Park commissioners voted too soon for runaway spending

Published 4:02 pm Tuesday, July 21, 2015

I am deeply disappointed that three fellow park district commissioners voted on July 7 to waive the rules and proceeded to vote to spend $240,000 more than was budgeted for the next phase of the VES Fields construction, thereby preventing Commissioner Doug Ostrom and over 11,000 islanders from participating in the most important financial discussion of 2015.

All the commissioners, including Doug Ostrom at the previous meeting, had agreed we would have to comply with the majority of the grading and paving required by King County to complete the VES Fields.

However, according to the park district legal counsel, we still could have saved the taxpayers $120,000, but the way the vote went, we now will be spending more money than we even have.

It is important to note that a vote to do all the work immediately is resulting in the district spending more than the total funds from the levy, all user fees and the 2014 surplus. This is only made possible by using funds from our, as yet unpassed, 2016 budget, even though the county has indicated we could delay the work until 2017.

For all these reasons, it only made sense that we should begin the undisputed  portion of the construction, while waiting to hear from Doug and the rest of the public concerning the best course of action to follow at the next board meeting. That said, we still need to hear from the public and Doug regarding this. I hope everyone will turn out at the next meeting at Ober Park at 7 p.m. on July 28 and voice their concern about the runaway spending.

— Scott Harvey

Editor’s note: A late development changed this project. See story on page 1 for details.