In the end it was a case of sound and fury signifying nothing. At least not until June 10.
Faced with competing voices of angry residents who want no change at all and a public works director who reported that the roadway is badly in need of work, the city council opted to punt. A modified version of the plan for Nevada Way will return to the council for a vote on June 10.
“No matter which direction we head, this roadway needs to be done. The utilities, the water system underneath it are 50-plus years old,” Public Works Director Gary Poindexter told the council near the beginning of his presentation on Tuesday night.
Actual vote is about the money
The council did move forward at least one significant step in the process of making the sidewalks along Nevada Way compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) without having to get rid or severely limit outdoor dining along the popular restaurant row area.
That step was the approval of an interlocal agreement between the city and the Regional Transportation Commission to accept $3 million in funding and move that money and the expected expenditures from the 2024-2025 capital budget to the 2025-2026 budget.
That step was actually supposed to be part of the non-controversial consent agenda and was moved to the regular agenda for a separate vote. This was after the discussion about what has become known as Option 2A for reconfiguring sidewalks and parking almost as if the council knew going in to the meeting that they were not going to approve the plan without changes.
(In regard to money, the council also voted to approve the fiscal year 2026 budget. A story digging in to that will appear in next week’s issue of the Review.)
Per Poindexter, 96% of responding stakeholders (business and property owners) voted in favor of 2A. He emphasized that this was a percentage of those who responded and did not say what percentage responded.
He also emphasized that leaving the status quo, as some vocal community members were urging, was not an option. Outside of the ADA issues with clear space for pedestrians, the current diagonal parking spaces on Nevada Way do not meet current city code for either width nor depth. Some had urged just changing the angle of the parking spaces to make them longer.
“Just changing the parking angle to 30-degrees in order to accommodate longer vehicles and get the parking slots up to current code would mean going from the current 46 parking slots to just 29,” Poindexter told the council.
Plan 2A adoption and the awarding of the contracts would allow the city to begin work by July 7, Poindexter reported. “And we can finish before Wurst Fest. We really want this done before the beginning of event season.”
And that is still possible. Probably. Poindexter told the council that final approval at their June 10 meeting was the drop-dead date to still make the timing work. If work can’t be started by July 7, it would need to be pushed off to at least January of 2026 in order to avoid construction during the popular fall event season, which begins in September. But Poindexter noted that because January is still a busy time, construction was more likely to be pushed off for a full year, until July of 2026.
Telegraphing the vote
It became fairly obvious that the council was going to ask for changes with the first comments from Councilwoman Sherri Jorgensen who thanked Poindexter for, “Listening to the public when we ask you to,” and then offered an extended statement that began, “I’m looking at this and I’m asking myself the question of, how is this making downtown better for us?” Jorgensen also thanked Poindexter for meeting with a local ADA group.
To revisit, for many years eateries along Nevada Way have placed tables and chairs outside on the public sidewalk. It became a big enough issue that in 2008 the city began requiring a permit and that the city be named as co-insured on the business insurance policy before approval could be granted for encroachment onto the public right-of-way. Per comments by Poindexter, it appears that no one from the city has been checking on insurance status for existing permits.
He also said that the entire permit process is being looked at and will be “tightened up.” But, currently, the permit is cheap and, per one business owner along that corridor who spoke during public comment, enforcement is non-existent.
Enforcement of what? The permit states that businesses must keep an unimpeded walkway at least 48 inches wide. Recently, that became a bigger issue when the federal government announced that they would begin enforcing the 48-inch requirement (which is part of the ADA). Non-compliance would make the city possibly subject to major fines.
“We will be revising the encroachment permits as part of this and enforcement is going to have to be part of it if this is going to be successful,” Poindexter told the council.
In an effort to create a visual tool of the current issue, a group of residents went to the street this past Saturday morning and used neon green tape to define a 48” corridor. The photos showed at least four chairs in front of one business over the line early in the day before the area was even crowded. Tellingly, according to the residents, the tape in front of the most-generally crowded businesses had been torn up before noon.
Much of it comes down to what people are willing to do in order to help others. When Councilwoman Cokie Booth said she was sure that most people, if they saw someone in a wheelchair or using a walker, would get out of the way. She was met with a loud chorus of negative reports otherwise by members of the ADA community in the audience.
“Well, that’s a shame,” she said as Mayor Joe Hardy admonished the crowd that this was not a public hearing and that their comments were not appropriate at that time.
One door opens
Councilwoman Denise Ashurst opened the door to the eventual outcome when she asked if it was possible to approve the budget but table the actual plan. Poindexter replied that was possible but it risks delaying the entire project for up to a year.
Councilman Steve Walton asked about a solution put forth in some local social media groups that would see a 48” defined corridor established from the columns of the covered sidewalk areas and extending toward the building with the tables and chairs pushed up against the wall of the buildings. City staff reported that they had presented that option to the business owners, who were opposed to it because they would lose seating.
Walton asked if that was an objective measurement. “Did someone measure how much space would actually be lost or was that a subjective assumption by the business owners?”
The answer came back that no measurement had been done and that it was a subjective assessment. City Manager Ned Thomas did, later, say that seating would definitely be lost under that scenario.
Walton then noted that getting the city into compliance with its own code in terms of parking space sizes was essential and said, “No matter how you slice it, we are going to be losing parking slots.” Poindexter agreed.
In the end it came down to more data. Staff will come back on June 10 with an accurate count of available parking slots if they are converted to steeper and deeper 30-degree slots on both sides of the street as well as an accurate accounting of how many seats would be lost if the sidewalks were not widened.
In what may have been a joke, the mayor (who is known for quips from the dais) noted that he will not be able to attend the June 10 meeting.