Recently Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon issued a public release stating, “Quality of life issues are very important for our local military personnel,” and that Snohomish County is “sensitive to the needs of military men and women and their families.”
Everett is the home for Naval Station Everett and the homeport for the USS Abraham Lincoln, but North Marysville/Smokey Point is the real “home” to many Navy families.
How do an 85,000-seat NASCAR racetrack and hundreds of acres for thousands of event campers, placed directly next to neighborhoods full of Navy families, fit into the county’s concerns for their quality of life? Actions speak louder than words. A large percentage of the people who will feel the highest degree of negative impact will be our community’s military families. Many of them have purchased homes in the Smokey Point area.
The Navy Support Complex that hosts the Exchange/Commissary and other support services is located just south of the proposed event campsite. Naval Station Everett was too small to have on-base housing for families, so the Smokey Point area was chosen for public/private joint venture housing and the support complex. The Navy also helped the county with road improvements to ensure its personnel could easily commute to and from the Smokey Point area.
Commuting for everyone who passes through Smokey Point on I-5 will be affected by event traffic at least 200 days of the year, according to International Speedway Corp. Of course, the county supports the Navy remaining in the area for the economic benefit, but if it truly supports our communities’ military men, women and their families, it will not welcome a facility larger than Safeco Field that will bring deafening noise next to their homes.
Carla and William Brown
Arlington
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