Council seeks volunteers for voters’ pamphlet levy renewal pro and con committees
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
At its July 11 meeting, the Shoreline City Council indicated that they intend to move forward with placing renewal of Shoreline’s maintenance and operations levy lid lift to maintain basic public safety, parks and recreation, and community services on the November 8, 2016, general election ballot.
Accompanying the ballots will be the King County Voter’s Pamphlet. The pamphlet will include an explanatory statement from the City that states the effect of the levy lid lift renewal if approved. In response will be statements in support and opposition to the ballot measure. State law requires the City Council to appoint two committees to draft the pro and con statements. The committees can have no more than three members each; however, the committees may seek advice from any person or persons. The committees will also have an opportunity to write a rebuttal statement to the other side’s statement.
Individuals interested in applying for one of the committee positions should submit a community service application to the Shoreline City Clerk no later than July 22. Applications can be found at shorelinewa.gov or at the Clerk's desk in City Hall. The City Council will review the applications and appoint the committee members at its August 1 business meeting.
To learn more about the requirements for the voter’s pamphlet and the duties of the pro and con committees, review the 2016 Jurisdiction Manual at King County Elections.
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2 comments:
This can't be called a renewal if it's an increase in rate and structure. I won't be supporting any option other than a true renewal.
City Hall is already hard at work drumming up spin to inaccurately frame the critics of this levy lid lift as "anti-tax" yahoos. If the criticism they're receiving was against any levy lid lift whatsoever, that would be the case, but it's not the case in this situation.
Page three of the latest issue of currents summarizes the nature of what is proposed. Funding basic services is important, but with assessed home values steadily increasing and seeing as how the City has been spending money like a drunken sailor on these over-hyped growth delusions of grandeur, they need to be reigned in. Apparently, City Council is under the foolish impression that assessed home values are simply going to level off, so we really shouldn’t be concerned. You can't make all of these policy, upzoning, and land use changes based on this "growth hype" one day, and then try and convince the public the next day that assessed values are going to level off.
With all of the recently built or planned high-density projects, our City is set for accommodating more people for the next few decades. We’ve met our requirement. Bottom line, this increase is needed to pay for additional growth and proposed density that the majority of us don’t want. If the plans are to cram as many people into Shoreline as possible, of course we’ll need more public safety resources, additional park space, and human services. I think projects like Ronald Commons are nice, horrible location but a nice idea, but if we have a dozen more projects just like it, it creates a demand for more human services in our city. If we can’t manage the needs of our current population and live within our means, then how can we be expected to not only accommodate more people but pay for it with an increase? It’s a perpetual, never-ending cycle.
Not only that, but why should we be asked for an economic development plan that’s practically solely based on building apartments (it’s unsustainable) where the owners won’t be paying taxes for more than a decade and vague plans for a film industry that will never come to fruition because unlike Canada, we have film industry unions here in the US. I’d actually be curious to know how much tax revenue is being lost annually on all of these twelve year developer tax breaks. There’s no plan to attract small business, in fact with a proposed B&O tax and the TIF coming back in a couple years, Shoreline has earned itself a reputation of being extremely uninviting to small business. With the minimum density requirements in the station areas, you can’t even build a standalone structure for restaurant or cafe or yoga studio... for it must have levels upon levels of apartments on top!
If City Council continues to make these poor decisions and not right the ship, they’re going to be in for a very rude awakening come November. If they think they can justify an increase based on the latest citizen satisfaction survey which is packed full of “leading questions” as an accurate measure of the public’s support for the direction the city is heading in, then… best of luck! I think a good question that should have been included on the survey was… did the city choose the right upzoning scenario for 185th? Should have it been less dense? Should it have been confined to the half-mile walkshed? Should there be minimum density requirements? Should developers be getting 12 year tax breaks? Should have there have been a PAO? Should 145th be widened to twice the width? Should Sound Transit pay for replacement the 1000+ trees that are in the path of the light rail line? Should the city be doing more to stop Point Wells in its tracks? Should the city have a plan in place to ask developers if their projects are a part of the EB-5 program to prevent situations such as the Potala Place disaster and maybe require a compliance check to ensure that the required amount of jobs are being created? Should have the city spent $200k on the squatch marketing campaign to cram more people into Shoreline? So many more meaningful questions that could have asked, but no.
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