Baby, it’s a-allllright now. It’s amazing what a week off can do for a council, like promoting unanimity. The council meeting was mostly smooth sailing tonight, with more “dittos” than the 2^nd hour of Rush Limbaugh.

* MOST INTERESTING ITEM OF THE NIGHT *
From the budget review, the county has confirmed that Animal Control will now be left to the cities to manage, starting at the end of January. The shelters will disappear in late spring. The city managers all raised a little hell about having this dumped in their laps, and Dow has promised to address the transition right away.

In Maple Valley’s case, we’re expecting to need about $100K to fund animal control activities, while only collecting about $65K in license fees. So, the difference will come from other revenue sources. What wasn’t mentioned was a possible fine for not licensing your pet (very effective in Seattle) to increase the compliance rate. A public information campaign might also be in order, and I don’t mean a tiny text ad in the local papers.

I think we need the same kind of effort that we saw in the last election to get the word out. I told one candidate that I would be happy when the campaigning was over, and we could use these “powers of persuasion” to solve our common problems. Right now, the compliance rate is about 30%, so if we could get it up to 50%, it would cover the shortfall.

Getting the word out is a problem for cities in general. I’ll talk about some ideas for better communication in next week’s print column in the Reporter.

* BRIEF RECAPS *
Rather than put you to sleep with an extensive recap of everything that was said, I’ll just hit the highlights for tonight.

1) Lake Wilderness Lodge Fees
The fees for 2011 will go up about 5%. The meeting rooms will stay about the same, so they can remain competitive. The Lodge folks will have a presence at an upcoming bridal expo, and will offer a 10% discount if they book a reservation at the expo. They’re also planning a website discount as well.

2) Park Fees
Fees to rent a picnic shelter are going up a few bucks. It’ll cost you $70 to rent a shelter for ½ day, for up to 100 people, and $90 if you aren’t a resident of Maple Valley. However, if you invite me and provide a well-charred hot dog, I’ll save you the 20 bucks.

3) Planning Commission
The JR Hayes site on the north end of the city sparked some discussion, as they won’t be re-zoning it to Commercial Business (I think). It’s going to stay a gravel pit for the near future, and it’s funny how the council referred to it as a “strike zone”, since the lot looks like a bunker-buster was dropped on it. The strike zone comment refers to the surgical strike they are planning for the potential re-zoning of the property, while not really addressing a change for the surrounding properties.

Some of the council members, the Planning Commission chair, and the Comm-Dev Director had a back-and-forth on the merits of considering the zoning needs of the entire city, and not just this one property. From what little I know of zoning, the overall goal is to make sure that stuff goes well together. For example, we don’t put jails next to the elementary schools, and we don’t put a house in between two warehouses. Seems like everybody’s on the same page, so I don’t really know why we spent 20 minutes on this.

4) Utility Tax
Last week, I complained a lot about the indecisiveness of the council over the utility tax. This week however, Mayor Iddings led off with a great lesson for us all. We’re getting a new patrol sergeant for the police department, and that job will be funded mostly with a permanent utility tax increase of .75%. The Mayor pointed out that it’s irresponsible to create a city job with a temporary tax increase that expires in 2 years, and it was refreshing to hear.

Councilor Jonas had her statement ready voicing her support of the City Manager’s recommendation, and the dittoheads followed suit one after the other. Councilor Barnes tried to add a directive to have the city staff create a relief program for low-income and seniors, but was asked to make that a separate item for next week. Everyone’s on board!

5) Whatever Floats Your Boat
Councilor Gerken asked about saving the proposed boat rental program at Lake Wilderness. We currently have 1 paddleboat and 3 canoes, and there was a $2K proposal to buy a couple more boats and staff the program. It might be offset by rental fees, but since it’s a new program we don’t really know if the fees would cover it. Maybe we could get a local business to buy the paddle boat and have their name plastered all over it.

Get ready for another dumb idea. If I had a pizza place in town, I’d sponsor a boat, have coupons at the rental desk, and offer to have a pizza delivered to the park at the end of your boat ride.

6) Gender Equity Law
This will be brought up next week, but it’s a proposal to make sure that access to parks, ballfields, etc. is equitable for both sexes. It’s funny how we’ve started using the word “gender” instead of “sex”, and we all seem nervous to say the word sex. Even the guy talking about the program said both words rather hurriedly, and with a tiny laugh after saying it.

Let’s get over it, shall we? And let’s amend this law to say that neither sex shall have sex in the park, OK? A park employee came upon a couple in their sunset years getting it on in the bushes this summer, and had to shoo them away. Ewww.

7) Warming Stations
I had to include this one because it made me laugh. We have “cooling stations”, since you can open up a municipal building during the day, and send people home when it’s not hot anymore. However, most people would want a “warming station” at night, and we don’t keep those places open all night long. So, the city has a list of shelters on their website, which I found hilarious. If your power is out, and the heat isn’t working, just go online to find the nearest shelter location. Really? Even if you have web access on your cell phone, you can probably afford a motel for the night, and aren’t scrounging around for public shelters. We can do better than this.

Next week! The final council meeting of the year starts at 6:30pm, as we say goodbye to Councilor Pilgrim and Deputy Mayor Smith, who won’t be returning in January. Make sure you wear your tie-dye socks in tribute.