MUKILTEO — Since the city hasn’t found a way to raze the building, it’s going to force everyone out by raising the rent at Rosehill Community Center, the building’s tenants say.
"I’m feeling like they want the building empty," said Carol Harkins, the community center’s chief tenant, who would see her rent increase 75 percent, a possible fatal blow to her Gene Nastri School. "If they have their building empty, then they can tear it down."
The City Council has voted in the past to knock down the old school so it can build a new community center and city hall, but that’s not why the city wants to increase rental fees, city administrator Rich Leahy said.
Actually, it’s just the opposite, he added.
"What we’re trying to do is try to keep Rosehill open," Leahy said, saying that the city needs more money so it can operate it until a final decision is made on what to do with the building. "What we’re trying to do is fill a hole in our budget."
Last week the council selected raising rent at the community center to 80 percent of market value as a way to help make up for a $443,000 budget shortfall in 2004. Raising tenants’ rent would get the city $38,000 toward that goal.
The council also was able to agree on a number of cuts elsewhere in the city budget that, with the Rosehill rent increases added in, total $263,000.
The cuts include not hiring two paramedics and cutting items such as large-item trash pickup, computer upgrades, training and the use of temporary labor.
Harkins said raising rent to $1 per square foot would force many renters to shut down or look elsewhere for space, something she said will cause the city to lose money while destroying a valuable part of what makes Mukilteo unique.
Harkins rents 1,856 square feet for classes and programs in drama, art and music. With her bill going from 57 cents to $1 per square foot, her bill would jump from about $1,000 per month to about $1,750, an increase she cannot afford.
"I don’t know what I’m going to do yet," Harkins said. "Until things are absolutely carved in stone, I don’t know how to respond."
That’s not the case for Julie Glafke, who is already trying to figure out how to tell her Jazzercise clients that she will be shutting down if the rent increase is approved.
Because she rents the center’s gym by the hour, her rent is going up 50 percent, making it so she cannot afford to continue with her eight exercise classes a week.
"I almost left last year (when rents went up 10 percent)," Glafke said, adding that she only makes a "couple hundred bucks a month" in profit.
"I can’t imagine that there are too many tenants that are going to be able to stay," she said. "I feel like a slow death is going to happen. People are going to leave, and then they’ll say, ‘See, we don’t need it,’ and everyone will say we don’t need a community center because nobody uses it."
Mayor Don Doran said the city values having Rosehill’s community providers, but also said it’s fair to tap them for a rent increase when the city is strapped for cash. They still would be getting a discount rate.
"This is agonizing," Doran said of the budget cuts. "The proposal isn’t to go to the market rate; it’s to go to 80 percent of the market rate. That to me seems to be pretty fair."
Doran said the center’s tenants provide services a city might provide, but Mukilteo’s budget is too small to do that.
"Generally, I would give them their due. A community center in another city would be offering similar services," Doran said. "The difference is right now we don’t have a parks and (recreation) program, and I don’t think we’ll be getting one anytime soon."
Including Harkins, the center has five permanent tenants, which means they control the space they use 24 hours per day.
One pays $1.25 per square foot, which wouldn’t change, Leahy said. A store run by seniors would go from 16 cents per square foot to 50 cents per square foot. The last two permanent renters pay 45 cents and 78 cents per square foot.
Reporter Lukas Velush:
425-339-3449 or
The Mukilteo City Council will continue its budget hearing at 7 tonight at Fire Station 3, 10400 47th Place W., Mukilteo. Mayor Don Doran said he hopes the council will adopt the 2004 budget at the meeting. Call 425-355-4141 for more information.
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