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Neighborhood News

December 2005/January 2006

Wireless regulations rewrite – we’re getting close

Last night, the “Wireless Gang,” a group of neighborhood leaders including yours truly who have been working with Thurston County Regional Planning to completely rewrite the City’s current obsolete wireless ordinance presented our recommendations to the City Council. The recommendations we presented were endorsed by 9 neighborhood associations. Overall we think the new ordinance is a great improvement over the City’s current regulations, but we think the draft presented to Council can be improved. Our recommendations were well received and the Council will discuss the ordinance at a study session next week in preparation for finalizing and adopting the new ordinance early next year. We’ll keep you posted.

Notification of small developments

I’ve been working with Kent and Linda Davis, who are new arrivals to our great neighborhood, to change the City’s public notification process (or lack thereof) for small developments (9 units or less). Currently, there is no requirement that adjacent property owners be notified if one of these sorts of developments is in the works. Kent and Linda experienced the consequences of this first-hand, when, without any notice, a plot was almost completely cleared of trees to make way for 5 two-story homes and 2 ramblers across the street from their home. Because of this lack of notification, there was not opportunity to have discussions with the developer about his plans and discuss ways to address neighborhood concerns. Where we’ve have learned of these types of developments, like the Arbor Square project on Bethel, we’ve been able to persuade the developer to make some modifications to their original plans. We’ve recently meet with Keith Stahley, the new Community Planning Development Director to discuss strengthening the City’s notification requirements for these sorts of developments, and took him on a tour of our neighborhood. The next step is to draft a request for Council to consider changing the notification requirements. We’ll be discussing this at our Board meeting in December.