If cities don’t take 39 parks off the county’s hands, they could fall into and neglect and disrepair, Interim King County Executive Kurt Triplett warned. At a news conference today, he laid out a plan to bridge part of the county’s $56 million budget gap by terminating services at parks in unincorporated urban areas. The public could still visit the parks, but if you want to use the playground, for instance, your kids would have to climb a fence to get in. Crews would also close restrooms and cease to maintain the grounds.
“Mothballing these 39 parks, in potential annexation areas in East and South King County, provides nearly $4.6 million to close the general fund gap,” said Triplett, adding that seven county employees would lose their jobs.
But cities could prevent the parks from becoming magnets for crime and raccoons. Triplett said all the parks are within “potential annexation areas of cities” typically used by local residents, and that 14 are in areas with annexation on the ballot this year. The county would hand the parks over to nearby cities for free, he said.
“The state Growth Management Act designates cities as the appropriate provider of urban services such as local parks, and we’ve been working for years with these cities to transition the parks in the annexation areas that will be mothballed in December,” he said.
Regional park facilities, such as the King County Aquatic Center and Marymoor Park, would not be affected.
Triplett’s proposal, which the King County Council will consider when it passes its annual budget this fall, would cover less than 10 percent of the budget shortfall. Today’s park proposal would be added to the 10 percent cuts from county administrative budgets Triplett proposed last week.
“We’re simply out of tools, and we’re out of money,” he said.
We in Seattle already pay for the county’s parks outside our city, as well as our own.
About time those suburban slackers started pulling their own parks weight.
They could always designate these as wildlife refuges. They could support a great deal of high quality crack cocaine habitat which has been pushed aside by the city.
I know of 39 AWESOME locations for some meth labs that are going to be available!!
King County is not out of tools.
If Jessie Israel wants to run on the only thing she’s ever done (privatize the County’s park system), then maybe she should take credit for this wild success story too?
@4 for the win.
These parks are symbolic. The council wouldn’t support his tax increases and the last thing Triplett wants to do is dismantle the bureaucratic morass he helped build under Sims.
Blackmail is a good term for it.
BTW if anyone should complain about unfairly paying for these parks it’s the 10% of rural KC residents who pay over 50% of the counties property taxes. Nary a county park in site, but when you live in the woods who needs em.