Center process was flawed from the start

By Mary Kay Voss

Last week’s editorial regarding the Mill Creek City Council’s “No” vote on the Community Center, stated “the business of government is not to make money … it exists to provide services.” I disagree. It is to provide basic, essential services: safety and security for its citizens, infrastructure and education. That’s it. It is not government’s obligation to take money in the form of taxes from one person, or group, to pay for non-essential classes, like dog obedience or belly dancing or exercise programs for others. Government or “city hall” doesn’t have any money of its own. It only has that which it forcibly takes from the people.

Some of us on the Mill Creek City Council believe fervently, that if you can not charge enough for the entertainment programs to pay for themselves, then don’t have them. There is no constitutional guarantee of life, liberty and a “quality facility to stay fit” (as the editorial would have you believe.)

I am proud of the decision this Council just made. Was it difficult? Most definitely. Why? Because we would like to have lots of nice amenities for our citizens.

The Community Center issue is one that has for years been fraught with promises and grand ideas. However, there were flaws in the process and in the thinking.

In response to a mailed survey many Mill Creek residents said they would like a number of different services, and/or facilities. However, when asked “How much would you be willing to pay for those amenities?” the response was about $2 per month.

So, the City Council took that to be a “go ahead” and sent it off to the Parks and Recreation Board to “design us a community center.” The fundamental problem, as I see it, is the Council at that time did not set a budget for the building for which they would commit taxpayer dollars. If they had said to the Board, “see what you can do with $3 million or $4 million dollars,” I firmly believe the outcome would have been totally different.

So, after the Parks and Recreation Board came back with architectural renderings of four different choices – all about $8 million – the council went through lots of discussion and gnashing of teeth. We had to consider not just what those outrageous building costs were going to mean to each property owner in Mill Creek, but, what it would cost to operate and maintain it.

That’s where the costs really start adding up. It appears, from all estimates, that the shortfall would be about $300,000 per year. The source? A utility tax on every utility for every Mill Creek resident.

Well, that somewhat shocked this Council, who by now had seen the passage of Initiative 695, which reduced city revenues drastically, I-747, which limited our ability to raise property tax caps by no more than 1 percent per year, and the proposed I-864, which would reduce our property tax revenues by about $900,000. (14 percent of our general fund).

Combine those revenue reductions and the increase in labor and industry costs and health insurance premiums by 25 percent per year for the last two years, and we end up with a very obvious negative gap between revenues and expenses. The City Council has been unwilling to increase the already high tax burden on our citizens .

So, what were we to do? The last consultant hired told us we would never be able to make the building and the programs self-sufficient. Never. He also put in print what many of us were subliminally feeling – 13,000 tax payers in Mill Creek would have to subsidize this building and its’ programs for the 60,000 people that would be using it. Whoa! That is what finally tipped the Council away from the whole idea.

Some of us on the Council object to taxpayers subsidizing the non-essential services that our Parks and Recreation Department provide. Because, face it, it is not government’s job to provide entertainment, even if it is good exercise and therefore good for you.

Our very first obligation as City Council members is to serve as stewards of the people’s money. We are given the responsibility of making good, sound, financially strong decisions to ensure the future well being of our city.

In difficult times, which these certainly are, it would not be prudent to obligate the citizens to 20 years of payments for $8 million dollars of bonds and increasing their taxes to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars shortfall on a facility every year forever and ever. We just said “No.”

Mary Kay Voss is a Mill Creek City Council member.