In less than two weeks time, Langley will have its big meeting. This is the one that everyone’s been talking about, the one about the city’s proposed marina access/bluff conveyance project.
Given all the expressed interest, it may well prove to be one of Langley’s best attended meetings of the entire year. Unfortunately, it may be a bit anticlimactic.
City leaders said this week it won’t include even a ballpark price tag of various designs, one of the details residents have been clamoring for and debating ad nauseam through The Record’s opinion page for months. They also don’t plan to take any kind of consensus on favored or disliked options. Instead, the city planner is expected to simply deduce from the discussion which options he feels are preferred, and those that he believes are not.
The city should rethink this position, and the scope and design of the meeting.
First and foremost, project cost is more than an inconsequential detail that can be made clear once preferred alternatives are identified. Truly, how can anyone, be they city officials or members of the public, make an informed choice before knowing something as basic as cost.
Charrettes or their like aren’t uncommon, and the above reason is why they usually include at least some kind of financial information. For example, the county held a meeting in November outlining 10 possible new road routes to reach Whidbey Air Park. A specific dollar figure wasn’t attached, but handouts made clear which routes would cost the most, and which cost the least.
It’s doubtful any reasonable person is expecting the city to provide a line-by-line breakdown for each option, but knowing which designs are the most expensive seems both reasonable and prudent.
As for gaining a consensus of public opinion, granted, a straw poll at the meeting would hardly be conclusive and rife with its own issues. However, it seems less subjective than one person’s conclusions divined from a roomful of people involved in noisy discussion.
Fears that participants would be put on the spot unfairly, and subject to criticism from neighbors seem silly at best, disingenuous at worst. A simple form filled out by participants and deposited in a box would address that problem easily enough.
While the agenda follows the recommendations of the Langley Planning Advisory Board, the public perception of this meeting from the beginning has been about getting some real answers about the various options, and the opportunity to give city leaders feedback about what they want. A meeting that doesn’t address the most talked about issues, and doesn’t give residents a chance to give input that actually matters, begs the question why it’s being held at all.
