Neary-Sighted - The Departure Column: A Few Words on Retiring from the Council

By Walter Neary

I started my blog desperate for exchanging information about Lakewood. I began this blog many months before the start of The Suburban Times and years before the start of Lakewood Patch. With their appearance, and of course continued coverage by The News Tribune, a lot of the reason for my blog went away. The good news about the situation is there's more ways than ever before, even if those ways are not in newsprint, to talk about Lakewood.

Of course in the past few years I've updated the blog, often about major issues, but this summer was not the time to do so. My day job became the most intense it's ever been, thanks to my employer's wonderful and extensive program to bring Internet and technology to the poor. There's no sign this workload will diminish, which is good because I love the work. As you can imagine, this increased intensity had something to do with my decision not to run for re-election.

Speaking of that decision, a sure sign my poor blog here got pushed to the side is that I never updated it with my departure column for the city council. That's embarrassing! This column was published in August in Connections, the city newsletter. This column belongs on this blog as well, and so I share it here:

This is the final year of my second term on the Lakewood City Council, so if you read only this one sentence, please accept my deepest thanks for the honor of serving you these eight years.

If you read this second sentence - and time is so precious, isn’t it? - let me thank you for reading this newsletter. Not everyone does.

So now, here on the fourth sentence, I know that whoever you are, you care enough to read the newsletter articles and not just the headlines. That makes you special because you clearly care about Lakewood. So let’s talk.

These past eight years have seen a lot of action. We started our own police department, which has reduced crime throughout our city. We shared Nov. 29, 2009, the day four of our officers were murdered. We’ve shared agreements and disagreements about parks, roads, sewers, businesses, and more. As I wrote in the Lakewood Journal in 1995 when we chose cityhood, we will never all agree on everything. But in our city we have a place to meet and discuss and share. That’s what cityhood is for.

So are the time and resources that we invest in the city worth it? Let me tell you how I measure success. If you remember my columns in the Lakewood Journal about my then-little children, this story has more meaning.

To help out my daughter and son-in-law, they’re living with Cindy and me. In this day, and age, the two of them have done something remarkable. They have jobs within a mile of their home. JoAnna is the smiling face who greets you as you enter Barnes and Noble. David works at Cartridge World. The two of them have something in the marriage that Cindy and I never enjoyed; they work within a couple minutes’ walk of each other.

Yesterday, they pre-qualified for a mortgage. These smart young’uns could live anywhere in the Puget Sound area. Where do they want to live?

Lakewood.

They like this place. Lakewood is a place to raise a family. That’s success.
So now you’ve read 29, nearly 30, sentences. You’re the person I ran to represent; the person I tried my best, sometimes well and sometimes badly, to serve. In front of you special people, I have a tear in my eye. Thank you for the honor of representing you on the Lakewood City Council.