Stuck

“I like the budget the way it is.”
    Bill Ameling

We have a phrase that gets used on occasion around our house: “Zeek is stuck.” On the whole, Zeek is an active dog- more so than the other two. He is known for his bursts of speed- what we have come to call his hauling the mail, which entails dashing off on the whim of a moment, and returning perhaps seconds or minutes later at the same warp speed. He often reacts to things that are not there, which mostly stems from his perception that formerly inanimate objects which have suddenly gone into motion, such as an open door closed by a passing wind or a crumpled piece of plastic mysteriously moving to uncrumple itself, should not be moving of their own accord, and thusly should be roundly rebuked and barked at. He is a dog in motion, until he isn’t. It is the time that his motion stops that is of concern here. He will often stand in one place for minutes on end, sometimes unnoticed until one happens upon him as one passes from room to room in the house. What is a bit more annoying is when he comes to a dead stop for no apparent reason while we are moving from one spot A to another spot B. Generally he can be coerced into being unstuck by saying his name a number of times in succession, which has also led us to believe that the dogs secretly are playing what we have come to call the name game, whereby the winner each day has the highest accumulated mention of his or her name. We believe, however, that Zeek is the only one of the three who is actually playing, let alone keeping score.

I began thinking of things not in motion yesterday when a flurry of  stories hit the news summaries that, on a somewhat regular basis, tend to fill my email inbox. Among these were various tales of something that was supposed to be moving but wasn’t causing something that wasn’t moving to became animate in strange and disturbing ways. We are talking of course about the STP. This is not the large event that causes ten thousand or so bicyclists to roll independently from Seattle to Portland. Nor are we talking about the various types of fuel and oil treatment that can help vehicles to move from place to place. We are instead referring to the Seattle Tunnel Project, where the world’s largest boring machine has been sitting idle under the streets of Pioneer Square for a year because it supposedly broke after hitting a pipe. This part is always that bit that gets me to stop and scratch my head, figuratively. Why would a giant machine designed for boring through the earth choke on a pipe? I keep reading, but have yet to find an answer to that question. We now learn that cracks are forming in Seattle streets and the viaduct continues to sink at what some might say is an alarming rate, all of which may not, but more likely may, have something to do with the extra digging and groundwater pumping that is being undertaken  to possibly rescue the giant borer and the project that surrounds it from failure and ridicule and a growing chorus of I-told-you-so’s. Some are calling for a halt to the project and a return to the common sense solutions back on the surface. Since it was the few and the powerful that ignored the vote of the masses and forged ahead with the big hole in the ground, we probably don’t need to guess at the outcome of that battle.

It was just yesterday morning that I received an email from my lawyer which contained a forwarding from my family’s lawyer regarding their meeting to discuss “the Ray estate” next week. There is something terribly wrong about my having to write that last sentence, let alone discuss it, so I won’t. To hope that this situation will become unstuck in some reasonable amount of time seems wishful at best. I will instead jump to last night, where I found myself once again stuck behind my video camera looking at small people on an LCD screen grapple with Vashon money and the park system that is supposed to benefit from it. It is in some ways funny to be recording these proceedings, as it seems what I have come to recognize after a couple of years of this is that one just keeps hearing the same thing over and over again, not unlike Bill Murray’s stuck reporter in the film ‘Groundhog Day’. One keeps hoping for signs of enlightenment- indications of any change at all for the better. In truth, that CAN be seen on the side of the staff, where executive director Elaine Ott and maintenance chief Jason Acosta have both shown a willingness to learn and grow in their positions, and the parks have benefitted from their efforts in this regard.

On the contrary, up until very recently the board has remained steadfastly stuck in a regular three to two vote lock over decisions regarding the completion of the controversial VES fields project which has continued to drag on with time and cost overruns. Many have complained that the rest of the Vashon Park system has suffered with cuts in programs and staff while the VES project has been given priority status in terms of how budget funds have been allocated. At the meeting last night, commissioner Lu-Ann Branch made mention of safety issues around the overflow parking on Sundays during an afternoon of soccer games at the VES fields and the problems that a multitude of vehicles parked on the highway shoulder present to cyclists in particular. In what seemed to be a rather field-centric response to Branch’s concern, commissioner Ameling simply said: “Don’t ride your bike on Sunday.”  There was, however a glimmer of hope of the parks becoming unstuck because intractability. Commissioner Doug Ostrom suggested that just because things have been done one way for a long time, it doesn’t mean that as new commissioners come on board that they are obligated to follow these old ways. He did say: “I want to take issue with future expenses connected with a past project…it seems to me that the process is about changing your mind sometimes, and new commissioners are entitled to make that point…we have some options…. I don’t see why we have to continue doing what we have all along.”
Clearly, the VES fields are a sticking point in Vashon Park District operations. A part of this last discussion last night revolved around fields users paying more of their share to get the fields completed rather than burdening the rest of the system by continuing to load the budget in favor of the fields. One of the things that has never been explained is why the promise of the entire sum of the matching funds for the RCO grant never materialized from the fields users, not to mention how and why the state allowed that to slide by to begin with. Another thing that remains to be seen is if voters will continue to support the parks with commissioners who choose to remain with their heads and feet stuck in the sand, if indeed not somewhere else.