By Peggy Sturdivant

My next-door neighbors were away for three weeks. They returned to a Ballard parched by the high temperatures and scorched by the anger that has erupted since the announcement by the mayor’s office of a transitional encampment for the homeless at a former Seattle City Light substation at 2836 NW Market Street.

Kirk Robbins, President of Ballard District Council, traveled back from an island off of Maine in near ignorance of what was smoldering until he entered a room of nearly 90 people at the July Council meeting.

They landed in a Ballard with its residents divided and feeling cut off from city government. Alas. I hate divisive issues. I prefer being with friends and family who share similar opinions, or who at least are willing to discuss differing viewpoints respectfully. With the response to the admittedly unexpected news of a potential 52-tent site on NW Market I feel at odds with friends, my spouse, and just plain upset.

I’m upset because this issue seems rigged to force people to choose sides. If you speak out again the specific site then someone is quick to slap on the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) label. City Council even seemed ready to pre-sort public comment into one of two categories per their response to the mayor: “The opportunity for community engagement should not be utilized by neighbors and businesses as a platform to exclude transitional encampments from any of our neighborhoods.”

But where was the community engagement beforehand? It wasn’t with the Ballard Chamber’s group that has been meeting with the Department of Planning and Development on possible solutions for homelessness in Ballard. The community engagement wasn’t with any members of the Seattle Green Spaces Coalition (SGSC) Steering Committee (of which I’m a member) as we met with various City Council members, Deputy Mayor Kim and Seattle City Light over last year about possible public uses of surplus substations.

The community engagement wasn’t evident as Ballard residents, with or without homes, sat on the lawn at 2836 NW Market with their backs to the tree now scheduled for removal because its roots are supposedly part of the soil contaminated with PCBs and pesticides. It wasn’t evident when SGSC asked Seattle City Light to try to prevent its former substation sites from becoming fire hazards and to tend to the Korean Mountain Ash tree, which has been recognized by the City’s DPD as “exceptional for its size.” Lynn Best, SCL’s Environmental Affairs and Real Estate Director’s reply was:

“The tree at the former Market Street Sub site needs to be removed to do the cleanup.  There is no water supply at most of the former sub sites so there is currently no way for us to water any of the plants at those sites.  We will look into this further. In general, there are very limited resources for any maintenance of excess property.”

No discussion on how the site that has no water will fit the Council’s criteria that “the encampments should also provide access to bathrooms, potable water, and regular garbage collection.”

I’m frustrated because I’ve been trying to engage with the city on former substation uses since 2007 and feel blindsided; does that make me a “NIMBY?” If I’m upset because contaminated soil was all right for the general public until now does that put me in agreement with headlines that stoke ugliness like KIRO’s “Ballard Residents Organizing Against Homeless Camp” or The Stranger’s SLOG, “Ballard Business Owners: Get Seattle’s Homeless Away From Us!”

I feel sick seeing the headlines and reading some of the comments that are on-line. It was hard to sit in the hot-tempered and plain hot meeting room at the Ballard Library on July 8, 2015. Yes, there’s been an organized effort by the Ballard Chamber of Commerce to learn how the Market Street site was chosen and review alternatives. Yes, there’s a petition entitled “Don’t Tell Ballard To Shut Up,” signed by 580 residents in less than 48 hours, drafted by a Ballard resident after he and his wife left the District Council meeting still upset with the lack of public process and not satisfied with Council Member John Okamoto’s non-specific assent to ‘community engagement going forward.’

There won’t be any going forward for the Korean Mountain Ash if it’s destroyed as part of a $145,000 clean-up that will put the remediation cost at about $3,000 per future transitional resident at the 9548 sf site.

I’m saddened because with the exception of a few folks in Ballard who don’t even want the homeless to exist I think we all want do more to prevent homelessness. Sure the proposed space is on the way to a tourist destination, between liquor store, tavern, marijuana dispensary and VFW hall…that’s not the point. We’re not telling the homeless we don’t want them. I think we’re saying we want better for them.

Is this site really going to help the homeless who are really and truly living in our backyards, in the greenbelt above Shilshole, under the Ballard Bridge, near the loading dock of Jo-Ann’s fabric, after hours in the doorway at the bank where as I write there’s a salmon barbeque pit? I think we need places in every neighborhood that offer social services, hygiene, and safe shelter.

In Interbay, West Seattle and in Ballard we feel the site announcements fell from the sky…and I thought I had been tracking the sky. The more we stay so divided - as though there were just two sides, the more damage we all sustain in this tinderbox of a summer.

Correction:

The pull quote from Seattle City Council members from their written response to the mayor was incorrectly attributed to Kirk Robbins in the At Large in Ballard column, "Divided we fall." He is President of Ballard District Council and did not comment of behalf of Ballard's neighborhood council.