THE RHETORIC
“Rhenda Strub didn’t listen. The one issue she fought hardest for was to put tall buildings on the isthmus. That was her priority, but that was not Olympia’s priority.” –Nathaniel Jones, quoted in The Olympian, April 6, 2011″
My opponent launched his campaign with this statement about me. It is not true. I voted against the rezone when it came to Council on December 9, 2008. Who would vote against “the one issue she fought hardest for”?
When Mr. Jones asked the Thurston County Democrats, who had endorsed me, to endorse him as well, they agreed only after he promised to remove the false claim from his website and stop repeating it.
Recently he violated his promise with a mailing to voters, including me!
“My opponent voted for a failed plan to raise building heights on the isthmus, even after so many members of the public pleaded with her not to do it.” –Nathaniel Jones, October 17, 2011
Maybe Mr. Jones thinks he is threading the needle here between truth and fiction, since he is no longer claiming it was my “priority” to put tall buildings on the isthmus. But he is still distorting the facts.
THE REALITY
Short Story
I have cast 4 votes on rezoning the isthmus. I first voted against higher buildings. A week later, I cast a protest vote in favor of the higher buildings because my council colleagues who voted in favor were being mistreated by people who disagreed with them on this policy issue. I then voted twice more against higher buildings.
Long Story
The issue
In January 2008, my first month on the Council, we voted unanimously to add rezoning of the isthmus to the Planning Commission docket. They spent the year studying it and recommended approval of the height limit increase back to Council. We held two days of hearings. People were angry. They shouted at us. We got angry phone calls and letters from people on both sides of the issue. People told me they had fought with their closest friends over it and some said it had ruined friendships. Many people said they had never seen anything like it in Olympia. I sure hadn’t seen it in my five years here, and I hadn’t seen anything like it in any of the seven other cities I lived in before coming here.
the compromise
I called anti-rezone and pro-rezone advocates asking them to meet with me to look for a compromise. I was the only member of Council who met with both sides on the issue. We met several times. The conversations were tense. It was frustrating. But, we reached a compromise: I would work to get the decision postponed for a year, giving us time to work out something with the developer who had agreed with me to talk about other options. In exchange, the anti-rezone people would agree not to sue the City if the zoning decision ultimately went against them. Two of my colleagues had already told members of the anti-rezone groups that they would vote against the proposal. I talked to another who agreed to support the compromise we had worked out. That made four votes, enough to give us a year to work toward a development proposal that everybody could agree on.
my failure
I got a call from a member of one of the anti-rezone groups telling me that their attorney would not agree to the compromise–they wanted to preserve the right to sue. He asked me to get the group back together and keep trying to find a way through. I will never forget that phone call, because that is when I told the first person outside of my family that my son, Wyatt, had just been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. It was a week before he turned 13 and the doctor had just told us Wyatt might not live past twenty. (I’m reluctant to get so intensely personal in a campaign, but I cannot think of a way to tell this story without including the details which caused my failure of leadership.) Three years later, Wyatt’s prognosis is not so grim or I would not be running for re-election. But, on that day I was devastated. I could not carry on with anything but supporting my son. I told this to the man on the phone. He was compassionate and offered his sincere condolence. He said I should tend to my family and let the isthmus issue go. I did, after getting a promise from him that he would meet with other Councilmembers to keep trying to work something out. I asked two of my colleagues to please agree to the meetings when they were asked. Then I surrendered myself to grief.
I came to the December 9, 2008 meeting of Council hoping I would get news that something had been worked out. But, my colleagues say the calls never came and no meeting was held. I told them how disappointed I was and heading into Council chambers said that I would be voting no to uphold my commitment to find compromise. Here are excerpts from the minutes of that meeting:
Item 4I – Ordinance Adopting 2008 Comprehensive Plan Amendment 6
Urban Waterfront Rezone Proposal
Councilmember Messmer moved, seconded by Councilmember Hyer, to delay the rezone decision to the 2009 Comprehensive Plan Amendment process and allow time for completion of the park feasibility study. Motion failed 4-3, with Councilmembers Strub, Messmer, and Hyer voting for.
Councilmember Machlis moved, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Kingsbury, to approve the urban waterfront rezone ordinance. Motion passed 4-3, with Councilmembers Strub, Messmer and Hyer voting against.
my protest vote
After the rezone vote, Council took a break. Someone handed me a piece of yellow paper that I had seen most of the people in the packed audience chamber holding. It said that a new group was forming to recruit people to run against five members of Council when they next came up for election because they were not listening to the public. My name was on the list. The new group’s name was Citizens for Responsive Local Government. The contact listed was the man I had told of my son’s disease and my inability to continue in a leadership role on the rezone, the man who had seemed so compassionate. He put my name on his hit list, before he knew how I would vote and without trying to carry on the business of compromise.
Every City ordinance requires a first and second reading and vote. In the week between that night and the next meeting my colleagues who had voted yes received extremely harsh treatment from the opponents of the rezone. The non-profit community theater that one of them ran was vandalized. So were the buildings belonging to the isthmus property owner and the Olympia Master Builders. Other colleagues got hate mail and verbal abuse. When I came in the next week to vote I scolded anti-rezone advocates in the room for abandoning compromise and creating a climate of anger and incivility . I told them I was changing my vote to stand in solidarity with my colleagues who did not deserve to be treated this way. Had my vote made a difference in the final outcome, I would not have changed it. But, I wanted to make a statement about incivility in public discourse. I find it ironic that my statement about incivility is now being used to attack me.