Local government touches our daily lives far more frequently and far more substantially than many citizens realize and perhaps more than any other level of government. We depend on local government to keep our neighborhoods safe, to educate our children, to operate our library systems, to coordinate our elections and to provide a seemingly endless list of other services.

However, it often seems that our largest local government agency, Pierce County, is also among the most invisible and the most closed off to its constituents.

This could be because much of the policy areas charged to the county generally don't tend to be flashy or tend to spawn the sorts of civic debates that local municipalities and schools districts tend to.

Or it could be because each resident of Pierce County is only represented by one County Councilmember. (Every Tacoman - conversely - is the constituent of four city councilmembers and five school board directors.)

However, this could also be due to the fact that the Pierce County Council seems to often insulate its policy making process from the public. For evidence of this consider when the County Council - comprised of the only full-time, non-executive elected officials in all of Pierce County - meets for their public meetings: 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons. 

A time where the majority of working people in Pierce County cannot participate in a public meeting without taking a few hours off of work or using a sick day. It doesn't take a political scientist to realize that afternoon meetings (as opposed to evenings) result in far less citizens attending and participating. Similarly, it doesn't take an economist to know that low-income and working class citizens often hold jobs that are especially difficult to take time off from without being penalized.

That's why Councilmember Connie Ladenburg recently made a motion to change the County Council's public meeting times from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays. Voting on her motion has been delayed and it's unclear how the "yes" and "no" voters currently shake out. Hopefully Ladenburg's motion kick-starts not only a move to evening County Council meetings, but also to a more communal culture at our county-level government.

WARNING: THIS POST INVOLVES MATH >>>

The Problem

Local government has a problem. Costs are up for asphalt and health care, library books and fire trucks. But revenue is down. There's less revenue from sales tax, from business and occupation tax and from property tax - about 20 percent of the total.

To make things worse, the Pierce County Assessor has been tougher on property value than other assessors in Washington. He pushes values lower so tax revenue is lower.

Is the system working as it should?

(Note: the previous Assessor, Dale Washam, is responsible for the numbers below; the current Assessor, Mike Lonergan, was elected in November 2012.)

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Comment On This Post

The Pierce Conservation District is a local government agency that works to preserve and manage Pierce County's diverse endowment of natural resources. It's an agency whose portfolio of programs is constantly evolving and whose work touches every corner of the county. The Town Hall Tourist fired a few questions the direction of PCD Executive Director Ryan Mello - yes, the same Ryan Mello who serves on the Tacoma City Council - to learn more about his agency's work and mission. 

TOWN HALL TOURIST: Can you briefly describe what it means to work with landowners to help manage natural resources? Is if often difficult to bring these landowners to the environmental/sustainability table?

RYAN MELLO: Working landowners are often the best stewards of the land.  Whether in an urban, suburban, industrial or rural setting, what we find at the Conservation District is that landowners typically are eager to "do the right thing" by the land, but what they are lacking is education about the best management practices or techniques and the funding to make the necessary improvements to their land or practices. That's where the Conservation District comes in. The District works one-on-one with all kinds of landowners to educate them on everything from how to better manage polluted rain water runoff, how to create more sustainable farm practices, or how to improve marine shoreline practices to ensure the long-term health of our shorelines for people and wildlife.  Helping landowners manage natural resources means giving them the know-how to manage their property and helping them implement the best practice and seeing them through to completion in helping with technical assistance, volunteer help and/or financial assistance. 

TH TOURIST: PCD seems to be a crucial player in a lot of the work being done to restore and protect the Puyallup River Watershed. What is the most important thing Tacomans should understand about the watershed - besides, of course, the fact that we live in it?

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Everyone in Tacoma Has a Link Opinion

Who can remember the last time this town had such a big debate about public transit? Pierce Transit has been dealing with devastating budget cuts for years now and I don't recall a two week period where activists and elected officials alike have been, at the same time, as riled up about transit as they've been these last two weeks over possible link extension plans.

The basic two week, 5-point plot has been this:

1. Sound Transit announces that based on their research they'd like to receive community input about three potential Link extension routs what would connect the current downtown link to the Hilltop, Sixth Avenue or the Eastside.
2. Debates erupt all over town (actually mostly on Facebook, but also on exit133) about which plan is "best for Tacoma." (In quotations because nine out of 10 activists and electeds have just been advocating for the plan closest to where they live).
3. Tacoma City Councilmember David Boe introduces his own "hybrid plan" that attempts to reach all three of the communities targeted by the three proposed plans. (The Trib ed-board summed up the pros and cons of Boe's proposal nicely in this editorial)
4. Local transit advocates criticize Boe's proposal for being far too expensive and for its potential to delay the extensions approval.
5. The city of Tacoma formally asks Sound Transit to consider Boe's proposal (at which point I'd like to imagine Boe ripped the sketch out of his pad and handed it over to Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl).

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