5 Questions for ... Bill Evans
This week our 5 questions are for departing Councilmember Bill Evans. He is a local merchant, active in the Proctor District, and a board member of the Convention & Visitor Bureau in addition to his Council duties.
We have excerpted his answers below. If you would like to read the full interview, click here.
1. Looking back on your tenure on the City Council, what achievement are you most proud of?
Without any hesitation, I’m proudest of a Resolution and an Ordinance passed by Council during my tenure. On April 16, 2002 we passed Ordinance #26948 … “extending protected class status based on a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity.” Then, on January 28, 2003, we passed Resolution #35754 “Opposing a pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iraq and proposing that the U.S. government give U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq sufficient time to complete their task.”
Unfortunately, the voice of many cities wasn’t heeded in D.C. and we’re all aware of the eventual outcome. We continue, of course, to struggle to bring resolution and closure. Policy is one thing, of course, and projects are another. The one should lead to the other.
2. What changes do you see coming in the Proctor District in the next 10 years? What would you like to see remain the same?
To a certain extent, the state’s Growth Management Act gives us guidelines that will help us preserve what is best from the past while encouraging creative urban planning and growth that will help Proctor be the livable, walkable community that all of us want.
I see people working hard to preserve small, family owned businesses. I see those businesses not only surviving but thriving and that will take hard work from the whole community. I see the condominiumizing (is that a word?) of spaces occupied by retail shops and restaurants so that entrepreneurs can actually own the storefronts and spaces out of which they work. I see housing options which, for all practical purposes, have not existed in Proctor for many years. I see more public art and more green spaces. I see a strong, vibrant and growing Proctor Farmers Market. I see old buildings preserved and new, environmentally friendly buildings built. I see a flexcar in Proctor’s future. I see more ‘feet on the street’.
Proctor, like many of what I like to call the ‘urban villages’ of Tacoma, has history. I just finished co-authoring a book on the Proctor District with Caroline Gallacci. I spent hours, for several months, in the Northwest Room at the Central Library researching the district from its earliest days. The beauty of Proctor is that there’s probably more history spoken at a breakfast table in Knapp’s than you’d find in any scholarly treatise. History is ‘lived’ and ‘talked about’ in Proctor and it’s important to treasure that history. During my years in Tacoma I have been fortunate to be involved in the preservation of four very significant buildings….Old City Hall, Union Station, Albers Mill and the old Elks. In Proctor you get to be involved in the preservation and enhancement of a whole community. History, of course, doesn’t have to mean stagnation. We can preserve and enhance at the same time if we work hard to do it right.
3. What’s your favorite movie you’ve seen at the Blue Mouse?
Next year, 2008, marks the 85th birthday of Proctor’s Blue Mouse Theater. It has operated seven nights a week, pretty much uninterrupted, since 1923. We’ll have to have a celebration!
Several years ago at the Sister Cities International Film and Food Festival I saw a movie from Korea that I very often think about. It was called ‘JSA’ (Joint Security Area). … I remember the several hundred people in attendance that night walking out of the Blue Mouse in almost stunned silence. It was a powerful movie that I will never forget.
4. If you met a family from Portland, OR., how would you pitch Tacoma as a vacation destination?
It’s very important, I think, that we ‘pitch’ Tacoma as a destination different from Portland. I want this family to realize that they aren’t going to a ‘carbon copy’ city. Expect the unexpected.
[Read the full text of the interview for Bill Evans’ planned tour around Tacoma.]
5 What was the most bizarre or outrageous thing you ever saw at a City meeting?
No comment. It’s been a great eight years!
Filed under: General
9 comments
L Laura Hanan December 10, 2007
Nice guy, but limited as a council member and afraid to take a stand on pretty much anything.
As a business owner he had a unique perspective to examine the issues that continue to plague the existence of a successful retail area in downtown Tacoma but chose to focus his energy on the Proctor District, where his business is located.
His answer to question number 2 indicates a limited understaning of critical issues facing Tacoma such as business investment and development, state and local transportation, crime, and balancing social services with city resources.
While it is admirable, not to mention politically correct, that Evans supported “extending protected class status based on a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity,” I find it bizarre that this is what he considers to be the most important achievement as a member of Tacoma’s city council.
M Mofo from the Hood December 11, 2007
Laura, what does that mean to say someone is politically correct? How did politics get to the stage where a person with convictions may be intimidated not to speak or vote their conscience?
Of course the implication of my statement is that people have a conscience. And to have a conscience or sense of what is morally right or wrong implies that there is a supernatural lawgiver that placed that conscience within people.
Like the following statement or not: Without God people have no moral obligation to others. There could be laws to govern behavior, but there still would be no moral reason since right and wrong would be determined by feeling or pragmatism. You see once you make God obsolete, then anything is possible.
E Erik Hanberg December 11, 2007
I think I agree with Mofo … but I’m not sure.
Either way it doesn’t seem bizarre to be proud of passing a civil rights ordinance that prevents discrimination in the community that elected you. I am pretty dang proud of the vote I made in November of 2002 that helped keep it from being overturned. I don’t see a disconnect.
M Mofo from the Hood December 12, 2007
Can an Ethiopian make his skin white by reason?
Can a leopard make his spots disappear by thinking?
We could make a law that says black men are white.
We could make a law that says leopards don’t have spots.
But neither law would be based on truth.
Why is there a need for a protected class status? In a pluralistic society like ours today the groups that claim to be the most tolerant are the ones that only tolerate others that are the same as them.
Think it through.
E Erik Hanberg December 12, 2007
Mofo,
The ordinance and the subsequent ballot did pretty much only one thing as I recall, which was to add sexual orientation to the short list of reasons you can not be discriminated against by an employer in Tacoma (the others being the federal standards of race, creed, age, and gender). I don’t think it provided any more protection than that.
M Mofo from the Hood December 12, 2007
That’s good to know. That’s certainly interesting.
Is it legal to be heterosexual? I just want to know if I’ve been living my life in accordance with the government. Not that I would compromise my hetero status, I won’t.
But even more to the point, I have never seen an employment form that asked a person’s gender preference for a sexual encounter.
Why is it necessary to legitimate that question or sexual activity by government sanction?
I’m really concerned that in the future that people will be incarcerated for offending someone’s feelings.
J Jake December 12, 2007
It is my understanding that it doesn’t matter if you are hetro or homo they are both sexual orientations therfore they are both protected classes.
A hetrosexual business owner can’t fire someone for being homosexual.
A homosexual business owner can’t fire someone for being hetrosexual.
M Mofo from the Hood December 12, 2007
Why?
M Mofo from the Hood December 12, 2007
Laura, Marx was so excited when he read Darwin. He thought he found a legitimate basis for his doctrines.
Sorry Karl. Evolution is not a fact. It can never be proved. It is a faith, but a weak one because of the weak evidence that the faith is based on.
The basis for approving or disapproving a public issue is what I’m concerned about.
If we make laws that allow people to condemn others because feelings have been offended then we really will create Hell on earth. What is Hell? Christians would define that as absence from the glory of God (or good, if that clarifies it better).
The disciples of Christ and the disciples of Marx are only similar to the extent that they insist that their world view be coherent and internally consistent.