The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About12-December 2015From Mayor David King December 2015 Beginning to Relax It’s been raining and our reservoirs are beginning to refill. The City’s financial condition continues to improve. The election is over and a combination of experienced elected officials and energetic new blood will be overseeing the City next year. So as I’m confident in the City’s future, and with nothing much else to write about on this dreary day in November, I thought I’d share some personal habits I’ve found useful at Council and am hoping to carry forward after my term is over this month. Keep Reading and Listening I think we are living through a revolutionary time in human history where more and more “information” is instantaneously available. It’s like the advent of indoor plumbing. For centuries people got their water from community wells that were social centers as well as essential infrastructure. Now we turn a tap and it just pours out. Similarly, schools, universities and libraries are no longer the only gateways to knowledge, and, as with all transformations, there are downsides and upsides. City staff has always been helpful about providing factual information for these newsletters but I’ve made a conscious effort to base them on public documents available to anyone with internet access. But any account, however factual, incorporates bias – what’s included, what’s left out – and we need to be attentive to the motivation behind information we use - why it exists and who’s paying for it. So skepticism is an essential skill of this new age. Our brains are biased and imperfect windows on the world – at least mine is - and sources of information frequently leverage bias to move us in a particular way. So I try to begin my skepticism with my own reactions. Fortunately, there is a growing body of scientific knowledge about our brains, how they work and what they hide from us. Some of these concepts have been useful in my work on City Council. Confirmation Bias - The tendency to favor information that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses and set much higher standards of evidence for hypotheses that go against them (“disconfirmation bias.) I have put in hundreds of hours researching issues but with so much data available I’m almost always looking for evidence to support the conclusions I’ve already reached. Normalization Gap - The divergent narrative of a harmful event in the eyes of the aggressor, the victim and a neutral party. A self-serving bias. I find this applies to pretty much any encounter where there is a strong difference of opinion coupled with different levels of authority - between employer and employee or policeman and driver for instance. I have found it helpful because I realize that two very different accounts of the same event can both be truthful descriptions of how they were experienced. Illusory superiority - a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. Actually I quite like this one and rely on it. You'll never run out of positive reinforcement if you keep a ready supply on-hand. Alice won't help with this, however. Unlike water, there is no established standard of quality for the information that now pours out of our screens and speakers. Needing to put something up on the screen to feed a 24/7 news cycle, news organizations now largely limit their reporting to “both sides.” Actual journalism - the neutral third account of the event - is often unavailable. Worse yet, agenda-driven institutions like Fox and MSNBC (or any campaign committee) may deliberately misrepresent current events or wildly unlikely future ones in order to present differences as personal injury - “They’re coming for our guns!”, “War on Women.” This uses our bias towards confirmation and our sensitivity to injury to get us energized and angry. Since governance requires acknowledging unwelcome facts, and politics requires denying them, we’re governing badly now that we’re campaigning all the time. I try, with varying success, to resist being manipulated in this way. Keep Writing and Talking As I accept the fact that the earth is very old, the global consequence of releasing greenhouse gases that were sequestered in the earth over millions of years in the geological equivalent of the blink of an eye – the human activity that is responsible for climate change – is intuitive to me. But how did we do that? How did we get here? This also seems obvious to me. To a degree greater than every other creature on the planet humans adapt through communication and culture, not mutation. Adaptive biological mutations propagate from parent to offspring. Adaptive cultural innovations – from making a stone hand axe to building a Facebook page – can be used immediately by anyone that learns about them. ”Broadcasting” information - appropriately taken from the distribution of seeds to germinate – is barely a hundred years old, and our current revolution adds the ability to reply as well as receive. The