Craig Larsen, Director of Parks & Recreation, Trails, Art OPINION: Several months ago, the Parks commissioners sat nervously in council chambers in front of the full Council, Mayor, Directer Larsen and staff . They had the daunting and uncomfortable task of asking Council for a $40 million park bond! The bond request was quietly denied.
The timing of the commission's request was unusual in that it pre-empted our public "Budget by Priorities" meetings. In addition, the public passed a parks levy only a year ago. It wasn't until the Budget was released a week ago that I discovered the Administration's motive this huge park bond request. They need $37,000,000 to build two Downtown Parks. I'm all for creating a "Great City" but it would have been nice to be included in the Parks & Trails Commission planning process. We, the public did not receive the benefit of transparency and "open government" in this case. The government did not receive the benefit of our input.
Last night, I went to the Parks and Trails Commission meeting. During the weeks of November 10 & 17th the Council will consider a $43,060,000 hike of the 6-year capital budget for Parks. It was interesting the commissioners didn't once mention the park budget. Most of the discussion was about a proposal to change Cleveland Ave. and Redmond Way into 2-way streets .
Director Craig Larsen said a couple of months ago he had been planning to televise 2-3 parks commission meetings per year on RCTV-21. I keep waiting. Mr. Larsen schedules the Arts Commission 3-times per year for RCTV and their budget is tiny compared to the Parks $87,000,000 program. Wouldn't you want to dial in on occaision? Staff recently committed to posting commission meetings without 2-3 month delays. Current commissioner names and titles are being updated on RCTV and current commissioner names are now posted online. Trasparancy may be improving. I ran into Councilman Hank Margeson at the Digital Arts Festival. He had heard the Parks & Trails Commission wouldn't be holding any or their meetings on RCTV-21. I hope Hank heard wrong. The public has asked for transparency over and again; and Mayor Marchione has agreed to the values of Open Government. I'm hopeful and trusting the Administration will someday lift the darkness and move the Parks & Trails commission and public forward.
Your comments on the parks budget are welcome. Email Park Director celarsen@redmond.gov or ParksAndTrailsCommission@redmond.gov.
Footnote:
The Budget breakdown is here
cc: Parks,Trails,Art Director Larsen, Mayor, Council and commissioners
Excerpt from an email sent to me on 10/31 by Richard Cole about the Capital budget. (CIP)
ReplyDelete"Most of the items so far have been ongoing services, so we haven’t needed as much deliberation. We’ve flagged about a dozen items so far to come back to for more deliberations and debate. Also some of the new proposals, mostly capital items have not been addressed yet.
We continue to struggle with the best outcomes and measurements as does the administration. We knew before we started that they would take some time to make them meaningful. Certainly at least one budget cycle.
The other change from past budgets is that we were kept informed along the way about proposals so there were no surprises. This is a DRAMATIC change from prior budgets."
-- Richard Cole, Councilmember and Council Finance Chair. 10/31