EDMONDS – This city must decide between parks and sidewalks.
The problem is, the city wants both.
The city plans to take money from a fund traditionally used only for parks and use it to pay for some backlogged sidewalk projects.
Proponents say the plan can improve safety.
“Parks are very important, we need to do them, but so are sidewalks,” said City Councilman Dave Orvis, who favors the plan.
Opponents say the plan could hurt parks and is not a good way to solve the city’s financial difficulties.
“The bottom line is, taking from one fund to fix another fund isn’t the way we’re going to solve our problems,” Mayor Gary Haakenson said.
Under the plan, 15 percent of the city’s annual real-estate excise tax, which generates about $1.5 million a year, would go to sidewalk projects. That would equal about $210,000 a year, city development services director Duane Bowman said.
City Council members will discuss the proposal and possibly take action Tuesday.
The excise tax equals one-half of 1 percent of all city real-estate sales. State law says it can be used for parks and recreation or capital improvements, Bowman said.
In March, the City Council asked city staff to generate ideas for revenue to pump into the ailing street fund, from which sidewalks are financed.
For each of the past two years, the city has lost about $350,000 in income to its street fund – nearly half of the annual total – after the 2002 passage of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 776, which eliminated county-level motor vehicle excise taxes.
Further spurring the city on were Meadowdale residents, who recently complained of safety problems centered around the sidewalk-less intersection of 76th Avenue W. and Meadowdale Beach Road.
The city would need about $1.9 million more per year to cover its needed improvements to streets and walkways, Bowman said.
“This enables us to get started on the list,” Orvis said.
The first project, Bowman said, would likely be a long-planned but unfunded walkway along 76th Avenue W. and 75th Place W. in Meadowdale with a $548,000 price tag.
To qualify, a project would either have to be listed on the city’s walkway plan or improve access to parks or schools, Bowman said.
“Walking is one of the top recreational uses in the city,” he added.
Still, the plan could affect parks, interim parks director Brian McIntosh said.
These could include joint ventures with the Edmonds School District to improve athletic fields that are used by schools and the community, McIntosh said.
Also at stake could be development of vacant land, such as a small parcel near the Meadowdale beach, into usable park space, he said.
“It would make it difficult to do the good things we’ve done in the past,” McIntosh said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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