By Tim Clifford

The first meeting for the month of May for the SeaTac City Council was held on May 12 at City Hall. Clocking in at a little over 90 minutes and with only two presentations on the agenda this was one of the shorter meetings in recent memory.

During the time for public comments a number of attendants criticized the council for their handling of the North SeaTac Park clean up (or lack thereof) as well their treatment of councilmember Pam Fernald. Recent television and print media coverage of Fernald offering her salary to help cover the clean-up costs came to dominate the proceedings. The term “disgusted” was used frequently and one commenter accused the council of being “environmentally racist” by neglecting Tub Lake and North SeaTac Park.

The first presentation of the evening was given by Kizzie Funkhouser, a volunteer supervisor with Catholic Community Services (ccsww.org). Volunteers with this program provide aid to senior citizens throughout south King County and SeaTac who can no longer take care of themselves (yardwork, handiwork, running errands, etc.).

The second presentation for the evening was given by Doug Osterman, the current Mayor Pro-Tem of Normandy Park, on watershed-based restoration and salmon recovery in SeaTac. Osterman also works as the Watershed Coordinator for the Green/Duwamish & Central Puget Sound Watershed. This presentation was a progress report on the salmon habitat plan that was ratified in 2005 by the city of SeaTac. The plan expires at the end of this year and the hope is that the city will renew the effort at that time for another 10 years.

The major highlights of the evening came during the time for council comments. It was during this time that each councilmember remarked on the recent press surrounding North SeaTac and Tub Lake and gave their own response to what they have seen.

City Manager Todd Cutts outlined a four phase plan to clean the park that apparently began on May 6. An update on this plan and its progress will be given at the May 26 meeting where a discussion on North SeaTac Park is currently on the agenda.

Also during this time councilmember Kathryn Campbell, for the second time this year, spoke out against the audience in attendance at the meeting.

“There’s been some commentary about people on the council and people in the city not working together and I’d like to make the suggestion that if you don’t like what you see in the city then why don’t you stand up and do something about it other than standing at a microphone and complaining,” said Campbell.

This immediately riled up the audience, many of whom had volunteered their time in the North SeaTac clean-up with councilmember Fernald, and negative comments were shouted back by the audience. “What do you do?” and “you just sit up there and chastise the people that are here every time” were some of the choice responses thrown back at the councilmember.

A point of order was made by the Mayor to quiet down the Campbell’s attempted responses. She ended her comments by informing the audience that her phone number is readily available on the city’s website and that people are free to call her anytime if they wish to challenge her work ethic.

One point of discussion that this meeting seemed to hint at for the May 26 meeting was how much the homeless community may be laid to blame for the garbage at local parks. As councilmember Bush suggested some of the homeless in the area may actually be from Burien. One idea that was thrown out was an eventual collaboration between Des Moines, SeaTac, and Burien to address the homeless population in across all three cities.