Pine Tree Park: Another City Council fiasco

Seems like the Kent City Council keeps running into the same old wall and failing to understand what causes the concussion.

First the council tells us, after they’ve sold Pine Tree Park, that they had to do it to find the funds needed to maintain the other parks in Kent. Then the council changes their story – now telling us that no, we won’t use the proceeds to maintain other Kent parks – we’ll use it to expand other Kent parks. They don’t seem overly concerned that they sold Pine Tree Park without public input. The council apologizes for this oversight and regrets that they have lost our trust – but they offer us nothing more.

Back in 2012, Kent voters turned down a property tax levy/Proposition 1 that would have raised money for street and park repairs. There were those on the council, back in the day, who felt strongly that it was too much of a financial burden to place on home owners in Kent. They were right and the voters agreed with them – the property tax levy failed to pass.

These same minority members council believed that the money to fund street and park maintenance should and could be found by asking Kent’s burgeoning industrial and commercial businesses – covering the Kent Valley – to pay their fair share of taxes to maintain Kent’s infrastructure.

Then back in 2013, the council formed a land improvement district (LID) for Southeast 256th Street between Kent-Kangley and 116th Avenue Southeast. They wanted about 200 property owners to pay $2 million, an average of $10,000 per property. The affected Kent property owners protested, citing the obvious: that there are thousands of drivers who use the road every day and it was unfair to ask so few to pay such a premium.

The council’s LID allowed 30 days for affected property owners to submit at least 60 percent of the LID’s $2 million value in signed and dated protests – and they succeeded – submitting more than 70 percent of the property owners’ signatures. Subsequently, the council voted to increase the business & occupation tax [B&O]. With these additional monies, the 256th Street improvement was green-lighted and completed.

Now, let’s look again at the council’s original premise that we’re desperate for park maintenance funding – oops, excited to expand our other parks, even though we’re desperate for maintenance funds – and this is why we’ve chosen to sell Pine Tree Park.

The facts are these: The homeowners in Kent are already paying their fair share in taxes, and our council has been given this message time and time again. So stop hitting your heads on a wall and establish reasonable business taxes to provide what is needed for our infrastructure.

If the current council isn’t up to the job, then perhaps it’s time to hire a new one – that’s our job.

As for the sale of Pine Tree Park, I think the council needs to rebuild trust, and the first step after a mistake is to take responsibility for your actions. In this case, it means that the council should cancel the sale of Pine Tree Park. It’s still not too late to correct this big mistake.

– Mary Cross