I recently read a couple articles that have been weighing heavily on me. The first was one outlining what actions climate scientists are undertaking to reduce their own personal impact on climate change in light of what they know. Some of the scientists featured in the article have stopped flying or have switched to a plant based diet but most noted that the impact of all these individual changes is likely minimal compared to the impact that writing opinion pieces in the local paper or advocating at council meetings would have. The second was an interview with the former chief planner of Vancouver, Brent Toderian, one of North America’s premier urbanists. The interviewer asks what we can do about the (implied terrible) NIMBYs [Not-In-My-Backyard]. Toderian responded that he didn’t blame the NIMBYs at all. Rather, he blamed the local city councilors who knew better and yet still caved to the pressure every time 15 people showed up on a Thursday night to yell about at them.
For as much attention and money national elections receive, it is in local that we can have a much bigger impact. The rubber of issues as diverse as climate change and the racial wealth gap hit the road right here in the ‘Wood. So, with all that being said, when June 2, 2020 rolls around four seats on the second floor at 139 South Kirkwood Road will be up up for grabs. Council members Maggie Duwe, and Ellen Edman, along with Mayor Tim Griffin, will all face re-election while councilor Nancy Luetzow’s seat is term limited and will be filled by someone new (unless she were to decide to challenge Griffin for mayor).
So which Kirkwood counselors have caved or, worse yet, don’t even seem to know better in the first place? Turns out quite a few of the ones who are up for election this June; let’s take a look.
Voting Record & Methodology
>>>>Google Sheets Version Here<<<<
In order to evaluate each candidate’s record both as systematically and clearly as possible I compiled a list of votes that I think significant in terms of urban issues (like walkability and housing) and then went in search of how each member individually voted. This process was made significantly more difficult as the city recently changed its website and have not uploaded the minutes for the council meeting’s beyond a certain date. While simply trying to think of important votes is not ideal and is likely prone to bias, it is the best method I could come up with that did not bombard the viewer with hundreds of uninteresting unanimous votes to transfer funds from Kirkwood Electric to the streets department and back again. Some of these votes are unanimous (both bad and good) and while they do crowd the table and obscure the narrative, I feel obligated to give credit where credit is due (and to call out rubber stamping as well.) Relatedly, some of these votes aren’t as clear cut as they seem. While I’ve tried to offer context via notes where I can find it but often the reasoning for individual votes is not documented. It is possible, for example, that councilors oppose what I consider to be a good proposal because they favored an even more ambitious version or that they voted in favor of a good proposal for the wrong reasons entirely. With that being said, I believe in the vast majority of cases, the votes speak for themselves. If you have a vote that you think would be useful to see the votes on for the scope of this blog, I’d love to hear from you and will do my best to find it.
Conclusions
So what does the table tell us? Well, on the one hand the individual votes are interesting but everyone has a bad vote or a nuanced position on a particular issue. It’s when patterns emerge that we can begin to draw some conclusions. On repeated votes councilors Nancy Luetzow and Maggie Duwe have voted against good urban policy or, alternatively, for bad policy. Both Duwe and Luetzow opposed The Madison on the grounds of insufficient parking spaces with Luetzow additionally being opposed to the building’s height. Height seems to be of particular interest to both Duwe and Luetzow who also opposed the recently green lit condos at the corner of Clay and Madison on the grounds of height as well as the implementation of the the DPZ height recommendations on the basis that it might lead to slightly taller buildings. Both Duwe and Luetzow also opposed allowing for multi family developments without ground floor retail as a permitted use. While requiring new structures within the downtown area to have ground floor retail is objectively the correct urbanist take (at least on the A streets), Luetzow and Duwe’s push to make strictly multi family housing a special use instead of a permitted use seems like a play to force a vote on each development that falls within this category and perhaps garner opposition rather than a push for good urban policy. Other members of the council have bad votes on their record, (Wurtz also opposed the Clay & Madison condos, Edman spoke out in favor of tabling the DPZ recommendations and the tabling itself was unanimous, so all are responsible on one hand or another) but none have as consistently as counselors Nancy Luetzow and Maggie Duwe.
