Lakewood

Survey results are in. You said no. Doesn’t matter.

When then-Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz (TNT, November 24, 2012) proposed a tax increase on Lakewood’s residents – specifically for electricity and gas utilities that would have generated an additional $350,000 annually to help balance the 2013-14 budget – Lakewood’s Mayor at the time, Doug Richardson, said “people have to heat their homes and cook their food. Given the current economic times, we didn’t think it was wise to increase that tax.”

“Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?”

My father served in Italy during World War II in the 10th Mountain Division. He never surrendered. Never left a man behind. Never compromised his principles.

For “jobs too dirty, dangerous or dull,” robots excel.

There are three vacancies – one-third of the nine – on the City of Lakewood’s Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC).

The job description requires obtaining “citizen input and advising the City Council in developing and monitoring public safety policies” – like shopping carts and dunk tanks.

“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.”