Needed: a sustainable, existing funding source for parks long term

In June, the Kent City Council adopted the 2016 Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan.

This plan is not overly ambitious, but rather presents a critical strategy for maintaining our existing parks so that they can better serve Kent’s 125,000 residents, many of whom are currently underserved.

Parks department staff received significant community input during the plan’s development and it truly represents the community’s desires for its parks system.

However, the parks department cannot execute this plan without additional funding. The city of Kent’s current level of capital investment in parks won’t even maintain the system’s current level of service. Continuing to fund parks at that level will lead to an unacceptable decline in level of service. If funded as recommended by this capital funding recommendation, the plan envisions an attainable increase in level of service of in 10 years.

At the time it was adopted, it was well known that accomplishing this plan would require additional, reliable capital investment in parks, beyond the current, extremely limited funding for parks capital. To support that, the city of Kent Parks and Recreation Commission developed and presented a capital funding strategy that would help achieve this funding level.

This funding strategy was based on the commission’s belief that it is the city’s obligation to maintain parks current level of service with existing city revenues. It suggests that, to do this, the city is obligated to reallocate $2 million of existing, sustainable city capital funding to maintain the current parks’ level of service. If this obligation were met, voters could then decide whether they would like to contribute any additional funds to increase level of service.

In my opinion, current tax dollars should rightly fund our current obligations. Voters should decide whether to increase the level of service and fund new programming citywide.

While I have been heartened by the mayor and City Council’s awareness of the critical need for additional parks funding, and the identification of a short-term solution in the current 2017-18 biennial budget, I am dismayed to see it is a stopgap and a new tax for residents that will merely fund the next two years, kicking the capital funding issue can down the road, again. The source identified, banked property tax, does not address the previous director’s or the commission’s recommendation to reallocate an existing, sustainable capital source, and voter’s would be less likely to be willing or able to support additional level of service.

I recognize that this is a challenging budget process, and many council members have expressed to me that funding here in Kent is too limited and fund sources are too siloed to be sustainable. However, this budget, even in this great economy, does nothing to address those concerns. For example, the City Council decided against an opportunity to levy a motor vehicle excise tax, instead diverting funding from the already deficient capital budget to fill gaps in the growing operating budget.

Another example is last year’s change in the business and occupation tax ordinance, which increased the dedication of that tax source for transportation from $5 million to almost 100 percent of revenues collected, which in recent years has been greater than $7 million. While clearly the City Council feels that current revenues are insufficient to meet its goals for the city, it’s unfair to subordinate investment in our current parks to all other city goals – especially when the community has so clearly expressed support for parks.

With the fiscal cliff approaching, it is critical that this budget and our long-term financial planning as a city be more sustainable. An important part of that is solving our parks’ funding crisis now. The City Council clearly has options for funding parks sustainably, and not doing so tells residents that the city does not share their goal of maintaining the existing system with existing resources. A critical step in that is identifying a sustainable, existing funding source for parks long term.

– Annie Sieger, chair, city of Kent Parks Commission