[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor, written by a Reader. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The B-Town Blog nor its staff:]
Dear Council Members,
You and the Council Leadership are tanking Burien. Install effective Council Leadership, change the course of Burien. It’s time for an open discussion on who should lead Our City Council.
Proactive vs Reactive Governance
Navigating Burien into safer waters requires growing the City; not shrinking it. Are Your Leaders funding projects and ideas they espouse? No.
Your Leaders don’t prioritize. Prioritization is an important component of proactivity. Proactive people are Leaders: they know what they want and they make things happen. An effective Leader’s first priority to a project is funding. Without money nothing happens.
Burien’s leadership is reactive not proactive. They don’t plan, they don’t fund projects and they deny their inaction has consequences. Their reactive governance is killing Burien: businesses are shuttering, neighborhoods are in decline and crime is rising. Municipal safety encourages revenue growth and lowers costs thus creating value. The Council’s hands off approach is destroying Burien.
To become a safer City, the Leadership must become proactive. Your new City Manager needs ordinances to abate problems You hired him fix. Fixing these problems will encourage people to live and shop here. Business development needs Council attention to help fund more Police.
Three Council Members are tolerating the Leadership’s hands off dogma:
- Council Member Armstrong
- Council Member Bell
- Council Member Wagner
Council Member Armstrong: Funding adequate Police requires growing Burien’s retail tax base. More than Public Safety is at stake without new retail revenues. Our infrastructure is in disrepair due to inaction by the Council Leadership.
It appears the Mayor wants to cut a critical arterial (Peter Western Bridge) into North Highline to make ends meet. How will crippling Burien infrastructure help redevelop the North Highline and grow revenues to fund more Public Safety? This 20 second video raises questions about Mayor Krakowiak’s commitment to grow Burien:
The Council Leadership serves at the pleasure of the Council. You are abandoning Burien and Your dreams when You allow ineffective governance to go unchallenged.
Council Member Bell: Was Mayor Bell a person of his word? If yes, why are you tolerating Deputy Mayor Tosta not keeping hers? She and the other Council Leaders seem oblivious to the financial harm they are bestowing upon You, the Council and the Community.
The Deputy Mayor’s complaint about the $82K penalty clause in City Manager Wilson’s contract sounds like denial. Her failure to evaluate the former City Manager has consequences (60 second video):
This $82K penalty is a mere drop in the Council bucket: the Leadership wasted 34 meetings (17 months worth of meetings) on projects without any attempt at funding them. Their lack of follow through is harming economic development and Your efforts to create living wage jobs in Burien.
How are You helping Burien when You sacrifice Your dreams to support ineffective Leaders?
Council Member Wagner: Your advocacy of Economic and Environmental Justice with the Port is laudable. Your intimate understanding of the FAA and the Council Leadership’s inner workings raises this question: are Quiet Skies’ concerns about Your Leadership’s follow through warranted? 25 second video:
If yes, what is Your opinion of supporting ineffective Leaders negotiating on behalf of Burien with the FAA? Why do You remain silent?
Why do You support supposed “law and order†Leaders who wont fund extra Police through increased economic activity?
A Day of Reckoning
I want each Council Member to engage the Community on who should lead the Burien City Council forward and why.
Burien as an I.S.O. 9001 Quality City
Leadership quality impacts all organizations. Effective people lead; ineffective people dither. Choosing a new Council Leadership should involve more than seniority. Effective leader candidates should be able to document work challenges they overcame by working with others.
Our new Leaders should personify the Burien Vision Statement. They should be curious, willing to engage in dialogue and most importantly be collaborative. The ills that have befallen Burien can be traced back to ineffective Leaders not doing their job.
Your job is to install effective Leaders to support the City Manager in turning Burien around. Turning Burien around will make the City safer and provide funding needed for Community projects.
– Dick West
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Do you know what you call a person with no backbone? A “Noodleback” That’s what we have ended up with filling various Council seats and the City has suffered. I am not advocating for any cause other than forward momentum from the mess we’re all in.
Too much attention to all the social justice causes. They “market” Burien with a rebrand logo. How many of the council understand Business? Make Burien attractive to new businesses as this letter states and it would definitely help Burien’s image.
A open conversation in politics involving a Dick west Letter to the editor that sounds like a oxymoron.