For the last two weeks, meetings of the Vashon Park District board to discuss the Commons Agreement have risen to the level of anger and hysteria that was common during the $3 million spending debacle over the VES Fields. Keeping everything in an uproar drowns out any reasonable questions about the basic assumptions of the so-called Vashon Commons Agreement, which originated many years ago with Bill Ameling and the VISD.

There are people who don’t want you — you voters — to hear that other school districts, large and small, understand that keeping up fields and other sports facilities, gyms and meeting rooms is an expected part of their levy moneys from the tax-paying public. A standard part of asking citizens for levy money is: We build facilities and they benefit not only the students, but the rest of the community. Park districts — local or county or state — also provide facilities (VPD provides baseball, softball, soccer at places like VES, Agren, Sunrise Ridge, as well as aquatic facilities, managing the swimming pool, etc.). But those non-Vashon park districts do not contribute to the upkeep of school facilities nor do the school districts contribute to the upkeep of park facilities. I object to continuing an agreement which automatically assigns levy money from one district to another.

Voters need to know before a levy election if the approved money will actually go to the agency proposing levy support. It needs to be revealed if, as in recent years, the levy request might actually be approximately 90 percent for park district and 10 percent for school district. People need to know what they are voting for. And not have past board members claim the money was earmarked — like “5 cents for the schools” — for which no one can find the slightest documentation. Not in the Voter Pamphlet for 2009 (year of the nickel increase in the levy), not in the newspaper interviews with Vashon Park District and not in the VPD minutes.

— Mary O’Brien