By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Cathy Moore complained bitterly last week over the fact that—despite her frequent demands and a Change.org petition with more than 1,500 signatures—the Maple Leaf Neighborhood Center will remain in the mayor's proposed update to the city's comprehensive plan.

The designation would allow moderate density—3-to-6-story apartments— in an eight-and-a-half-block area directly adjacent to an existing commercial center. Despite its diminutive size, Moore has characterized the proposed center as a death knell for the area, saying she was not willing to "sacrifice my neighborhood" to allow rental housing in the area. (Moore lives elsewhere).

Moore spoke for ten minutes straight at last week's meeting, at times seeming near tears as she described what she characterized as an abandonment and betrayal of her district by the city's Office of Planning and Community Development."

"I just remain incredibly disappointed," Moore began. "I remain incredibly disappointed that the tremendous amount of public feedback that was given to OPCD was not really taken fully into consideration. And I would take issue with the characterization that you really listen to everybody."

Moore went on to describe all the dense housing, including affordable housing, that's going up along busy streets and next to light rail—"a tremendous amount of growth"—saying that this type of housing is "fantastic" and "supported by everybody" currently living in the district. Maple Leaf, she said, was an exception, "the only [neighborhood] in which there has been strong, vocal, consistent opposition."

What about the neighborhood's drainage capacity, transit access, the traffic all those new apartments would cause? Why hadn't the city "walk[ed] the district" with residents who opposed allowing more people to live in the area?

"You're not listening," Moore said, "and I don't understand, why is it? Is it because somebody is trying to put the screws to the council member for [District] 5 with some ideological position? ... There has been an absolute hardcore resistance to this."

At the very least, Moore continued, OPCD should "walk the damn neighborhood center with us and explain to the 1,400-plus people [who signed the online petition] why you're unwilling to reconsider the boundaries, why you're unwilling to look at other places that might be more appropriate and actually have people walking to the light rail that is so vital to our community."

Michael Hubner, the mild-mannered OPCD planning manager who typically does the presentations at the council's comp plan committee meetings, pointed out gently that the department has, in fact, done multiple walks with residents through every neighborhood center, including Maple Leaf, while mayoral staff Krista Valles pointed out that sometimes city departments make decisions individual council members don't like. "It's not that we haven't been listening. We've just arrived at a different conclusion," Valles said.

In other words: A legislator may really, really want something to happen, but sometimes they just don't get their way.

Moore's anti-apartment diatribe, which came during her first public appearance after announcing her resignation last week, was another example, among many, of her obvious frustration with how the legislative process works—even when something seems obvious to her, she doesn't always get her way.

The version of the comprehensive plan the council is considering is much more modest than the proposals most of the current council including said they supported on the campaign trail in 2023, with half as many neighborhood centers and much more modest density increases than the preliminary alternatives OPCD floated that year.

Last year, the city's Planning Commission declared that an earlier version of the plan would worsen inequities in the city and fail to address Seattle's affordable housing crisis because it didn't allow enough rental housing in enough areas. Advocates for housing, including many renters, have been saying the same thing about the comprehensive plan for years now. Moore has never demonstrated much of an interest in listening to them.

Give just once!