David Anderson

“I think your style alienates people from your cause more than educate and activate them,” writes a critic.

There comes a point where it becomes more than obvious that those with the responsibility (Public Safety Advisory Committee) to actually perform their duties in keeping with their self- and council-mandated job description: aren’t.

In his book “Boards That Make a Difference,” author John Carver describes the common malady of boards that as to making a difference: don’t.

Dunk tanks – based upon both the volume of water they hold and the volume of words by which the members of the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) held-forth in discussing dunk tanks – evidently matter more than a discussion of the Lakewood Police Department’s Use of Force Policy (UFP).

The April 2nd minutes of the PSAC – as found in the May 19 Agenda Packet (p.024) for the Lakewood City Council – contain 108 words dedicated to in-depth dunk tank deliberations.

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these.”

It was to be their dream. And not just theirs but all who would pass through its doors who would find help there for their own particular journey toward self-sufficiency, stability and family.

Because Lakewood as much said so.

In expressing what appears as surprising ambivalence to an ongoing investigation into alleged financial misappropriation of funds at the Tillicum Community Center, David Bugher, Lakewood’s assistant city manager and community development director explained why the city believed its piggy bank of federal grant money was not robbed while acknowledging someone else’s might have been.

Words are supposed to mean something. A promise made should be a promise kept.

Desiree Winkler, Transportation Division Manager for the City of Lakewood, wants to take money earmarked for one purpose in Tillicum and use it for another.

Culpable – the Center, the City, or both?

According to the May 4th article in the Tacoma News Tribune in which the Tillicum Community Center feared loss of funding which a follow-up article now declares is reality – the decision based upon “concerns with its past financial reporting” – Jeff Gumm, Lakewood’s program grant coordinator said that “the city is required by HUD to review the finances of the groups that receive the money every two to three years.”

What does a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich – the Fluffernutter – inMassachusetts, have in common with shopping carts in Lakewood?

Both – sandwiches and shopping carts – are apparently serious legislative directives by their respective governments for further study likely leading to official enactments.

If walking into a lamppost is labeled an insurable injury, what do you call a misappropriation of funds?

Feeling run down?

Speeding is bad, except when it’s not.

And not a dime more than $15,000 will be spent addressing it in Tillicum.

If that.