In response to the May 21 Herald editorial (“Low-barrier housing project can be good neighbor,”) lauding Mayor Stephanson and the City Council’s decision to locate their low-barrier project in an established residential neighborhood, I would like to make a few points.
Mr. Mayor, Council and Catholic Community Services: You did not trust the people of Everett enough to even give us fair warning as to this project. You established budgets and timelines, rewrote zoning ordinances, and kept this project as stealthy as you could until it could be implemented without time for serious legal consideration. You have sugarcoated the type of people destined to live there by rebranding them as “the most vulnerable.” In every meeting, in every newspaper article, the concern of the city leaders falls solely on these “most vulnerable.” How can we help them? What more can we do for them?
Most of these “most vulnerable” will not have jobs or any legal source of income. Were any of the nearby businesses asked if they wanted to invite them into their stores and restaurants? If one goes by the initial silence conveyed to rest of Everett’s citizens, I suspect not. In fact, I know. I did what the city did not; I walked Evergreen Way from Madison to 52nd Street and asked many of the owners and managers. Almost every one of them I spoke with said that they were as surprised as anyone about the project, and almost all had concerns about more “most vulnerable” entering their businesses.
So at no time did any of you city leaders ever give the slightest thought about the rest of Everett. We are the ones who work and live here, who try to take pride in our neighborhoods and our investments, and who pay the taxes that you so easily spend. During those city meetings, no one, not one of you ever stood up for the other 99.5 percent of Everett’s citizens. No thought or concern whatsoever for those that suffer in the “most vulnerables” wake.
Who cares about that? Not the Mayor. Not Cassie Franklin. Not Judy Tuohy. Not any of the council members. They voted 6-0 (with one abstention) to put the 70 worst addicts and mentally ill into a residential neighborhood without any serious conditions for treatment. Where do they think these “most vulnerable” are going to get the money for their drugs? We know. But the mayor and council are either too indifferent, or too shortsighted to care about the many other victims they will be complicit in creating.
In short, you did not trust us enough to include us in your plans early on. And when they became known, you then refused time and again to trust us enough to put the measure to a vote, or even a single, non-binding, advisory vote. You did not trust us, and that only demonstrates that you do not have trust in your own plan.
Mr. Mayor and City Council, you did not trust us. Therefore, we can not trust you.
Michael Neeley
Everett
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