growth of knowledge, expanding access to it, and the human habitat we have built from it, have resulted in our enormous population – and in the unintended consequences we are now trying to manage. The pen isn’t just mightier than the sword. The pen IS the sword. And the bank. And the farm. And the church. And the iPhone. And the Cern Large Hadron Collider. My experience at Council has helped me realize that participation in the human conversation is an opportunity and a responsibility. The conversation is our DNA and it’s mutating rapidly. That’s important. Always Vote Reading and writing - as in learning about our world and committing to share and use that learning – are habits I’ve picked up in my time as an elected official and that I hope to continue doing after my term is up. But I have voted without fail at every opportunity since casting my vote for Jimmy Carter in an iron-bound oaken box in the Middlesex County, Virginia in 1976. There are two reasons I always vote. First of all, voting matters. A City Council cannot constrain or dictate the actions of future councils - an allocation from the general fund to parks and recreation by one council can be reversed by a subsequent one. But dedication to the Port Townsend library of funds from the lid lift in 2008 was specified in the text of the ballot measure itself. Sixty-seven percent of us voted for it to increase operating funds for the City Library and only another vote by the people can change that. Secondly, I believe voting makes me a good citizen. It motivates me to consider the issues, and it affects my own behavior because I try to live up to the standard I want to set for the candidates on my ballot. A little over 54% of eligible voters turned out for our election last month, one of the highest percentages in the Washington. Even so I think it’s pretty sad that only half of us chose to vote. I doubt that those of us who didn’t lack opinions about the candidates or the other measures on the ballot. I miss going to Mountain View and getting my “I Voted” sticker and the small ceremony that was part of the community experience of voting. But the ballot still rules in this country and we all need to vote whenever we are called upon to do so – not only to decide issues but to protect the democratic institutions that make our votes relevant and binding. Imagine a Positive Future I grew up in a world teetering on the edge of a catastrophic nuclear exchange that in a few hours would have ended western civilization. I remember “whites only” drinking fountains near our house in Maryland just outside Washington DC. And I remember a blond haired girl in the fourth grade (I probably had a crush on her) returning to school with braces on her legs after contracting polio. The nuclear genie is still in the bottle. Vaccines have largely eradicated polio. And the mayor of Washington DC is a black woman. For all the bloodletting we see on the news, it is statistically the safest time for humans to be alive. From Sarajevo in 1918 to Iraq in 2003 no one doubts that human folly continues to exist and can lead to catastrophic decisions. But studies of human nature as I’ve cited above reveal that behavior can influence emotion as well as the other way around. Athlete’s visualize victory to improve their performance. Even a forced smile reduces stress. So I choose to believe that the same human intelligence that got us into this mess can evolve further to manage it. It’s way too easy to use what we think is wrong with today as an excuse to be lazy about dealing with tomorrow. Not Goodbye This is my last column in your Utility Bill. Thanks for your patience with these lengthy efforts – particularly when I wander a bit beyond the City limits as I have here. But as I said in the October newsletter, I’m not going far. I’ll be joining Port Townsend’s Diplomatic Corps – the former Mayors that are our community’s best ambassadors. I’m grateful to our excellent City staff for the consistently skilled and cheerful support I’ve received on Council for the past 8 years. I’m grateful to my colleagues on Council and I will cherish the memory of the work we’ve done together. And I’m grateful to all of you, my neighbors, for the encouragement I’ve received while serving as an elected official. It has been wonderful to live here for the past 37 years and wonderful to serve as your mayor for the last four. December 2015 Port Townsend Water Resources Update A series of storms in November raised stream flows in the watershed, however, the intensity of the rain storms flushed a significant amount of sediment into the streams. The resulting high turbidity from the sediment has limited the number of days water was able to be diverted from the rivers to replenish Lords Lake reservoir. Lords Lake reached its lowest point at the beginning of November and, while being drawn upon during the storm events, the level has generally trended upwards. The City Council will consider rescinding the emergency water supply declaration at the