I’ve been closely watching the movement the Everett City Council and Everett Public Facilities District has made regarding the proposed events center, and one thing is clear. No one seems to remember that the first word of “Public Facilities District” is “Public.”
I’ve seen vociferous support for the arena, splashed all over the media, but all of it has been from people, like council members and facilities director Don Hale who have a vested interest in seeing it built. I have yet to see such an outpouring of support from the public, those the city council purport to serve.
Yet they claim to work on the public’s behalf.
Site selection was carried out without input from the public. I know. I live within five blocks of the proposed site and not once was I or anyone in my neighboorhood consulted about the “abundant on-street parking” or the impact of hundreds of inebriated hockey fans wending their way to their cars, through our streets and yards.
Yet they claim to work on the public’s behalf.
They have put forward statistics and figures, which show a massive turnout for hockey, and other unspecified events, which would keep the facility paying for itself. How were these statistics arrived at? Certainly no one I know in the Everett area has shown great enthusiasm for hockey. How was it determined that a hockey team is precisely what downtown Everett needs to revitalize itself?
Yet they claim to work on the public’s behalf.
On one subject has there been conspicuous silence: the impact of construction and business relocation on a downtown traffic corridor already dangerously over capacity. The Pacific Avenue project has hurt businesses in that area, and late this summer we all saw the promised “minimal impact” of work done on the Marysville bridge. And this is a multi-year construction project on a mammoth scale, right in the middle of that same traffic corridor.
Demonstrate this to me. Show me the public outpouring of support for the arena, and the tremendous public demand for a hockey team, and the public outcry for more cars parked in front of our homes. Prove to me that the public need is being met by uprooting businesses and demolishing what few historic buildings remain downtown. Point out to me, not through studies and statistics but with actual people, the vocal majority of the public shouting out in favor of another huge county and city expense, in a time when all other fiscal programs are being slashed to the bone.
Then I’ll believe the officials work on the public’s behalf.
Everett
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