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 Levy—enabling 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 matters—or at least throwing a few more billion
in taxes into the mix—is 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)—although a majority still supported the levy. And
overall support for both Sound Transit and Pike Place Market was much
lower in the council’s poll—55 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.” 