We’d spoken with two county executive staffers about this last week and hadn’t even finished the followup yet, but now it’s a moot point – this just in from County Council Chair Dow Constantine:

Constantine: Puget Sound Park no longer under consideration as housing site

“I was pleased to learn today that Puget Sound Park has been removed from consideration as a demonstration project site for King County’s Sustainable Communities and Affordable Housing program.

“I support efforts to create needed additional workforce housing in our communities. At the same time, our public parks—both active and passive—are valuable assets to their surrounding neighborhoods and King County that must be preserved and enhanced whenever possible.”

Puget Sound Park wasn’t the only park discussed at last Thursday night’s North Highline Unincorporated Area Council meeting: Steve Cox Memorial Park updates were discussed, too. Artist Jay Haavik presented his concept – the large, leaning piece is meant to represent White Center, and the short one to represent Deputy Cox, with the community leaning on him. The larger, leaning piece will be an 8-foot basalt column; the smaller piece will be 5 feet tall, with a replica of his badge sandblasted into the side. The next step isn’t quite settled, though; the memorial is to be in a 20 x 37 section of the stadium, but there’s a City Light vault in the area, and if that turns out to be in active use, then the memorial’s area may have to be condensed. Councilmembers approved the design in principle but are waiting for formal word on the vault before a formal decision. There’s also concern about the picnic shelter at the park; county parks rep Sam Whitman says a neighborhood petition would be needed to start the process of possibly removing the shelter, which has drawn complaints about transients and late-night partying. Suggestions were made about better lighting or moving the picnic shelter, but Whitman says all that would cost money, which is in short supply right now.

First of two reports from tonight’s North Highline Unincorporated Area Council meeting — this one, focusing on the intensifying controversy over the county proposal to sell Puget Sound Park (as reported here yesterday, it’s already accepted “submittals” from firms interested in buying up to five county park sites to build “affordable housing”).

Toward the start of tonight’s meeting, council member Barb Peters read a letter the NHUAC sent to outgoing County Executive Ron Sims expressing opposition to any sale of Puget Sound Park.

James Bush, from the office of County Council Chair Dow Constantine, stood up and said the sale proposal’s not going anywhere. Constantine himself reiterated that in an e-mail to us after the meeting, saying in part:

… as far as I am concerned, we’re not selling Puget Sound Park. The Council would have to approve such an action, and my position has been clear:

1) Park land is precious and is not to be parted with except under extraordinary circumstances; and

2) Puget Sound Park is within Burien’s intended annexation area and any decision about changing the park can and should wait until after that annexation happens.

Burien city manager Mike Martin was at tonight’s meeting too and warned NHUAC members not to leave anything to chance, saying they have to get the county executive to remove the park from the list. From what he’s seen, he says he’s clear that “the project is alive.”

Each council member agreed to contact a King County Councilmember tomorrow to get the message out; Constantine also tells us that we should know within a few days whether he has a majority of councilmembers on the no-sale side.

NHUAC is also considering further public outreach about the controversy, possibly leafletting neighborhoods, even organizing a picnic. We’ll follow up with Constantine and his staff to keep you up to date on what happens next.

Much controversy and concern has been brewing around the prospect of King County selling parkland in North Highline, including Puget Sound Park, for “affordable housing” — here’s the full list of what the county put up for sale, five properties, with a request for submittals suggesting they would prefer that all five go to the same developer.

Three firms responded, according to online records: DevCo, Quadrant Homes, and Shelter Resources. The next step in the process is not clearly spelled out online. During a recent interview, we asked outgoing County Executive Ron Sims about this, and he said that the intent is for the county to replace the sold parkland with open space somewhere else. That’s not what North Highline opponents of the sale want to see happen, like Greg Duff of the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council (which will discuss the sale status during its meeting this Thursday). He writes:

It’s time for the citizens of Burien and North Highline to say something to Mr. Ron Sims about his underhanded attempt to sell off Puget Sound Park located at 126th and 1st Ave. South to contractors for affordable housing (another word for low income). Anyone who watched channel 4 news this weekend saw that this area is part of the proposed annexation area of Burien. Mr. Sims wants to sell off this park and leave Burien with more low income housing. Mike Martin, Burien city manager, is opposed to this idea. We need this park and unless we speak up we are going to lose one of the largest open spaces left in North Highline. Write Mr. Sims and let him know you are opposed to it. Maybe he’ll read your e-mail because channel 4 tried for 2 weeks to reach him and he never returned any calls. Maybe he is too concerned with moving to Washington DC to actually take care of King County.

The park sale plan is under “old business” on the agenda for this Thursday’s NHUAC meeting, 7 pm, North Highline Fire District HQ.

Dick Thurnau from Friends of Hicks Lake sent word that work on this long-anticipated project has begun in earnest; we went to Lakewood Park to get that photo this afternoon. As he points out, the railings are now off the soon-to-be-ex-dock, and work crews are setting up on the eastern shore. According to the county website, this project is costing about a quarter-million dollars. Meantime, Dick also says Friends of Hicks Lake will meet at 11 am October 27th at the west picnic shelter (10th SW entrance) of Lakewood Park, with the Pomegranate Center scheduled to, as Dick says, “give us insight on how to utilize people and organizations for funding available for Lakewood Park / Hicks Lake improvements.”

