Letter: Reflections on the wisdom council issues

I want to thank Jim Rough and the seven citizens who participated in his "wisdom council" on PTTV. I was encouraged to see randomly chosen citizens get together and discuss a community issue like chain stores. It took a lot of courage for those citizens and Jim to do so. As a City Council member, I came away with several issues to act and reflect on:

• The city needs to do a better job of educating citizens on the zoning and comp plan. A number of issues raised already exist, like the Historic District, commercial zones and visioning of Port Townsend in the future.
  
  
• The city needs to educate citizens about existing design standards and regulations. Last year this council adopted some interim commercial (C2) design standards. Like all of our plans and regulations, they are able to be modified. I have already discussed the idea of future design standard community workshops or a task force with Vern Garrison. Vern was instrumental in developing the existing standards.
  
  
• How we spend our money should be a personal choice. Competition is good for the average citizen in terms of selection and price. We can encourage or discourage certain businesses with our dollars.
  
  
• It is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a plan that is constitutional, legal and moral to dictate who can or cannot start a business in a town. If citizens or businesses have commercially zoned property, who can say who builds? What is good for a small business (like limited competition) may not be good for the consumer. And what about all the dollars going out of the community to Silverdale, the Internet, catalogue sales, etc.?
  
  
• Tourism is important to preserve viability of downtown.
  
  
• The mill is important.
  
  
• We should strive to have some consensus on what we are trying to preserve, why and how.

Jim Rough and I have a different vision of the long-run place of the wisdom council. Frankly, I view it as more of a focus group, giving elected officials like myself additional food for thought in approaching tough subjects. For those of you who may have thought I lost my mind in encouraging Jim, please relax. I still believe in our representative form of government, and always will. But Jim and I agree that activists will always be heard and the collective wisdom of a random group discussing important issues is exciting and a missing piece of a more harmonious community. I have no fear of random citizens publicly discussing issues. Do you? If so, what are you afraid of?

So where do we go from here? Jim will meet with the City Council on Feb. 14 to speak about the wisdom council. I have a tough list for Jim. This is a work in progress. What I admire about Jim is he understands that the same principle he is advocating - collective wisdom - will refine and make viable the concept (kind of a wisdom council on the wisdom council). May God bless our town.

ALLEN R. FRANK

Port Townsend

(© Port Townsend Jefferson County Leader - February 2, 2000)