The $50 million question
Published 1:37 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
SNOQUALMIE VALLEY – Local officials and their King County equivalents are unsure yet what the fate of parks in the Valley will be as the county stares down an expected $50 million budget deficit for 2003.
But one thing is clear: It won’t be a picnic to find a solution.
Executive Ron Sims said earlier this month that to make up for the shortfall, all county parks may have to be shut down this fall unless money is found to operate them.
Al Dams, a spokesman for the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, said Sims has asked the department to make drastic cuts.
With usage fees, the department’s total budget for this year is $26 million. Of that total, $19 million comes from the county’s general fund.
The county executive is calling on the department to slash what it receives from the general fund by $15 million for next year’s budget.
“That’s something like an 80 percent cut,” Dams said. “It’s pretty drastic.”
What this will mean for parks such as the Three Forks Natural Area remains to be seen. In 2000, the Metropolitan King County Council approved spending close to $1 million to make the 418-acre preserve between North Bend and Snoqualmie more accessible to visitors.
Although the land was purchased with an assortment of real-estate excise tax money and private grants, operating fees for the park will come from the county’s general fund.
Dams said that $250,000 allotted for the first phase of the park has been spent.
For some residents, the less done to the park the better. The county’s plans for Three Forks have drawn criticism from residents living close to it who say it will attract too many people who will make too much noise and damage the wildlife in the area.
But proponents of the park have maintained that the environmental impact and financial costs of the park will be small. Since it will have relatively low amounts of activities available that would require maintenance, costs should be minimal.
“We want it to be what it is supposed to be, and that’s a park,” said Gregg Hirakawa, a legislative aid for Councilman Larry Phillips, who was instrumental in preserving Three Forks.
For the time being, county planners seem committed to the park, albeit warily.
“Until the financial situation clears up, it’s hard to say what will happen,” said Kevin Brown, program manager for the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks. “At this point, though, we are still cautiously moving forward.”
One possible solution to shore up funding for county parks is creating a metropolitan park district. That idea is appealing to some since it would have its own taxing authority and would therefore be able to raise its own money.
Bob Wallace, co-chairman of the Metropolitan Parks Task Force recently set up by Sims to address long-term solutions for the region’s parks, said the park district is only one of many ideas to be discussed, and it may not be the best idea.
“Anything like that implies that you are going to have a dedicated revenue stream. Frankly, if they had the revenue, they should just give it to the county again without spending the money to form a whole other corporation,” he said. “I, personally, am somewhat skeptical that [the park district] is the solution.”
Wallace said the task force hopes to have something in front of the county by this fall.
Jeff Mumma, parks and recreation manager for Snoqualmie, said a park district would be a great idea if it would ultimately make parks easier to manage and run.
“Personally, I am open to anything that would make it easier to operate parks,” he said.
Mumma said Snoqualmie is interested in the management of county parks since the city still has some public-safety concerns about Three Forks, which it expects will attract many people because of the area’s easy access to the Snoqualmie River.
An offer from Snoqualmie to take over Three Forks was declined last year by the county. But Mumma said the city might begin talking with the county about a possible joint operating agreement.
Should the county fail to find a solution to its budget crunch, or put forward one that doesn’t live up to the Valley’s expectations, the idea of forming a local park district could be discussed again.
The concept was introduced about seven years ago after the county complained about the costs of running the Si View Community Center, which includes a pool, in North Bend.
Gardiner Vinnedge, who helped spearhead the effort to form a local park district, said the different taxing districts in the Valley and the low taxing authority a new park district would have made forming one a vexing task.
“This was when the county said they were having money problems and the hospital district was having problems, too,” Vinnedge said. “There was a bad climate in general [for asking for new taxes].”
A mailing was sent out that listed various recreational activities in the Valley, but the movement ran out of steam.
North Bend Treasurer Elena Montgomery said a local park district is still a viable alternative.
“It’s not impossible to do,” she said. “It will probably be revisited.”
While no decision has been made about the Si View Community Center, North Bend Mayor Joan Simpson said the city has received a call from county officials to set up a meeting on the subject
She said the possibility of the city fronting the operating and maintenance costs for the facility would be difficult because of a tight city budget.
The mayor added such an arrangement would be unfair to North Bend, since a majority of the facility’s users come from outside the city.
Wallace said keeping facilities like Si View open won’t be easy, no matter who pays for it.
“That’s the stuff that is very expensive and that is what sort of spending precipitated this whole thing,” he said. “Those will all require some hard work to stay open.”
