If our home is our castle, most of us don’t want anyone messing with the mote around it. Perhaps that’s why change in any neighborhood is met with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Plans to extend the Interurban trail in Everett from Madison Street north to 44th Street — and eventually to 41st Street, where it will connect to a bike path and trail system that will travel along the northern tip of the city to the Port Gardner shoreline — has received mixed reviews.
Everett officials should go forward with the project and work with neighbors to address their concerns.
At the top of the list of concerns is crime. Some people have reported transients in the area and attribute thefts and burglaries to people who come up from the brush below the homes along the proposed trail. But Everett Police Chief Jim Scharf said the crime rate in that neighborhood is no greater than elsewhere in the city. In fact, he pointed out that undesirables tend to go elsewhere when the trails are paved over and people are using them for recreation.
No one should ever assume a paved path is perfectly safe. Crime can and does happen anywhere. The brutal, near-death stabbing of a girl along the Interurban Trail in 2000 left many people uncomfortable and upset, but the trail is still well-used. People must be careful, whether they are roller-blading along a popular trail, visiting one our county’s many parks or taking out the trash in the alley behind their house.
Inviting things into our neighborhoods that we know increase crime is one thing, but we shouldn’t live in fear of creating positive things that might be used by a few bad people when they are definitely used by so many good people. No one wants to live a life of fear and we can’t ask an entire community to live like that, either. If a city or town has problems with its parks and trails, then law enforcement and neighbors should work to make those areas as safe as possible. We shouldn’t close them down or keep them from being built at all.
Like every other part of the county, Everett’s population is increasing. The city needs recreational opportunities that link the different parts of the city. This is just what many vocal residents have been requesting for years and now it’s finally moving forward.
Everett should stay on the path with this project.
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