City council president Richard Conlin and parks committee chairman Tom Rasmussen are preparing to start work on an ambitious new levy to pay for parks renovation and land acquisition in underserved areas like Northwest Seattle. Their position puts them in direct conflict with Mayor Greg Nickels, who declined earlier this year to support renewing the Pro Parks Levy that expires this year. Conlin and Rasmussen want to put the levy on the ballot this fall; Nickels has said he would prefer to wait until at least 2010.
Rasmussen says a "strong majority" on the council supports putting a levy proposal on the ballot in November, when voter turnout will be high. The levy would be somewhere between $100 million and $150 million, according to Conlin. Combined with the $75 million Pike Place Market levy the mayor introduced last month, that adds up to about the same amount as the expiring Pro Parks Levyâenabling Conlin to argue that his proposal isn't a tax increase. Nickels has argued that voters aren't ready to support a large new parks levy and a new six-year tax to overhaul the Pike Place Market and Victor Steinbrueck Park.
Complicating mattersâor at least throwing a few more billion in taxes into the mixâis the possibility that Sound Transit will put a $6 billion-plus light-rail and bus expansion measure on the ballot in November. Although Conlin said recently that he was "starting to have doubts" about the possibility of an '08 Sound Transit ballot measure because of resistance in Pierce and Snohomish Counties. The board has until at least the end of April to decide, and could conceivably take even longer.
A looming recession could throw another wrench into the works, a fact both Conlin and Rasmussen acknowledge. "It's certainly a cause for concern," Conlin says. "If the economy is really in the tank" later this year, "we may have to pull back."
According to a poll commissioned by the council members, more than two-thirds of voters interviewed said they would "definitely" or "probably" support putting a $140 million parks levy on the ballot in November. However, the poll also revealed that support for the parks levy slipped when it was paired with either Nickels's Pike Place Market levy (a near certainty) or Sound Transit expansion (a real possibility)âalthough a majority still supported the levy. And overall support for both Sound Transit and Pike Place Market was much lower in the council's pollâ55 percent overall for Sound Transit, and 56 percent overall for Pike Place Market. Whether the parks levy depressed support for either Sound Transit or Pike Place Market alone was unclear from the council's poll.
Marty McOmber, a spokesman for Mayor Nickels, says the poll suggests "support [for Conlin's levy] might not be as strong as [supporters] are suggesting." He says the mayor would strongly prefer to hold off on parks expansion. "We need a comprehensive and strategic accounting of how we fund parks in the future, and that process may take a little bit of time... This year, our focus is going to be strictly on Pike Place Market." 
