Yakima’s Mayor Weighs East Side / Citywide Concerns on Plaza

Yakima’s a really good city with many loyal residents but she needs a lot of things to become the completely great city we want her to be.  Safe to say nobody disagrees with that.

For example there are still road repairs to make.  Most all city parks need to be spruced up.  There are neighborhoods built before development standards required sidewalks that could use sidewalks and some of the city’s existing sidewalks are in need of repair.  Some neighborhoods need more lighting and there are homes in neighborhoods all across the city that could use a little more hands on care.  The question is - Can the city continue to work on those issues and still support a plaza project that will spark growth and development in the downtown area - at the same time?  Is it either or?  And in particular, is it either the East side or?

According to a quote in the Yakima Herald Republic, When pressed by some speakers about honoring promises of East side priorities, Mayor Avina Gutierrez told the 400+ in attendance at last Tuesday’s plaza-centric council meeting,  “We have people here who have been neglected for 20 years,” Avina Gutierrez said during the meeting. “I got elected to represent the people who were deliberately silenced or willfully neglected, and that’s not something that escapes me.”

With all due respect to the Mayor, if she is going to use that statement as a potential rationale for a decision affecting 93-thousand city residents, I think she needs to back up that statement with some facts.  Deliberately silenced?  Who was silenced? When and by whom?  Willfully neglected?  Google “willfully” and here’s what you get:  "Willfully means a voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty”  Again, that’s a serious indictment of past council’s actions and that demands some specific evidence of an intentional violation of duty.

I can understand the desire to help improve the neighborhood where you live but do you need unsubstantiated accusations to justify the actions?  That’s not the way to unite the people. Or maybe that’s not the concern?

The Mayor also took advantage of her spokesperson position to scold those who cheeringly attended the plaza meeting but didn’t turn out in equal numbers  for a human rights and district voting meeting.

Again from the YHR, “We had a council meeting (in June) about redistricting and we were told to be quiet and hold our applause,” Gutierrez said. “I find it a little disheartening to see this amount of passion come out about a piece of property.”

That’s because it’s not a just “piece of property”.   It’s Yakima’s future on the line, a game changer, a new approach to interactive life in downtown .  You have to hope that the Mayor, as the by-product herself of sweeping change to the city’s electoral system, will come to realize the significance of the change the plaza represents.

So, it remains to be seen how often these kinds of personal asides crop up, but the new reality is that the Mayor and

each of the current council owes their seat and their future solely to those in their districts.  It will be interesting to see how the collective big picture of Yakima fares with council allegiance sliced seven different ways.