Kent parks continue to crumble; more funds needed

The city of Kent’s reputation for outstanding parks is changing to outdated parks.

Park amenities such as boardwalks, picnic shelters, docks, playgrounds, restrooms, ballpark lights and other features are old and in need of repair or replacement. But the city budget for parks includes only about $500,000 per year for repairs when nearly $5.2 million per year is needed.

City Parks Director Jeff Watling told the City Council at a Tuesday workshop a similar message he’s delivered the last few years that many parks are nearing a critical stage in need of repairs.

“We are not able to address the majority of needs – not for growth of our system – but needs within our existing system,” Watling said. “The result is a system that is declining at a much faster rate than we can address …. Performance of our public spaces as the safe, comfortable, modern, vibrant gathering spaces that we need them to be and rely on them to be is decreasing greatly.”

Examples of the decaying parks include a closed boardwalk at Lake Fenwick Park; a 40-year-old restroom with plumbing problems and grandstands in need of repair at Kent Memorial Park; a popular slide removed from Springwood Park; a staircase closed at Earthworks Park; a dock in need of replacement at Lake Meridian Park; and closed tennis courts at Garrison Creek Park.

Kent voters in 2012 turned a down a property tax levy that would have raised money for street and park repairs. Now the council must determine whether to submit another measure to voters for parks, possibly sell off excess city property to raise money for parks or some other ideas to fix up the parks.

“Kent’s a city that’s been known for its park system for as long as I can remember,” Council President Dana Ralph said. “There’s a lot of things there that we can’t be proud of that we should be able to be. There’s a lot of work that’s gone into the system to build it up and we need to figure out a way to take care of it.”

It hasn’t been all doom and gloom for the parks. Watling said grants and city funds have enabled staff to renovate drainage systems at Earthworks Park; install new synthetic turf at Wilson Playfields; and install new play equipment at Lake Meridian Park, Tudor Square Park, Turnkey Park and Green Tree Park.

The city also received three grants of $500,000 each this year from the Legislature to put toward the expansion of Morrill Meadows Park (at a cost of $2 million) in an effort to bring in a new YMCA; to help pay for a new dock (cost of $1.75 million) at Lake Meridian Park; and to help fund new synthetic turf (cost of $1.9 million) for a field at Hogan Park at Russell Road.

Watling pointed out that even with its outstanding parks reputation, Kent has fewer acres (8) of developed parks per square mile (about 640 acres) than the peer cities of Bellevue, Everett, Federal Way, Auburn, Renton and Kirkland. Kent also has just 2.28 acres of developed parks per 1,000 residents, the lowest among the seven cities. Kent has a population of about 120,000.

“We may have been large when we were a population of 50,000, and we probably were, given most of our parks are of an age when we were a smaller city,” Watling said. “But now in land mass and population when we look at our comparable cities we are not in a state of being the biggest by any means.”

It’s repairs, however, that the parks need now.

“We have gone out to the voters before and asked them if they wanted to invest,” Councilman Dennis Higgins said. “It may be time to look at something like that again.”

Higgins added that voters need to be made aware of the city’s struggles to maintain its parks before the council refers any measure to them.

Ralph said the council doesn’t know yet what it’s going to do to fund the park repairs but it needs to do something.

“This is what’s good about Kent is we have an amazing park system,” Ralph said. “I want to challenge myself and my colleagues as we go into not only mid-biennial budget conversations but going forward that we take a hard look at some of the options that we may have as a council to make some changes.

“We had this conversation regarding streets and we went from almost zero funding to at least partial fix because we had that really difficult conversation and took some really difficult votes,” Ralph said. “But we are starting to see the payoff, and I feel we have those same kind of opportunities here to build the park system …. We owe it to the community to make this better and to have an answer and a solution.”

The council approved a new business and occupation tax (B&O) in 2012 that brings in about $5 million per year for street repairs. The council hasn’t voted on any new taxes or fees for parks in the last three years besides the property tax measure in 2012 that voters turned down.