Email: City manager believes the proposed initiative is illegal, but supporters of the initiative will get a chance to voice their opinion on Jan. 6, 2025
Paul Valencia
ClarkCountyToday.com
Save Vancouver Streets has a date to make its argument in front of the city council.
Do not be surprised, however, if the council does not act on the proposed initiative ordinance submitted by Save Vancouver Streets.
Cary Driskell, an assistant city attorney, sent an email to members of SVS advising them that the Vancouver City Council will conduct a public hearing regarding the initiative at its Jan. 6, 2025 meeting in the city council chambers. That meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. and the SVS initiative is the 11th item on that night’s agenda.
Save Vancouver Streets turned in thousands of signatures in November as part of the initiative process, and those signatures were certified earlier this month. SVS wants the city to have to go to the vote of the people any time it wants to remove current vehicle lanes from major roads and thoroughfares. The initiative is in response to changes made to several Vancouver neighborhoods through the city’s Complete Streets projects. More Complete Streets projects are in the works or are being proposed.
Justin Wood of Save Vancouver Streets said he is hoping to pack the council chamber with supporters, in hopes of swaying the council’s opinion.
The email from Driskell implies that it will be an uphill battle for Save Vancouver Streets.
“The City Manager’s recommendation is that City Council take no action on the proposed initiated ordinance because it is contrary to the general laws of the state of Washington and the Vancouver charter and is thus illegal,” Driskell wrote in the email.
The email continues, though, promising that proponents and supporters will have an opportunity to provide public comment.
Wood said the city’s initial response is not a surprise. He was told early in the process that the city did not believe the initiative process could be used to make this kind of a change.
“I didn’t expect them to go down without a fight,” Wood said.
Still, Wood noted, Save Vancouver Streets’ attorney has found several examples of case law to counter the city’s response.
Wood said all he wants is for the initiative to go to the ballot. He also does not understand why the city would be against asking the people for their opinion.
“If the city council is so confident this is what the people want,” Wood said of the Complete Streets project, “what are you worried about? I think we know the answer to that.”
Bottom line, Wood wants the voters to answer the question. He said he would accept the will of the voters.
“My opinion on this from the very beginning, if people in the city truly like the (Complete Streets) and the bike lanes, I’m fine with that,” Wood said. “I just don’t feel like people have had their say.”
Before the initiative gets a chance to get to the ballot, the city will hold a public hearing on the subject on Jan. 6.
“This will be an opportunity for residents of the city of Vancouver to share their thoughts,” Wood said.
For Save Vancouver Streets, that is a victory in and of itself.
This initiative process has been an eye opener for some at City Hall. The process is rarely used, but SVS came through with thousands of signatures more than the required number.
In November, city council member Bart Hansen told Clark County Today that the people behind Save Vancouver Streets did more than just turn in their initiative to City Hall. It was a message that the city needs to do a better job of listening to its citizens.
“Folks think they can’t talk to us,” Hansen said.
For Wood and other members of SVS, that was the crux of the issue when they started this grassroots organization. It appeared to them that the city said this is what is happening, and there is nothing else to be done about it. Complete Streets was coming to your neighborhood whether you wanted it or not.
That lit a fire that turned into Save Vancouver Streets.
The Save Vancouver Streets project has made significant progress since its origins at the end of 2023 and early into 2024. Clark County Today was invited to a meeting last winter:
In November, Save Vancouver Streets turned in roughly 6,500 signatures for its proposal:
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“The City Manager’s recommendation is that City Council take no action on the proposed initiated ordinance because it is contrary to the general laws of the state of Washington and the Vancouver charter and is thus illegal,” Driskell wrote in the email.”
And that is the crux of the biscuit. To simply declare this petition “illegal” is a perfect example of the outrageous arrogance the City of Vancouver has shown residents for years. Clowncil “adopted” Complete Streets without any input or indication to residents exactly what they had in mind.
To date, all they have accomplished is to obstruct traffic, and make it increasingly difficult for anyone to drive a car, which is exactly what the underlying goal of Complete Streets always has been.
Here’s my input for a ballot measure:
“In 2017 Vancouver City Council adopted, without a vote by the People, a “Complete Streets” program designed to radically restructure all neighborhoods across the City.