This post has been a lot of condemnation so far so I want to end this section by commending counselor Edman. While she, like all the other counselors, does not have a perfect record, in conducting my research for this project she is one who seems to see the value of urbanism.
Seat Vulnerability
So who is actually in danger ahead of this June’s election? Griffin, the most experienced counselor in the history of Kirkwood, seems pretty safe. With 52.27% of the vote in 2016 he wracked up more than his other two competitors, Gina Jaksetic (22.75%) and Scott Stream (24.8%), combined. Those competitors were no slouches themselves. Jaksetic was on city council herself at the time of the election while Stream had served as the President of the Kirkwood School Board and is brothers with prominent local and state politician Rick Stream. It is possible that Jaksetic and Stream split some of Kirkwood’s more conservative voters even though party affiliation does not appear on the ballot.
Maggie Duwe received 3,533 votes in 2016, the second most behind then incumbent Nancy Luetzow’s 3,811, while Ellen Edman captured the third and final seat with 3,473 votes (a healthy margin over fourth place finisher Mark Zimmer’s 2,978 and fifth place finisher Kevin O’Brien’s 2,902 votes). 2020 will mark the end of both Duwe and Edman’s first term serving on the council.
Likely Challengers
Both Paul Ward and Bob Sears seem likely to run again following their term-limited two year hiatus. Paul Ward served on the council from 2000-2004 and 2008-2018 while Sears served two consecutive terms from 2010-2018. Ward seems seems especially likely given that the new Performing Arts Center currently under construction downtown and the proposed surrounding district was his pet project. I’m willing to guess he’d like to see it through to the end. Both Ward and Sears’s records seem to mirror the other councilors. Going even further back former councilors Jaksetic and Gerry Biedenstein, the two dissenting voices from the monumental mistake that was the razing of the former Mel Bay in favor of a surface lot, are represented on the table but Jaksetic has stated that she isn’t interested in serving again while Biedenstein doesn’t seem to have sought re-election after losing a special election to Mark Zimmer in 2016 for Mayor Tim Griffin’s vacated seat.
What I’m Not Saying
I want to explicitly state what I am not doing. I am not calling for you, the reader, to vote counselor Duwe out, as to do so so far away from the election, without knowing who I’d be telling you vote in or how the members up for re-election have voted in the interim would be foolish. I am also not criticizing these consolers as people, or questioning that they actually wants what’s best for Kirkwood. Everyone on city council wants the best for their community. They are sacrificing their time and effort to do their best to make Kirkwood a great a place to live as they know how. They make too little and get yelled at far too much for anything else to be true. But, at the end of the day, in the final analysis, or whatever other cliche you can come up with, I fundamentally disagree with the votes that they have cast. I hope that this piece encourages people to run, encourages the incumbents to step back and examine the role that they play and to think hard about full implications of the positions that they hold. The most important election is always the next one. We’re less than a year a way now. Strap in.
I find myself nervous as I write this post. I think it would be unfair to criticize people by name while hiding behind the byline “The Kirkwood Gadfly”. While I haven’t exactly gone to great lengths to hide my identity, I would like to state it explicitly here: My name is Parker Pence and I will more than likely interact with these council members in some way shape or form between now and November 2020; will petition them to support some proposal; petition them to change their minds on another; perhaps see them on a Thursday night at PJ’s, but I believe what I’m saying is important enough to be said despite the awkwardness.
How You Can Help
Unfortunately, the period for declaring candidacy closed January 21. With that being said, you can still have an impact. Ask the candidates questions about their stances on density and road diets, lean on the incumbents to explain their bad votes, and finally do your research and vote for the best candidates you can, even if they aren’t perfect. More to come soon.