King County’s current budget woes will have substantial impact on a number of levels, not the least of which is the present and future of unincorporated King County, which is to say White Center. In today’s PI article on the subject the piece end with this, “To keep 39 parks open in urban unincorporated areas, Sims asked the council to maintain those parks for three years with $7.7 million currently set aside as incentives to cities that annex such areas.“

Old news to many, perhaps, but we hadn’t really heard a lot about the Technology Access Foundation‘s plans for a learning center in Lakewood Park until a conversation with Friends of Hicks Lake’s Dick Thurnau, following up on some other issues he had surfaced recently, both at the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council meeting and during the annual Hicks Lake cleanup (more later on what he and I discussed). His group enthusiastically supports this plan, which you can read all about on the TAF website. TAF is still in the midst of fundraising and hoping now to break ground in summer of next year. The TAF site says that as of this past May they’d raised about a third of the $15 million they need; we’ll check in with them soon to see where things stand now.

We mentioned last week that the date is set for the fundraiser for the Steve Cox Memorial. Here’s the official announcement with details from Heidi at NHUAC:

Steve Cox Memorial Art Project Dinner & Auction

Please join us as we reach for our goal to have an artist create a memorial
for Steve Cox that will be installed at Steve Cox Memorial Park in White
Center.

“A fitting tribute to a man that made a difference“

The North Highline Unincorporated Area Council Invites You To A Benefit
Dinner & Auction For The
Steve Cox Memorial Art Project

November 14, 2008 – 6:00 p.m.

St. Bernadette’s Parish School Hall
on 128th and Ambaum Blvd. S.W.

Catering by: Galliano’s.

Oral & Silent Auction
Auctioneer: Deputy Roy Galusha

Tickets are a donation of $40.00 per seat and are tax deductible

To RSVP
Please send check or money order payable to: 4culture by November 3rd, 2008 to:
NHUAC P.O. Box 66900 Burien, WA 98166

4culture is the fiscal sponsor for NHUAC
Credit cards not accepted

To learn more about 4culture, visit www.4culture.org

For additional information please contact Barb Peters at 206-242-0934 or Heidi Johnson at _hjohnson@northhighlineuac.org

King County’s out with an update on the tree work at Steve Cox Park; read it here.

Just back from the White Center/South Delridge Community Safety meeting, with lots of information that we will break into at least three reports. First one — King County Parks’ draft proposal for dealing with graffiti, in the wake of the latest wave of tagging vandalism at White Center-area parks. The county Parks Department‘s Evergreen District manager Sam Whitman presented the four-point plan: #1, parks staff will try to remove or cover up graffiti “as soon as it appears,” with county painters following up to restore the original color scheme. #2, community members need to report graffiti-vandalism damage as soon as possible by calling Whitman (his number’s at the end of this post), and by helping clean up/cover up graffiti IF parks staff can’t get to it soon enough. #3, extra support for graffiti removal from Community Service officer Vary Jackson and Department of Corrections crews. #4, proactive work to develop and maintain murals in the parks, as a way of discouraging tagging vandalism. Whitman says the goal here is to remove/cover graffiti within 24-38 hours, and adds that the county has hired “seasonal” painting help to support the effort; to report park graffiti, call him at 206/296-0572. More from the Community Safety meeting in separate reports later tonight.

By Kyla Woodall, New Start student

Over the course of six weeks, my classmates and I worked together to learn about the world around us. We discovered all about invasive plant life and how they affect our community. We broadened our minds in learning about new ways to help our environment by composting, recycling, and picking up the garbage that litters the streets. Even during the summer Samantha Rost came up to Ann Magyar (a teacher at New Start) and said “You know I am almost annoyed with you because now that I learned about native and invasive plants I really see them everywhere”, It was an engaging experience that helped us to develop an interest for improving our community. I feel that by attending this program, we have become more aware of our surroundings and how we make an impact on our global community and the future for our children and our children’s children.

This all started when Mark Farrell, a King County Education Employment Specialist and New Start partner, received a grant from the King County Natural Resource Stewardship Network with funds from The King Conservation District, the Forest Service and King County. As a class, we identified the invasive plants in Salmon Creek Park and removed them. Besides removing the invasive plants, we also did a lot of our own planting in our school’s raised bed planters. Soon New Start and its neighbors will have a crop of tomatoes, bush beans, turnips, beets, and other produce. Throughout the program we worked with people whose careers focus on the environment. People who came to see our final presentation stated, “In the beginning it looked as if it would take five years to finish what you guys accomplished in 6 weeks.” I feel that we really did quality work. We did everything by hand; it was very hard but rewarding at the same time.

Also in the class, we learned about this wonderful thing called compost. Before the program many of us had no prior knowledge as to what compost was, and after completing the program, we were all motivated to have our own compost at home. It was satisfying knowing that we could help to improve our environment just by separating our garbage. We did our part by reusing plastic bottles to drink water from, and when we were down at Salmon Creek Park we looked for trash to separate and recycle.

Some of us are going to return this summer and help build the native plant nursery, to help benefit the community even more than we already have. The New Start nursery will be part of the classes, and the plants will be transplanted to Salmon Creek Park. The students are also going to be doing a composting program on the school campus.

This program has really helped to shape us as individuals, as well as team members. It was a very engaging and worthwhile course that opened our eyes to new experiences and different ways that we could help our community, in more ways that we ever thought possible.