Shall this program be continued? Y/N”
City Council elections are next year. This issue needs to be a leading campaign item against every single one of these Critters who run for reelection. East Vancouver, the former Cascade Park, is far past the point of tolerating the antics of City Clowncil..Time for some big changes downtown, and I personally plan to contribute cash and promote the Campaign of anyone who runs to replace a member of Council.
Keep in mind that the same people on Clowncil are running C-Tran as well. Don’t like those enormous “Vine” buses?? Guess who voted to approve them…
Very well stated!
Elections do have consequences… ESPECIALLY local elections. Your vote in local elections nearly always directly affects one’s lifestyle.
It IS time for a change. The mayor and council (with the possible exception of Bart Hansen) are simply out of touch with the majority; they listen only to the deep-pocket developers.
I don’t understand what the City is thinking here. There is literally ZERO reason they need to restructure McGillivray or 112th or other streets. This is just a pure attempt of forcing people out of their cars, when it’s actually going to cause more problems with traffic, which in turn, leads to more pollution.
They don’t even maintain the bike lanes they have. They bike lanes appear out of nowhere and they disappear into nowhere.
Then they are allowing 4 car dealerships on Mill Plain and 136th as well as an In and Out Burger. They can’t see how this already congested area is going to become even worse and cause all sorts of problems. In fact I have a strong feeling that that is why they want to remove a lane from McGillivray so people can’t use that efficiently as an alternative.
The City needs to be stopped.
The City Council needs to quit wasting money on reconfiguring roads that do not need to be reconfigured & spend the money on potholes & repaving the roads that are destroying our vehicles! Does anyone from the city council even live in east county & know what is going on? Maybe they should take a drive to see the traffic when both schools let out and all the school buses, kids that drive to school, parents picking up kids from school, & see what the drive is like when we have 2 lanes each way now! The
city council is inviting more “Road Rage” to the mix! Cascade Park is one of the great established neighborhoods. I wish we had more neighborhoods like this in Vancouver. We don’t need “Cookie Cutter” homes built by the 4 or 5 builders in the area that all look the same. At least the houses in Cascade Park are different styles & have curb appeal, have wider streets, nice trees for shade, & parks. Every day you go down the road & see more town homes, apartments, houses, being crammed on a couple of acres that look all the same with no trees, no wide streets for parking. I don’t know how a fire truck can even get into these developments!
The Cascade Park neighbors want to keep their neighborhood safe & be able to get out of their driveways to go to work or shopping. The city council doesn’t seem to care about the east county or the people that live there.
C-Tran does not meet the needs of east county to ride the bus! All the money spent on the double buses & the “new vine” stations, & making bus lanes only to have cars down to one lane, doesn’t come close to getting from point A to point B. I tried to take the bus to my workplace, that is 7 miles from my house, which takes 20 minutes at the most depending on traffic sometimes less. I even had the C-Tran route person help me figure out what buses I would need to take to get to there. Surprise it did not work! It would have taken me almost an hour & 1/2 to get to work, because I would have to go to the Vancouver mall transit center, which is west, to change buses to go all the way back to the east county to my job. I rarely see maybe 5 passengers on the bus, usually it is 2 to 3 passengers. I know different times of the day it will have more passengers.
Quit nickel & diming the taxpayers with all these reconfigurations & learn to budget the taxpayer’s money or find a system that works to not raise taxes & give private, local businesses a break on their taxes, & all the folks that are being taxed out of their homes! Every time the city needs money, they just automatically raise a business tax, or find some way to put another tax on your phone, utilities, property, garbage, parking, if you look at any of your bills you will see a new tax added or increased. It may be a nickel, dime, or a couple of cents, but it adds up!
Now the city council has already determined that they will have budget shortfall & want to add more taxes to the people that are paying the taxes, for the homeless that aren’t paying taxes & not contributing to the tax base. I do know that there a lot of homeless people that want a place to stay & get treatments to get off the streets. Not everyone wants to get off the streets & get treatment. The cost alone of cleaning up the homeless camps, only have them move back in less than a month, is costing us the taxpayers, which may end up homeless because being on a fixed income, with property taxes going up year after year!
The city council needs to listen to what the people want, instead of what the city council wants!