Mukilteo advisory vote may have sealed Rosehill’s fate

Published 11:16 pm Wednesday, February 20, 2008

MUKILTEO — If Mukilteo City Council members were voting based on their personal beliefs, then the Rosehill Community Center would be renovated and left standing.

In the wake of Tuesday’s election, a majority of council members plan on voting to have the building demolished.

On the ballot, the city asked voters whether to renovate Rosehill or tear it down and replace it with a new community center. Nearly 55 percent of the ballots counted as of Wednesday afternoon favored replacing the former school.

Four council members said they would follow the will of the voters and support building a new community center. Two council members said they would not vote to tear down Rosehill despite the outcome of the advisory vote. One council member remains undecided on how he will vote.

“Having it set up this way, it seems whatever my personal preferences might have been, I need to pay attention to what the citizens are asking for,” City Councilman Richard Emery said.

Emery and City Councilwoman Jennifer Gregerson plan to go along with the advisory vote, even though both would prefer to renovate the iconic building in Old Town. Linda Grafer and Emily Vanderwielen are the two other council members who plan to vote in favor of tearing down Rosehill.

Despite the results, City Council members Kevin Stoltz and Tony Tinsley said they will not vote in favor of tearing down Rosehill.

As of Wednesday, 1,985 people, roughly 54.6 percent of the advisory vote tally, favored building a new community center. A total of 1,651 people, or 45.4 percent of the tally, wanted to renovate the existing building.

Council members plan to discuss the Rosehill Community Center at their meeting scheduled for March 3.

The building — built in 1928 to replace an earlier schoolhouse that burned down — is a part of the city’s history and can still function as a community center, Stoltz and Tinsley said. Also, the city could possibly save millions of dollars by renovating instead of rebuilding, they said.

Last year, Stoltz, Tinsley and Lord voted against putting the issue on an advisory ballot.

“In all good conscious, I can’t vote to spend $3 million more (than renovation) for the exact same features,” Stoltz said. “Regardless of the vote, I have to go with the information the council was given.”

Tinsley said the council was “irresponsible” in passing along the issue to voters, who did not have all the information council members had.

“I respect the voters’ rights to disagree with the positions I take, and I also respect their right to vote me out of office if they disagree with it,” Tinsley said.

City Council President Randy Lord, who remains undecided on how he will vote, said he would prefer to see the building renovated.

For Lord, the problem with the advisory vote is that three council members who called for the vote are gone. Marko Liias resigned to serve on the state Legislature, Bruce Richter retired and Lori Kaiser did not seek re-election. Gregerson was the fourth council member who wanted an advisory vote.

“I was actually quite disappointed back in November that we could not make a decision,” Lord said. “I was afraid we were going to end up right here.”

The argument over whether to tear down Rosehill might be finished, but city officials now expect debates over what a new community center might look like, or how it would be paid for.

The city has $5 million in its capital improvement fund for the project, but the city must find a way to come up with the rest of the money. Council members have discussed selling bonds to pay the difference, then repaying the bonds using real-estate excise taxes, which are revenues from fees when properties are bought and sold.

The city’s plans to renovate would cost between $13 million and $15.3 million, depending on how much work is done to the interior of the building. To build a comparable community center from scratch would cost an estimated $16.2 million, city studies have shown.

The longer the city waits to get started, the more expensive the project will get, Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine said.

“During this whole discussion, even those who want to renovate kept saying time is money, and that we need to make a decision,” he said.

“There will certainly be debate,” Marine said. “Will it be lengthy? I don’t know.”

Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.

What’s next?

A majority of Mukilteo voters decided Tuesday that Rosehill Community Center should be torn down and replaced by a new building. After the vote, Mukilteo City Councilmembers Jennifer Gregerson and Richard Emery said they would follow the will of the voters, even though they would prefer to renovate and preserve the building. That means at least four of seven council members could vote to tear down Rosehill.