lot easier if you bring a bicycle with you so you don’t have to walk between bus stops. The walking can use up a lot of precious time. A bicycle will be very helpful in that regard.
To get your bike ready for bus use, you’ll need to do a couple things. The first one is, any cables around the cockpit of your bike should be consolidated with zip ties. People taking their bikes off and on the racks, can catch their handles in your cables, and it will wreak havoc on your breaking and shifting abilities. The other thing is, get as much weight off of your bike as you can because you’re going to have to be lifting it on and off of the racks of the bus, very often. Remember to take off any detachable items such as lights or GPS/phone holders before you put the bike on the rack. Those things can be easily knocked off when other people are trying to put their bicycles on and off the racks.
Also, make sure when you lock your bike when you come downtown, you lock the frame and the front wheel. If you have a seat which detaches easily, either take it with you, or lock it as well. There have been plenty of seats and front wheels stolen from bicycles downtown, so just make sure you lock those easily removable items!
And lastly, be extra careful when you get downtown on a bicycle. Lots of people driving into downtown this time if year are seeing it for the first time, so they are looking up at the buildings instead of down at what’s going on in front of them in the street. Also be aware of people downtown with electric bicycles who tend to go flying through downtown at about 30 miles an hour, which is dangerous for them and for everyone. Just, lots to watch out for on a bicycle downtown. I love it, Ben, that you are accepting the challenge, and and also, please be safe out there.
I might add, please wear clothing that can be seen from a distance, especially at dusk, darkness or when it’s raining. If you can’t afford a light or reflector, use a bright yellow or orange reflector tape on the bike. Keep in mind that you are to follow the laws like the motorists and walkers. Keep in mind that you need to stay safe as there are drivers out there that aren’t following the rules, being defensive or have vision problems. If you take a chance with not being aware of a car, you will probably lose. My father did while walking. I was twelve and will never forget that night. You don’t want to hurt the people you love. and the people who love you.