Dear Editor:

I want to get this straight. Ignoring the public and their own stakeholder process, Faber & Co. kill the oldest public golf course in Washington, a paid for asset that costs taxpayers little but an in-kind water contribution. An asset that, with good management and time to develop programmatically, could provide funding for other parks projects. It’s also one of the last public active recreational opportunities for the demographics of our community. Why? Disingenuously, he and other council members argue, cost to benefit ratio, they’re against subsidizing services for a minority.

Instead they move ahead with an initiative to replace a pool that had a total of only 696 unique users in 2022, an average of 212 total users per month. Only 80 percent of which are city residents.

Already, the city subsidizes this group, about 1.6 percent of our population, to the tune of almost $500,000 per year. Compare that to the $4 per person in-kind water subsidy for the golf course.

They propose a $38 million dollar facility. This will saddle every citizen in our city with a $3,000 dollar debt, not including interest and operational costs of about $2 million per year.

With the exception of core services, water, sewer, etc. every city service benefits only a segment of our population. The cumulative effect of equitably servicing each of these minority interest groups is a healthier overall community.

We need a pool. We need pickle ball courts, skate parks, a library and a golf course. We need them at a scale and price that fits our community. With their actions council will pit every small interest recreational group against each other for a tiny remaining piece of the pie. Sadly, in the end we will likely be left with nothing except the skate park, and we’re mostly too old to ollie.

Mark Welch