VES Field finances should be board’s focus

Published 1:17 pm Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Thanks to all the candidates who entered the race for Vashon park board. Their answers to citizen questions at last Tuesday’s “debate” were appreciated, and I hope any voters who did not attend will watch the video produced by Voice of Vashon (Thank you, VOV).

I wish I had thought to ask if the new commissioners were either among the 75 attendees of the September 2012 board meeting or have thoroughly familiarized themselves with the financial circumstances of that time and the three years since. The VES Fields project had halted, and in spite of the usual TAN (tax anticipation note), as well as a $400,000 emergency loan via a non-voter-approved bond, the district finished the 2011 year $250,000 in the hole.

After an hour and a half of angry taxpayer questions, David Hackett admitted, “We know that we are in a leaking boat with a torpedo coming straight at us,” but Bill Ameling declared, “This was OUR mess to make, and it is OUR mess to fix.” And he said in another year the VES Fields would be done and no one would remember any of this. He repeated that last sentence in 2013 and again in 2014.

To date, the VES project totals more than $2.7 million. Three of the board members from 2011 are still serving, and three votes are a board majority. In 2015 alone, expenditures on VES are approaching $400,000, and with the final $100,000 payment on the bond and the cost of fields maintenance and the money needing to be paid to the school district for use of their fields, this year’s park district budget is more than 50 percent directed to fields and therefore to team sports.

Hopefully, the November election will provide us with a more generalist board that will even out the sharing of the tax levy monies.

— Mary O’Brien