SEQUIM — Years of searching bore fruit late Monday night at the Sequim City Council meeting.
The council voted 5-2 to move toward a purchase of “Property A,” an unidentified parcel on which a new City Hall will someday be built.
“It’s only ‘Property A,'” said Mayor Laura Dubois, declining to give the land’s location or price.
But Frank Needham, the capital projects manager who’s is hunting for a City Hall site for most of this decade, said it meets the city’s size and general location requirements: at least 3 acres and near the center of town.
At the end of Monday’s City Council meeting, the members went into closed session to discuss two possible sites, properties Needham said were taken from a field of six possibilities they’ve been looking at for the past seven months.
Members Erik Erichsen and Ken Hays were the two who voted against buying either property, with Hays objecting to a purchase before the city has a “sub-area plan” for its downtown.
Council member Walt Schubert, meantime, has said that the city has no business embarking on construction of a City Hall until the economy recovers.
But buying a piece of land sooner rather than later, of course, could save Sequim some money.
“We’re going to have the staff negotiate and see how it goes,” Dubois said.
Evaluating property
So Needham will spend the next several months evaluating the chosen property to determine whether it “totally suits” a municipal center that would include the city’s administration, public works, planning and police departments.
If all goes as hoped, Needham said, the city could buy the property in late 2010.
In other action Monday, the council moved forward on another long-argued point: the Town Center Sub-Area Plan, which is still unfinished after years of revisions by city staff.
The members voted 4-3 to pay a consultant up to $15,000 to tackle the plan, and describe how Sequim’s core can “grow into a dynamic downtown.”
The consultant will conduct a “marketing analysis,” a study of how to provide more housing and “expansion of the traditional pedestrian core,” while seeking a variety of businesses for downtown.
Erichsen, Paul McHugh and Susan Lorenzen voted against engaging the consultant, saying the $15,000 is money the city shouldn’t spend as it faces a deep revenue shortfall going into 2010.
“We’re capable of doing this job,” instead of paying an outside contractor, McHugh said.
“We don’t have the expertise on staff to move the sub-area forward,” Hays retorted, adding that “the sub-area [plan] is the most important piece of legislation the city will ever pass.”
Member Bill Huizinga agreed — saying the council has been unable, for years, to agree on how to reshape the city core.
“We will never come to a consensus,” he said, “without someone from out of town who says, ‘Here’s what you should do.'”
Declined grant
Yet harmony prevailed at other moments Monday night. The seven council members voted unanimously to do something they called rare and regrettable: declining a federal grant.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was to provide $170,000 for sidewalk improvements on Washington Street, Sequim’s main drag. But the money came with so many inspection requirements, Public Works Director Ben Rankin told the council, that compliance would have cost the city about $50,000.
Dubois said that as much as the city needs improved sidewalks, it’s prudent to “turn the money back.”
One more downtown-area feature received unanimous approval from the council: the Spruce Street pocket park, which will become Sequim’s second community organic garden, is to be renamed the June Robinson Memorial Park in honor of the Sequim historian, School Board director and Citizens Park Advisory Board member who died May 13.
Parks coordinator Jeff Edwards told the council that the new garden, at the corner of Spruce Street and Sunnyside Avenue, will be ready for planting in the spring.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsula dailynews.com.
