"I don't know where this came from because it's really bizarre," said City Council member Cynthia Richardson said of a proposal to require neighbors share private docks. "If you want to put a dock in and your neighbor doesn't want to, you can't do it," she added.
Richardson's comments came at Tuesday night's City Council meeting during discussion of changes to the city's Shoreline Master Program. The proposal she was commenting on would require people who want to install a dock or pier to share it with a neighbor. The proposal would affect mostly the Cap Sante neighborhood.
Richardson suggested if one neighbor wanted a dock, their next door neighbor didn't want one, then the next neighbor down the line did want one, how do they share? Or, she said, "a nasty neighbor shouldn't prevent you from adding a dock."
City Planning Director Ryan Larsen said the language would be revised to "strongly encourage" the sharing of docks.
Another proposal that drew comments involved reducing from 12 to 5 the number of buoys allowed in a buoy field. Council member Erica Pickett said "Buoy fields will do less harm than anchors. I don't think we want to make it difficult" to use buoys.
Larsen said he would bring a full copy of the revised Shoreline Management Program document to the Council for it's March 1 meeting.
