Sorry, did that really come out of the tips of my fingers? Maybe that sounds a bit drastic, but it is time to really question the operations of King County. Granted, I probably do that more than the average person, but one of the latest faxes to come across my desk and a press release put out by the county last week have me very concerned.

The first deals with the Secure Community Transition Facility (SCTF), or the more common term, sex-offender housing. Eight members of the King County Council, not including our own David Irons Jr. or Kathy Lambert, endorsed a plan to have the SCTF put in an area of forest production, basically saying the site near the fire training facility is good. Well, since eight members of the County Council are willing to jump on the NIMBY band wagon, so should we.

I am concerned about having a facility so close to our homes here in the Valley, but more importantly, I’m concerned with the way that a majority of the county council is so conveniently picking our backyard as the place to put their problem.

The area east of North Bend has long been a target of unwanted facilities – at one time a camp for alcoholics (I guess they had a preference to put chronic alcoholics somewhere) and a prison. Heck, there was even discussion at one time regarding a new regional airport here. Can you imagine the takeoffs and landings in the fog, surrounded by mountains?

We seem to be an easy target for things better suited for a more urban setting and this time they are banding together to say you folks out there should take our sex-offenders. It seems that representatives from other districts have a better idea of what we need then we, or our representatives, do. (Remember the Three Forks park proposal?)

In addition to the sex-offender housing proposal, King County Executive Ron Sims proposed a 5-cent, 6-year operating levy to protect 25,000 acres in county parks. Hello, Mr. Sims, didn’t you just close one of our parks, telling us we had to take over ownership? Didn’t we have to create a Metropolitan Park District to fund the county park out here (Si View) that you no longer wanted to support? We are now taxing ourselves to re-open Si View. In fact, with Si View moving from the county to our own park district, what other parks are you thinking we should support in Snoqualmie Valley? Maybe a ball field in Carnation or ball fields in Fall City? It might be more prudent to pay a local youth sports organization to maintain those facilities and transfer them out of the county coffers as well.

Based on the review of Si View, it was apparent that user fees and programming were not well planned to cover a good portion of the expenses when under county ownership. So what assurances do we have that county parks programming and subsequent user fees are better thought out now?

A tax increase for county parks is not what we need now. In fact, the model that Snoqualmie Valley put forth as a way to fund park facilities should be proposed more widely, further transferring parks ownership out of county hands and into local ownership. Too bad we don’t have some of that money we paid for Safeco Field with now.