Parks levy digs too deep into Seattle taxpayers' pockets

THE CITY made a nice profit recently by selling the Dexter Horton building.

The building sold for $46 million, $8 million more than expected.

The city had planned to use proceeds to help finance a new $226 million civic campus. But what about the $8 million windfall? Should it go to citizen programs or government offices?

That's enough money to buy a community center for Northgate, build new playfields at Sand Point, or revamp Kubota Gardens eight times over. But rather than go to parks, or any other citizen program, the money went to what city officials might call "more pressing commitments."

The money stayed downtown, and flowed into the financial hole created by unexpected expenses for the new municipal building. The project is still in design, but the cost of Paul's Hall has risen by $6 million, in part because somebody forgot to leave room for elevators and mechanical systems.

This is another display of the city's unstated fiscal policy. Downtown projects such as a garage, aquarium and symphony hall get special handling. They are approved without public votes and financed through the city's credit card. Voters get no say in the matter.

It's another story if the public wants improved community centers, more play fields or new gyms. For that, the city pleads poverty and tells citizens it needs higher property taxes.

These are boom times, and Mayor Paul Schell argues that this is a time to make investments in people and infrastructure. It's an appealing argument but it understates the reality of tax collections.

Tax revenue is flowing into city coffers at a rate that continues to surprise economists. Last year, for example, sales taxes grew by 10 percent, almost triple the expected rate. Look at your cell phone bill. The city's revenue from its tax on telecommunications grew by 18 percent last year and will reach $22 million this year - and yet the mayor wants new taxes.

The public gets a double whammy. We pay a very high rate of sales and other taxes and then get guilt-tripped to do more. There's something nutty about a city pushing voters to increase their property taxes, and then hosting forums on the high cost of housing.

By city charter, the parks department is supposed to get special status, but it has become a fiscal stepchild, getting a decreasing share of general funds over the past 30 years. While city dollars go to an expanding set of new city commitments, the parks department has increasingly turned to fees to support services, while major maintenance projects go unfunded.

A 1997 study looked at spending on major parks maintenance - such as planting trees, repairing buildings and fixing eroded hillsides - and called for $12 million a year just to keep a $47.5 million backlog from growing. But spending on major maintenance has fallen millions short of that goal, as the number of city employees working in administration has grown by 200 people in just two years.

A proposed $223 million levy might seem to restore some balance to the city's priorities. But there are two problems.

First, the size of the levy might turn off some city voters, who last year passed a $72 million levy for community centers and the Seattle Center and who before that approved a $196 million library bond, the nation's biggest ever for libraries.

This year's levy would be the biggest in the city's history, covering everything from dog runs to new parks for the Central Area. It represents work by a citizens coalition that spent months working with parks officials and a public affairs consultant who cost $115 an hour. (Watering the grass roots ain't cheap.) That coalition is fiercely lobbying the council to leave the list intact, for fear of "dismantling" a finely-wrought plan.

A close review of the list, however, shows it is swollen with $17 million for social-service programs that have no business in a capital project, $20 million for maintenance that should come from the general fund, and $20 million for an "opportunity fund," a fancy name for we-have-no-idea. By percentages, this fund for unplanned purposes is more than twice the set-aside in the 1998 library proposal.

In short, as much as a quarter of the levy is questionable even before you examine individual capital items.

Second and more important, the levy puts more money in parks but it does not restore them as a priority for city government. By creating a large fund for parks maintenance, it diminishes the city's obligation to support parks out of general funds. It puts the city even further down the path of shifting basic services onto voter-approved property tax increases.

If this levy succeeds, voters in eight years will be forced to choose between halting maintenance programs or approving a "renewal" that competes with future ballot measures. Remember that as the city pumps - without voter approval - at least $21 million into what will be one of the most expensive new aquariums in the world.

A smaller, more tightly focused parks levy would make sense, but the city has no incentive to make hard choices and impose discipline on its spending. If tax payers play the chump, why bother?

O. Casey Corr's column appears alternate Wednesdays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: ccorr@seattletimes.com.