Parks and Wreck

I am staring at a copy of the 2012 Operating Budget for the Vashon Parks District (VPD). Actually, that is not true. I am staring at my keyboard as I hunt and peck this onto the page. In truth, staring at the keyboard gets me way further down the information highway than hours of pondering this document put forth and approved by our Parks Commissioners. One could spend the time, as I have, going to a number of VPD commissioners meetings and come away with no greater understanding of what this document means, or of what is actually going on with Parks. One could see a nice net zero net at the bottom of the sheet from the approved budget document dated 1/27/2012. But then one could ask, as many have at these meetings, why there have been so many personnel cuts and program changes at Parks, only to be gaveled into silence (in direct violation of the Roberts Rules of Order) and be told by Commission Chair Bill Ameling that we are "doing fine" and are "moving forward". With the following five of seven statements listed as his "special interests": "Conduct should be deserving of respect; Maintain accountability- what’s in the budget; District as well-run organization; Inform the public about the Park District; Transparency in government"- as board chairman, one could say that Ameling has failed miserably in attending to these interests, let alone acknowledging through his actions at these meetings that he listed them in the first place.
My first direct experience with VPD was a few years back when I was asked to attend the meetings that took place regarding the acquisition of the outdoor pool from King County. As someone who sees maintaining a public place to swim as a benefit to the community, I was more than willing to spend my time scratching my head at meetings and asking what I thought were relevant questions, although the answers I received were not always what I wanted or expected to hear. One of the most puzzling of these exchanges revolved around the $75,000 grant that came from the county to help with the transition. I have struggled to locate that in the budget from two years ago that was posted on the VPD site, but found nothing that was recognizable or labeled as that grant. What really bothered me at the time was the statement by Wendy Braicks that they really weren’t concerned with generating revenue from the pool the first year. As the other half of my household works for a real park district in the City of Seattle, I have become acutely aware of the fact that, although pools and fields and various other park facilities are subsidized, a major part of a facility administrator’s job is to maximize revenues through the scheduling of paying programs. What I learned this year was that during VPD’s first year of pool stewardship, the swim team that used the facility on a regular basis paid no use fee. That changed this past summer. What seems even stranger though is that this is not uncommon throughout the Vashon Park system. I have it on good authority that fees for field usage are not charged. If anyone knows otherwise I’d like to hear about it. There is a $10K item listed under income for fields usage, but it would seem to me that with over $1 million currently being spent on fields "improvements", the return on this investment as presently indicated would only politely be termed as pathetic. There is also the question of where the costs for the fields project are shown in any of the printed budget materials, as well as any indication of where the funding grants are listed, how much has been paid and how much has been received to pay it. This doesn’t seem to show up on any of the budget statements that have been posted on the VPD site. But questions along that line of public interest inquiry have only been answered by Chairman Bill through his overuse of the gavel and the words "…we are moving on".
And then there is the not so little question of the Rosser residence, and why the house and buildings on their property were deemed expendable in the original plans for the new soccer field complex. What is so important about a set of athletic fields and their improvement that an established residence of over sixty years would be bulldozed so as to make way so that an occasional use, over-fertilized meadow could stand in its place? Why was a U.S. geodetic survey marker bulldozed and removed from the site, regardless of the toothless and unenforced laws and fines that exist to ensure their preservation? Why was grading on the fields done without proper permitting? Why was the flow of water runoff altered against all rules to the contrary? What is going on here? Oh no- not the gavel. Tap, tap, tap- we are moving on. Or are we?
I just received a call as a result of an early passing around of this treatise. It was from a friend of mine in Parks and he suggested I mention this tidbit. To date, $1.7 million has been spent on this fields project, without it being completed yet. Because of this incompleted state, matching grants that could be used to help cover some costs are being missed as deadlines pass. These grants are needed and will be missed, as the estimated total cost for this project, if and when it is done, will be around $2.7 million. My friend in Parks mentioned that it should be pointed out that with an estimated $900,000 coming in to run VPD through the annual property tax levy, it will take three years worth of levies to cover the fields costs, and that is without paying existing operating costs, let alone the maintenance and watering expenses on these new fields of green. I’ll let you do the math on how that squares with the $10,000 Fields Facility Usage income currently listed on the 2012 VPD Operating Budget.
It seems that unless some accountability for this mess is achieved, and these and a multitude of other questions are answered, then the current batch of commissioners should step aside so that we can pay more attention this time and elect a set of five commissioners who are in agreement with the basic premise that fitness and health is what the Vashon Park District should be about instead of its current, apparent focus on secrets and lies.