The City of Lakewood started a Neighborhood Connections Leadership Group to help guide the creation of new Neighborhood Associations in Lakewood. The group meets monthly to identify key priorities for Lakewood residents and to help facilitate information sharing and conversation between residents and city officials.
The group created a draft map identifying neighborhoods and potential new Neighborhood Associations. The map is designed to create smaller, more intentional spaces for community discussions.
Share your thoughts! Public input will help shape this map and ensure it reflects the needs of the community. Take the short survey now.
Call it Flett creek or Flett acres neighborhood, not Dower Elementary. It used to be all Flett farmland. Also dont call it East Lakewood. It sounds disparaging to an already underserved area of the city. The city has a sister city in Korea, why cant it be called Lakewood Koreatown.
“The Neighborhood Association Leadership Group” is now, apparently, four days old. What became or will become of the “old” Neighborhood Association project? When and where does the “Leadership Group” (monthly) meet? What distinguishes each of nine indicated neighborhoods (econ, population, cultural, social, institutional landmarks)? How does the LPD organize service areas or West Pierce F&R organize response? CPSD has five “districts.” City Council has seven “positions.” How do these relate? What describes actual neighborhoods, parks, school and church attendance areas and HOAs comprising “interest realms” that constitute Lakewood? Over lay these perhaps, and ponder bonding interests and association to network – governing representation.
Having served on the City of Lakewood Council (2003-2008) the topic of neighborhood associations was discussed and specifically in the context of district elections.
Political power through representation requires the individual, individuals with common interests, an organization like a Neighborhood Association or on the education side of things Parent Teachers Associations and within government, a “champion” to represent their interests. This can only happen when each organization has their own representative who is responsible to them. This goes both for the City of Lakewood and Clover Park School District.
What we have now are two completely different layouts of the City and School District and “at-large” elections for Council and District Board. As a result in both cases there is no real representation of neighborhoods or districts. The reality is that candidates for both Council and Board spend most all their campaigning in high voter precincts and little or no time in low voter precincts which ironically most need representation. Once in office elected officials will bend to the will of the people who elected them, not necessarily the people who need them.
District elections would solve one of the most fundamental systemic problems that both City and School District face: lack of real representation. Instead of trying to doorbell 10,000 in high voter precincts a district elected representative could literally go through their district four times and get to know everyone in their district. They could keep constituents informed, energized politically and get out the vote. They would become the point of contact on the Council or Board to issues of district interest and be held responsible by their district voters when election time rolls around.
How well does the current system of “at-large elections” work, even as with the Board requirement to live in the district?
Not very well.
Neighborhood associations have nearly vanished as have PTAs. There is public apathy which is to be expected when elected officials don’t really represent the voters. This translates at election time to Council races with 29% and Board races with 26% voter participation. This is exactly what to expect with the systemic design held in common between Council and Board. It’s a system designed to fail and fail it does unless low voter turnout is your objective.
So as a first step I’d suggest that Council and Board lay out a common set of districts from which council and board members are directly elected. Seven is probably a good number for the Council and may require expansion of the Board. Council and Board district representatives will have the same geographical areas and populations as their joint responsibilities and bring a “one-two-punch” to representation on their respective bodies. Many of these district problems will require the close coordination between City and Board representatives which would be built-in systemically instead of attempted without any real attachment to the district or knowledge of the problems and solutions.