Mukilteo park
Park’s sale needs more discussion
The Mukilteo City Council voted recently to begin the process to give the mayor the authorization to surplus the Central Waterfront Park and sell it. We can disagree on whether that is wise, but we cannot disagree that is a monumental decision that should be undertaken with utmost care and public, not backroom, deliberation.
The area to be surplussed is referenced as “Central Waterfront Park” in the 2016 Waterfront Master Plan, page 10. This area is directly north of the ferry holding lanes.
I am begging the public to start paying attention to the actions taken by your elected leadership and ask yourself if these actions make sense.
It doesn’t make any sense to me. Neither does the budget. Neither does the unsustainable cost trajectory. Neither does the willful avoidance of complying with financial policy safeguards and replacing them with watered down policies we promptly again ignore.
The city finances are weak. Our latest audited financials are from 2022 (council has not yet seen audited 2023 financials), yet we moved to building two-year instead of one-year budgets. Our current budget is for the two-year period 2025-2026. We built that last year with 2021 audited financials. Per our finance director, “we only have an educated guess as to what our actual operating reserve actually is,” and we have witnessed this number changing by 10-15 percent. That doesn’t make sense. You don’t balance your household checkbook like this. You should question us and anything we do until it makes sense to you, especially when it involves selling off one time waterfront city parks.
Mike Dixon
City Councilmember
Mukilteo
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