Authored and submitted by Professor Robert Dean
Nothing much gets by “The Hounds of Whinerville.” A recent letter from Columbia River Crossing Director, Nancy Boyd, addressed to Shari Hildreth, Deputy District Director to Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, who asked 28 pointed questions on behalf of constituent, Professor Robert Dean, makes it clear that Downtown businesses will not be financially compensated for general loss of access to their establishments or for diminished incomes during 6.3 years (or 5 years or 15 years) of construction on the CRC project. The letter also reveals that the problem was not studied for the $150 million Environmental Impact Statement.
CRC critic, and master “ankle biter,” Larry Patella, likes to ask the rhetorical question: “who is minding the store?” How prescient and appropriate have his observations been when it comes to the impacts of the CRC and light rail on Downtown Vancouver? It turns out that nobody has accounted for the indirect impacts on businesses during 6.3 years of construction.
Nobody?
Didn’t Downtown businesses flock to the City Council with concerns about disruptions to commerce during construction?
Yep!
Didn’t the City pass resolution M3663 back in July 7, 2008 instructing the CRC to study “possibly severe” disruptions to commerce during construction of the bridge, I-5, light rail and the three parking garages?
Yep!
Didn’t Resolution M3663 Attachment A Page 11 also make it a condition of approval of the Locally Preferred Alternative that residents and businesses must receive “financial aid” to compensate them for indirect effects of construction? After all, isn’t 6.3 years an awfully long time to try to conduct a business in a construction zone?
Yep!
So, they are looking out for us.
Nope!
It looks like Resolution M3663 was just window dressing to keep people quiet until the light rail boosters could approve the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and get that all important Record of Decision.
It worked to a Tee.
Opponents of light rail were mollified by Mayor Leavitt and the City to the effect that the CRC would address all of the “caveats” built-in to Resolution M3663 in the FEIS. The City Manager assigned the transportation director to monitor CRC compliance with Resolution M3663.
However, in the end, they must have decided that it was cheaper and easier to sweep the problem of indirect effects on the human environment under the rug. Think of a triathlon and the swim leg winner fails to round the final buoy. Mayor Leavitt pointed out that he was hearing from lots of folks at the time who were saying “just build it!” It would be expensive and time consuming to fully comply with Resolution M3663.
To alert the public of likely “severe impacts” during construction would also be unthinkable when agency approvals of the FEIS are scheduled for just a few months away. Someone must have decided to simply run the FEIS past a sleepy City Council June 27, 2011 at a workshop .
The councilors had an advance copy of the unpublished FEIS and presumably they had each lightly perused its contents. The general public had no such copy. The city transportation director and high level CRC staff breezed through a 2 hour synopsis of the unpublished FEIS.
Only councilors Jeanne Stewart and Larry Smith thought to ask about people who might be harmed by the CRC (around the 1 hour mark). Staff explained that every single Economic Justice person would be accommodated. They spent some time explaining how direct impacts would be fully compensated to the nth degree under the Uniform Act. They completely skirted the issue of compensation for indirect effects, especially during construction of the CRC project.
You might be wondering why the City Council would hold a 2 hour workshop on a matter that the Mayor had insisted for a year, especially during Citizens Communications, was not city business. Well, the Mayor might have misspoken.
Several members of the Council sit on the agency boards of C-Tran and RTC. They will need guidance, or if you’re Jeanne Stewart, orders, on how to vote on approval of the unpublished FEIS. The Mayor asked for a show of nodding heads (at the 2 hour mark) of all those in favor of approving the unpublished FEIS and pronounced unanimous consent.
Wait a minute. Isn’t it illegal to take an action without also taking public input? Councilor Jeanne Stewart thought that was the law (see Miller v. City of Tacoma, 979 P. 2d 429 – Wash: Supreme Court 1999). No matter, the City Consigliere, Ted Gathe, ruled otherwise. He explained that they do this sort of thing all the time (around the 2 hour mark).
Several weeks later, C-Tran and RTC approved the unpublished FEIS. This time they took uninformed public testimony in the absence of a published FEIS for citizens to review. 6 weeks later, they published the FEIS so that those unprivileged members of the general public could see that the CRC had not studied indirect impacts after all.
Too late! As the light rail boosters gleefully crowed, the Record of Decision was signed December 7, 2011.
But is it too late?
The Mayor and other elected light rail boosters have been touting future “jobs and prosperity.” No benefits can come until the project is completed. In the meantime, the constituents of these politicians are the ones who will be going bankrupt during construction of the project. Nobody has heard from them, yet.
Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart once said, “The closer we get to something real, the harder it’s going to get, because the devil’s in the details.” If you are a business owner or if you live in the project influence area, or even if you can see that you will be harmed in any way by the CRC, call your elected representatives now.
Tell them you’ve seen the Devil up close.
CRC 2-2-12 – indirect costs follow up
