By BECKY THOMAS
Staff Reporter
Though the issue is now past city council, a discussion at the Oct. 12 meeting of the Cheney Planning Commission highlighted the conflict surrounding the city putting aside money as a guarantee for work by city crews to mitigate a wetland.
Only four of the seven commissioners were present at the meeting, which made Don Nichols' ‘no' vote on the measure stand out even more.
Nichols' argument seemed to be with the previous form of the decision, which didn't require the contractor—in this case the city—to submit an annual report detailing the success of the work, specifically the survival of wetland plants.
“You're not getting my support. Uh uh,” he said. “Not until there is a requirement in code that makes, whether it's Cheney, a developer, whoever, (submit a report). Until you put some teeth in it, we're just up here blowing smoke.”
City planner Elisa Rodriguez said the document was edited to require a qualified professional to submit annual reports by Sept. 1 of each year.
Nichols still voted against it, and Councilman Doug Nixon, sitting in the audience, expressed his confusion.
“I'm not getting it. I'm just not getting it. If we own Miller Pond and we don't do it right, we're going to have to fix it, correct?” Nixon said.
Community development director Brian Jennings said this is how the city would deal with a contractor hired to do work.
“Just because we're a public entity and this is an internal project, we can't treat ourselves differently or hold ourselves to standards that are different than we would hold to anybody on the private development side,” he said.
The measure passed 3-1 and was accepted by council the next night, after similar discussion and a motion to look at the code and clarify it at a later date.
Jennings also gave a report on the progress of Choices for Cheney, the city's ongoing comprehensive plan rewrite process. He said a public workshop scheduled for Nov. 20-21 would focus on design and finding solutions to current design problems in the city.
“I think it will be a very interesting two days,” he said.
Rodriguez detailed a list of code errors, inadequacies and confusions she wanted to clear up. She said eight of the 17 items were simple word or numbering errors, or unneeded text that could be easily fixed.
These eight will be discussed at the commission's first meeting of the new year, while the more detailed items, including a need to correct the lack of criteria for binding site plans, will take more time and will be tackled later.
Becky Thomas can be reached at becky@cheneyfreepress.com.
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