Pinehurst Seattle

The City Council is must soon decide whether Seattle will get to vote on a proposal to invest in Seattle’s parks and green infrastructure. Make your voice heard, and join other parks and green space supporters by testifying at the City Council Public Hearing on July 16, 5:30 at City Hall. This is the final push to get a new parks levy on the ballot, and we need your help.

This is the final year for the Pro-Parks levy, passed in 2000. The levy was a great success, building parks and playfields throughout the city, and leveraging matching funds from other public and private sources. Without a new parks levy, capital funding for open space acquisition, parks, playgrounds and playfields will decline dramatically. If not passed this year, we may have to wait until 2010 for a similar proposal to emerge.

A Citizen’s Committee appointed by the City Council has gone through hundreds of potential projects – identified in public hearings, neighborhood plans, and city documents – to develop a new proposal for our park system to keep pace with our growing population.

The City Council is now deciding whether to place this proposal on the ballot. Here is what is at stake:

1. Ensuring that our parks facilities are safe: new funding to bring twenty-three substandard playgrounds into compliance with federal safety standards; to make safety improvements at Othello Park; to make critical seismic repairs at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center and the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park; and to convert three wading pools, which may have to close to meet health standards, to spray pools.

2. Protecting and enhancing Seattle’s Green Legacy for future generations: new funding to acquire critical parcels in our City’s remaining greenbelts and natural areas; to continue the renewal of the Washington Park Arboretum; to restore forests, streams and shorelines on city property; to create new parks on reservoir lids at Jefferson Park and Myrtle, Maple Leaf, and West Seattle Reservoirs; to renovate Camp Long for environmental education and camping opportunities for families and youth groups; and to expand the City’s network of P-Patches and community food gardens

3. Creating neighborhoods that support healthy living for all ages: upgrade twenty-three neighborhood playgrounds; improve sports fields at lower Woodland, Genesee, and Delridge Parks; build three skateboard projects; extend the Burke-Gilman and Duwamish Bicycle Trails; and construct the Thomas Street overpass to provide a trail connection between South Lake Union, Queen Anne, and the Olympic Sculpture Park.

4. Providing the parks and green spaces that are essential if our City is to grow with grace: new funding to acquire park land, facilities and trail corridors in urban villages and single-family neighborhoods that have been identified by the City as having critical deficits of parks and green spaces; to complete the development of parks in the International District, Whittier Heights and Crown Hill on property acquired through the 2000 Pro Parks Levy, and to develop a park at Northgate.

5. Encouraging community creativity in implementing the levy: A $15 million Opportunity Fund to provide communities with the chance to submit proposals for innovative projects to address emerging needs during the life of the levy. The committee only accepted projects that have reliable cost estimates, that can be completed during the six year life of the levy, and (when combined with the Pike Place Market levy also on the ballot) that will cost no more than the expiring Parks Levy. Please attend the hearing, or e-mail city council members and let them know you support renewing the investment in Seattle’s future. With the skyrocketing cost of land, it is important that the City has the funding to acquire green space and wildlife habitat before all of the remaining opportunities are lost to development.

http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/parks_levy.htm