City Council Member Richard Conlin isn’t wasting any time settling
in to his new role as council president. His first
priority:
renewing the $270 million Pro Parks Levy, the latter part of which will
expire later this year. Proposing any renewal will put Conlin in direct
conflict with Mayor Greg Nickels, who wants to propose a joint Pike
Place Market–Seattle Center levy—the so-called Legacy
Levy—to go to the ballot this November. “We’re not looking at
proposing a renewal” of the Pro Parks Levy, Nickels’s spokesman Martin
McOmber says. “We think it’s been a successful levy, and we’ve
taken steps to address some of the things that were in the levy
that will be going away.”
Conlin says he isn’t opposed to funding improvements at the Center
and the market; he just doesn’t think the city should stop investing in
new parks to do it. “My feeling is, there’s always a need for more open
space and habitat,” Conlin says. “The question is, is there a way we
can bring [parks, Seattle Center, and Pike Place Market] together as
one package?”
The debate, then, comes down to priorities: How much money will
voters be willing to spend, and would they prefer to spend it on
Seattle Center, Pike Place Market, parks, or some combination of the
three? The differences between those potential levies could total
hundreds of millions of dollars. Conlin estimates that renewing the Pro
Parks Levy alone would cost somewhere in the range of $300 million; add
to that $80 million for Pike Place Market and millions for Seattle
Center, and you’re looking at a potential superlevy.
So far, Conlin’s only firm support appears to come from new council
member Tim Burgess, who campaigned on renewing the levy and says he
“absolutely” still supports it. Parks committee chair Tom Rasmussen
says he wants to weigh the “competing interests” before deciding
whether he supports renewal, and other council members, including Sally
Clark, remain ambivalent. 