De- cember 7th council meeting. The weekly water status update is posted on the City’s web- site. Short Term Vacation Rentals There has been a lot of interest in the topic of Short Term Vacation Rentals in the news lately. Short Term Vacation rentals is the rental of a house for a period of a less than 30 days. At their meeting of Octo- ber 19, 2015, City Council requested the City Manager to “prepare leg- islation related to short-term rentals that a) consolidates the existing provisions of the City’s municipal code related to rentals of less than 30 days into one chapter and, b) incorporates short-term rental provisions that generally conform to the guidance in the Table at Exhibit A, and to present those documents for approval.” This referenced Table lists the Community Development and Land Use Committee’s 15 “Short Term Rental Issues and Recommendations” that were developed during their meetings this year. This document and other information about short term rentals can be found on the City website at: http://cityofpt.us/video.html City Council Archives 2015/October 19, 2015/Agenda The issue is not expected to return to Council for review until early 2016. In the meantime, it is important to remember that the City currently does allow rentals of fewer than 30 days under certain conditions. Bed and Breakfasts and Tourist Homes are currently per- mitted with approval of a conditional use permit. The owner of the property must live on the prop- erty rented. With very limited exceptions for “grandfathered” properties, the City does not allow rentals for fewer than 30 days where the owner is not present during the rental period. For further information, please contact Land Use Development Specialist Suzanne Wassmer at (360) 385-0644 or swassmer@cityofpt.us. Sister City Program Have you ever wanted to visit Japan? Would learning more about a different culture appeal to you? If the travel bug hasn’t bitten you how about hosting visitors from Japan in your home or just participating in activi- ties when guests from Ichikawa come to town? The City of Port Townsend signed a Sister City Agree- ment with Ichikawa, Japan in 2002. Since then both cities and their schools have conducted exchanges. Many participants have commented on how life chang- ing the experience was. The Sister City program fos- ters a person to person connection, allowing each par- ty to see the world from a different view while learning all the things we hold in common. Through our Sister City travels our members have shared homes and lives of our hosts and our hosts have done the same in return. The Port Townsend Sister Cities Friends would like to offer Jefferson County residents the opportunity to participate in the program. If you would like more information about the program please email cmcnabb@cityofpt.us or call 379-5089. All levels of participation are welcome. If you don’t know, don’t throw questionable recyclables in the bin! Contamination can make all your carefully recycled materials end up in the trash Contamination wastes resources • wastes $$ • wastes time http://jeffersoncountysolidwaste.com/ MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Citizen Advisory Board Recruitment The following Boards currently have vacancies or positions up for renewal. Appointments are for three years. Arts Commission - 2 positions Library Advisory Board – 1 position Parks, Recreation and Tree Advisory Board – 1 position with arboriculture/landscape experi- ence P.E.G. Access Coordinating Committee – 1 position with Professional Video experience Planning Commission – 2 positions Applications are available in the City Clerk’s Office on the second floor of City Hall, 250 Madison Street, Port Townsend, WA. Call 379- 5083 with questions and to request an applica- tion form or download from www.cityofpt.us (Boards & Commissions). City residency or employment within the City is a requirement for most positions. Water Treatment Facility Project Update: November weather has slowed progress at the new Water Treatment Plant Site. However, the first concrete has been placed in the deep sumps and the wells formed. Rebar has been set for the pipe chase slabs, and the building foundations have been formed. At the new 5 MG reservoir site, the excavation has been brought to subgrade for the base rock and slab. The reservoir subgrade has been covered with plastic sheeting to protect the soils from rain. The Offsite contractor is placing sanitary sewer pipe from 10th Street north crossing under Discovery Road and along Raini- er Street. Much of the 8” PVC pipe is placed in trench over 10 feet deep. A new trail installed by the project along Rainier Street from Dis- covery Road allows safe passage for bicyclists and walkers to connect to the trail extension from Howard Street at 20th Street without conflict with fast moving heavy construction equipment. For current information on our construction projects please visit the City of Port Townsend website www.cityofpt.us and click on CURRENT PROJECTS