Road and park improvements haven’t kept up with the dizzying growth in Snohomish County’s population. That’s no secret. The county, used to providing mostly rural services, has struggled to meet residents’ increasingly urban expectations.
The recent opening of two new county parks, at Cathcart and Lake Goodwin, is welcome but just scratches the surface of the parks deficit. Families, many of whom live in homes with practically no yard, need nearby places for kids play. And unless you’ve locked yourself indoors the past few years, you’re familiar with the shortage of road capacity and sidewalks.
County Executive Aaron Reardon has put forth a modest but excellent idea to begin making up ground in roads, sidewalks, parks and surface-water management. Reardon’s Community Infrastructure Development Initiative would borrow $19.6 million, without raising taxes, to speed completion of a smorgasbord of projects throughout the county.
County Council members may seek to tweak the project list, and Reardon says he’s open to that. But the overall plan is an innovative one that deserves council approval.
Borrowing rather than paying as you go, Reardon argues, addresses two realities. First, the need is here right now, and this plan brings projects to completion 2-7 years earlier than scheduled. Second, waiting allows inflation to creep in, making projects more expensive. And with interest rates still low, the county can borrow for less than 5 percent.
All of the 15 park projects in Reardon’s proposal are upgrades to existing county parks – things like playgrounds (at six sites), ballfield lighting (Lake Stevens Community Park), an off-leash dog area (Fobes Hill Community Park) and a spray park (McCollum Regional Park).
In addition to seven major sidewalk/walkway projects, the plan seeks to accelerate two long-awaited road projects in fast-growing areas: the Granite Falls bypass, which would keep gravel trucks from rumbling through downtown, and the widening of 20th Street SE from 91st Avenue SE to U.S. 2 in the Lake Stevens area. Both already have a variety of federal, state and local dollars earmarked, but not enough to complete them. The Granite Falls bypass would be aided by a low-interest (0.5 percent), $7 million loan from the state’s Public Works Trust Fund, money that still must be secured.
Bonds for park improvements would be paid off with revenue generated by growth – park mitigation fees and real estate excise taxes. Payments for roads and sidewalks would come from the county’s road fund. In other words, no new taxes would be imposed and existing county services wouldn’t suffer.
As small steps go, this one promises a big payoff. We say go for it.
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