Remembering Gil Carbone, a champion for government reform, downtown revitalization | Opinion

In recent months we’ve lost some giants in the constellation of former local civic leaders: Olympia Mayor Bill Daley, Lacey City Council member Bill Bush, and Olympia City Council member Gil Carbone, who died in September at age 94. I served with them all, either on the Olympia council or on a regional governing board. They got things done, and more often than not, they made sure others got credit.

I write now to remind citizens of Gil Carbone’s contributions.

Gil was one of the first people in Olympia to call attention to the lack of transparency and citizen participation in Olympia city government. In the 1970s, Olympia was governed by a three-member commission, usually composed of local, white, downtown businessmen.

Mostly, they made decisions out of the public’s view, so when the commission convened, their meetings were often very brief. How brief? When Gil was on his way to a commission meeting to testify, he had to stop for a train to pass on his way there. He arrived five minutes late, and the meeting was already over.

I met Gil when he helped the League of Women Voters put together a campaign to change Olympia’s government from the three-member commission to a seven-member City Council with a full-time, paid city manager. This change increased the diversity of membership on the council, and provided more opportunities for citizen participation.

That change also kicked off an era of enormous progress for downtown Olympia.

In the 1970s, many downtown buildings were empty, auto dealerships occupied much of the land, and there was limited public access to downtown’s waterfront. The new council members ran on a platform of downtown revitalization, based on several ideas that had been talked about but never implemented: the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, The Olympia Center, Percival Landing, and a farmer’s market.

Gil’s major effort was to find a way to fund and build the Percival Creek Bridge, which enabled the establishment of the Olympia Auto Mall. When people buy cars, those purchases generate a lot of sales tax, and that revenue was crucial to funding many downtown projects. The Auto Mall also provided an incentive for the auto dealers to move out of downtown and open up downtown properties for more pedestrian- friendly uses.

The Percival Creek Bridge project was very controversial. Environmentalists opposed it because they thought construction of the bridge would damage Percival Creek habitat and stimulate growth on the west side. The vote to approve the bridge was 4-3.

Gil and the council were not deaf to the concerns of the environmentalists. In conjunction with the approval of the bridge, they passed an ordinance to add environmental protections for construction on a steep slope, and to protect the water quality in Percival Creek. This was a precursor to environmental protections required by the Growth Management Act for all Washington cities.

Gil was a courageous, outspoken, and hardworking council member. Olympians should remember his work to make Olympia City government transparent, diverse, and participatory, and to establish the Percival Creek Bridge, which stimulated an important source of city revenue and the redevelopment of downtown.

Holly Gadbaw served 19 years on the Olympia City Council, including a term as mayor.