Voters in NPI’s hometown of Redmond easily rejecting public safety and parks levies

Sig­nal­ing that they may not be hap­py with how the Bicy­cle Cap­i­tal of the North­west is being run, vot­ers in NPI’s home­town of Red­mond are eas­i­ly defeat­ing two levies that were placed on the August Top Two bal­lot by the Red­mond City Coun­cil with the sup­port of incum­bent two-term May­or John Marchione.

The first levy, Propo­si­tion 1, would have raised funds for pub­lic safe­ty. The sec­ond levy, Propo­si­tion 2, would have renewed and expand­ed an expir­ing parks levy.

As of last night, Propo­si­tion 1 (pub­lic safe­ty) was fail­ing 53.36% to 46.64%. Propo­si­tion 2 (parks) was fail­ing by an even wider mar­gin, 54.46% to 45.54%.

Few­er than six thou­sand votes from Red­mond res­i­dents have been tab­u­lat­ed so far, but this elec­tion has seen very low turnout, and it’s unlike­ly that either levy will make up the dif­fer­ence by the time the elec­tion is certified.

Both levies were opposed by sev­er­al for­mer Red­mond elect­ed lead­ers, includ­ing Rose­marie Ives (a four term may­or) and Jim Robin­son, a coun­cilmem­ber and for­mer can­di­date for may­or who lost to Mar­chione eight years ago.

There was no orga­nized cam­paign against the levies, but the argu­ments made by Ives, Robin­son, and Richard Grubb in the oppo­si­tion voter’s pam­phlet state­ment nev­er­the­less appear to be car­ry­ing the day over those made by the Yes cam­paign, which did print up yard signs and dis­trib­ute mate­ri­als urg­ing a Yes vote.

Of Propo­si­tion 1, the no side argued:

Politi­cians often exhib­it some skill in devel­op­ing spe­cious ratio­nales for increas­ing tax­es but “they can­not escape the numbers.”

Over the past four years, tax­pay­er fund­ed prop­er­ty tax­es to the city have increased by $4,000,000. For that same peri­od, sales tax rev­enue to the city has increased by near­ly $5,500,000. Giv­en oth­er sources, the city’s over­all rev­enue for the same peri­od has increased by $14,750,000 or more than 10%.

These amounts of increas­es should sure­ly be enough to run a city gov­ern­ment whose house is in order and whose may­or has said “we must live with­in our means.” Let’s take the may­or at his word.

The Yes side coun­tered:

Your invest­ment of a $138.32 per year for the medi­um priced Red­mond home is an effi­cient way to save tax­pay­er mon­ey by avoid­ing cost­ly replace­ment of street infra­struc­ture and nip­ping prop­er­ty crime in the bud before it has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to flour­ish. This smart invest­ment in safer streets and crime pre­ven­tion ensures a healthy and secure com­mu­ni­ty for your fam­i­ly and gen­er­a­tions to come.

With respect to parks, the No side argued:

As long-term, com­mit­ted park sup­port­ers, we find it hard to vote against parks. But it is not hard to oppose a tax increase when funds have been mis­di­rect­ed to a mega project at the expense of neigh­bor­hoods. To date, the city has spent $23,968,811 on a two-acre down­town park sur­round­ed by near­ly un-nav­i­ga­ble traf­fic, lit­tle park­ing and is unlike­ly to be used on a reg­u­lar basis by the wider com­mu­ni­ty. This huge out­lay when the City already has a 16 acre munic­i­pal cam­pus and park­ing garage just two blocks north is fur­ther evi­dence of mis­di­rect­ed spend­ing and reshuf­fled priorities.

Fur­ther­more, the city plans on spend­ing an addi­tion­al $12,387,462 to build the park and $85,000 annu­al­ly for main­te­nance. Dol­lars are not unlim­it­ed. Spent one place, they become unavail­able to oth­er neigh­bor­hoods and Idyl­wood, our only lake­front park.

The Yes side argued:

Idyl­wood Park on Lake Sam­mamish gets improve­ments to ease con­ges­tion and make your day at the beach more pleas­ant. Park­ing will be less chal­leng­ing in sum­mer weath­er when thou­sands of out­door lovers vis­it our beau­ti­ful water­front com­mu­ni­ty park.

Neigh­bor­hood walk­a­bil­i­ty and recre­ation are improved by Propo­si­tion 2. New parks in South­east and North­east Red­mond are cre­at­ed from unde­vel­oped park­land. Overlake’s West­side Park gets a new play­ground and oth­er improvements.

The levy main­tains fund­ing for youth pro­grams and main­te­nance. Park main­te­nance and secu­ri­ty is increased at Grass­lawn, Idyl­wood, Hart­man, Per­ri­go, and Ander­son Parks in sum­mer months.

Propo­si­tion 2 enables a num­ber of projects for parks and trails near you. The Grass­lawn pic­nic shel­ter will be replaced, the Far­rel-McWhirter eques­tri­an are­nas resur­faced, and path­ways ren­o­vat­ed at Reser­voir and Cas­cade View Parks.

For the last few weeks, Red­mond’s local news­pa­per, the Red­mond Reporter, has print­ed sev­er­al duel­ing let­ters urg­ing a yes vote and a no vote, respectively.

It appears to us that the yes side may have been ham­pered by a fail­ure to explain exact­ly what vot­ers would get for their mon­ey by approv­ing the levies, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pub­lic safe­ty levy. In our expe­ri­ence, when the dots aren’t con­nect­ed for vot­ers, they are more like­ly to vote no. It is help­ful when a levy only funds one project or set of inter­con­nect­ed projects because it makes it eas­i­er to explain.

Con­sid­er the excerpt­ed state­ment above. It leaves much to the imag­i­na­tion. What new parks are being devel­oped, and where? How would park­ing at Idyl­wood be improved? What does ren­o­vat­ing path­ways mean?

If peo­ple can’t visu­al­ize it, they may not vote for it.

Pol­i­tics at the city lev­el in Red­mond have been some­what sleepy for a num­ber of years. Remark­ably, Red­mond has­n’t had a con­test­ed race for city coun­cil since 2011, and has­n’t had a con­test­ed race for may­or since 2007.

This year, how­ev­er, May­or John Mar­chione is fac­ing a strong chal­lenge from small busi­ness own­er and gov­ern­ment effec­tive­ness advo­cate Steve Fields, who is mount­ing an ener­getic, grass­roots cam­paign focused on con­ver­sa­tions with voters.

Whether the fail­ure of the levies will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the may­or’s race is unclear. Can­di­date elec­tions have very dif­fer­ent dynam­ics than bal­lot mea­sures do.

If Red­mond vot­ers do want to make a change in lead­er­ship this Novem­ber, their only option will be to replace Mar­chione, because no one filed to run against incum­bents Hank Marge­son, Hank Myers, or David Car­son, and Angela Bir­ney was the only per­son to file for the seat being vacat­ed by Tom Flynn.