December 8, 2006

December 8, 2006
Section: Editorials
Page: 5B

Park district proposal a step in right direction
Staff

We are pleased that people who want more park and open spaces along Chuckanut Drive are taking matters into their own hands.

Instead of trying to force people throughout the county to pay to buy land in their neighborhoods they are proposing creating a new park district that would tax people in the area to buy lands.

The Chuckanut Mountains Park District would include people in southern Whatcom County and northern Skagit County and would raise money to buy land in places such as the Fairhaven Highlands development and on Blanchard Mountain to protect it from development and logging.

The group of citizens proposing the district needs to collect signatures from 15 percent of the estimated 20,000 registered voters within the proposed boundaries of the district in order to qualify creation of the district for placement on the November 2007 election ballot.

We can't recommend that people support or reject the district at this point. Details will surely emerge in the future to clearly help citizens decide if they want to pay taxes to support such a district. But we are glad citizens have organized the district in this manner.

There are a lot of great natural places in our community that neighbors want to keep natural. Many of them are zoned to allow for some other use, such as residential development. The growing trend of having the neighbors most concerned about the disruption pay to stop it is a good thing.

The same is true around Squalicum Mountain, where neighbors are organizing to try to find funding to buy out a developer who has the rights to build in the forestry zone there.

Let's be honest: Money talks. And public wells of money are already adequately strained. In the city, county and state, elected officials already have to make tough choices about what they can afford and what they cannot.

Taking local action is the next logical step for people truly concerned about something right in their backyard. Creation of a park district for the South Side and along Chuckanut Drive might just be a way for concerned neighbors there to get what they want without politicking to try to force the city or county parks departments to drain their coffers for the special interest.

We salute the people who have proposed this district for thinking outside the box. The next step is for them to put together a tax proposal that their neighbors can truly support.