On Monday, September 21st, The Olympia Downtown Association and Oly 2012 hosted a candidates forum. All eight candidates for the four city council seats up for election showed up and the two hour event was moderated by Greg Lane of TVW.
To watch the forum in its entirety, please click below.
By Enid Layes
The Legislature adjourned last week. It’s been a long 105 days and several issues of importance to Oly2012 and Olympia citizens committed to revitalization of our downtown have been settled…at least for now.
Senator Karen Fraser and Representative Sam Hunt introduced legislation to override the Olympia City Council’s decision to amend their comprehensive plan to allow mid-rise mixed-use development on the isthmus. Oly2012 testified against these measures in both the House and Senate committees. Oly2012 believes the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA) clearly gives authority to local governments to make zoning changes that are consistent with their comprehensive plans while allowing appeals to the Growth Management Hearings Board and then to Superior Court to ensure consistency with the GMA. The bills ultimately failed. We want to acknowledge the Olympia Downtown Association, the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce,
2009 Vision – Introduction
In early May of last year, our group formally began our work by writing our vision for downtown – a combination of a high-level sketch of what downtown should become melded with specific positions and issues for our group address in the year ahead. In that paper we first laid out our initial position on the isthmus rezone.
Though little has changed from last year to this year in terms of our future vision for downtown Olympia, our 2009 vision paper is written in terms more general than our vision paper of a year ago – more vision, less position. Our future positions and work will be based on the platform established in our annual vision paper.
Our Downtown Vision for 2009 will focus on four key items: Housing, Parking & Transit, Economic Vitality and Arts & Entertainment. The work OLY 2012 will engage in over the next year will be directly linked to these issues.
Housing
Housing remains at the top of our list of key issues for downtown. In order for downtown to thrive economically, people – all kinds of people – must be there at all times of the day and night. In this day and age, getting
