Features

When the City Council revisits the dreaded creeks issue next week, Councilmember Betty Olds will finally be allowed to participate. 

Several months after banishing Olds—who has a creek running underneath her property—to the sidelines for a conflict of interest, City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque reinstated her, saying a state board essentially reversed its opinion on the matter. 

The written opinion by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission could have ramifications for other councilmembers and commissioners. 

Albuquerque said she was now reviewing her decision to exclude Councilmember Linda Maio from discussions about new zoning for University Avenue. Maio lives adjacent to the thoroughfare. 

Olds would likely have remained excluded from the creeks debate had Planning Commissioner Tim Perry not asked Albuquerque last month if he should excuse himself from a commission debate on changes to the Landmarks Ordinance that would affect a property he owns. 

As she did for Olds, Albuquerque called up the FPPC hotline, only this time the telephone consultant advised her that Perry had no conflict of interest, even though his case was practically identical to Olds’. 

“I knew they had to be wrong on one of these,” Albuquerque said.  

She requested that a commission lawyer deliver a written opinion on the cases, and the opinion handed down found that both Olds and Perry were eligible to participate. 

Olds said it hadn’t occurred to her that the city didn’t have a written opinion when she was barred from the creeks debate. “I guess they should have asked for it in writing. It would have been a lot quicker than this.” 

From now on, Albuquerque said, the city would no longer accept the opinion of the FPPC’s telephone consultants. 

The council is scheduled to conduct a hearing on the creeks ordinance next Tuesday. The current ordinance forbids new construction within 30 feet of a creek and is mum on whether the homeowner or the city is responsible for fixing long-buried underground culverts.  

Councilmembers will soon get a reminder of the costs of maintaining the city’s underground creeks. This Tuesday, they will be asked to approve $250,000 in emergency funding to repair a broken Strawberry Creek culvert at Allston Way and Harold Way in the city center. The total repair project to be completed next year will cost an estimated $550,000 and come from the general fund and clean storm water fund. 

According to a city report, if the culvert is not repaired before the upcoming rainy season nearby properties could begin to sink.