Pine Tree heroes and their fight

I was proud and saddened when the people in the Pine Tree area mounted a concerted effort to rescue their small park. Those people feel betrayed by city authorities who entered into negotiations for the sale of this property without any notice or warning.

Evidently, the City Council was planning the sale of this property to a developer for $2 million with the intent of using the money for repairs to other parks. As a Forward Thrust property purchased by bond levies, the property was supposed to belong to the citizens “in perpetuity” – not to be sold or converted to another housing development ever.

I suspect the neighbors who love this park would get together and coordinate beautification projects year-round so that all visitors could enjoy a safe, clean, attractive park for families and their pets. The council had no idea that people would rally around an old park – their green-tree oasis from the stresses and demands of everyday life.

Councilman Dennis Higgins says that the city needs $60 million to bring the whole park system up to snuff. $2 million doesn’t fix the problem unless the council plans to sell all the remaining parks.

Higgins’ response blamed the citizens for not passing a parks levy and challenged protesters at a recent council meeting to tell him where the money was going to come from to maintain the parks. I have a suggestion: Beef up B&O taxes on manufacturing shops – big and small – by square footage and number of large heavy containers loaded onto semi trucks and eliminate the loopholes and exemptions in the B&O law now.

When the city placed the park levy on the ballot you also added street repair – once again trying to get the citizens of Kent to pay even more of the financial burden to fix the road damage that is 90 percent attributable to the huge numbers of semis and large trucks that receive and deliver products and goods manufactured in the Kent Valley. So that was not a parks levy – it was a parks and street repair levy. That’s why it failed.

We are sick to death with subsidizing businesses around here that are ravaging our streets and roads. The more weight they haul, the more damage done to our streets, roads, and bridges. Let the perpetrator pay the piper.

I challenge Higgins and the other members of the council to figure out a way to get rid of the ShoWare Center at the earliest possible date so that healthy parks are affordable again. Parks give children a place to explore and watch nature.

– Sandra Gill