No Loss for Words

Like most of you, I read the article in the Everett Herald about the county’s plan to build the much down-sized court house remodel. I’m happy for the court house workers that they are getting updated facilities they need so badly.

This example in Everett of elected officials recognizing the error of spending $172 million for the original plan and scuttling the deal even though they had already spent millions up to that point can serve us as we look at the Snohomish Carnegie Library project. Snohomish needs to make sure that spending $4-5 million dollars on the old Carnegie is the best use of our limited public funds.

The county council pulled the plug on the project because it was too expensive. What makes their case different from ours is the fact that the project they killed actually served the people working on the county government campus. The common sense elected officials concluded that spending an extra hundred million didn’t make any sense. Even in the face of a critical need.

So, I come back to the decision-making process in Snohomish regarding the Carnegie Library project. There’s no question that there are strong feelings about restoring the old building, but aside from historical aspects, the building will neither serve a constructive purpose in our little town nor fill a critical need. The spending of the public money will be for a vanity project that does not serve a single identified deficiency or person in our town.

I applaud the county council for recognizing the poor judgment of squandering that money when a more sensible alternative was available. I hope elected officials in all our communities vet big budget projects before they get so far into them that they cannot pull out.

I would hope that before we agree to commit public funds to a project, that project must serve a public need first and second the cost must be reasonable in the context of our total budget. One way to fund controversial projects is to put them up for a public vote. If the citizens want to take on bonded debt to pay for the project, then a public vote would confirm that. I would be in favor of that method of funding the Carnegie.  Then voters would agree to tax themselves to pay for the project.

All of our communities struggle with their own challenges in meeting the needs of their citizens. Both Lake Stevens and Arlington are living with working libraries that are grossly inadequate for their communities but like our city did, they are doing their fiscal analysis and hopefully concluding that the need justifies the cost. When we built our new library, it made sense because we determined the need justified the expenditure.

Now looking at the old Carnegie building, I see a building that has no functional purpose in our city. At the same time, our finance department is advising us that revenues coming into the city coffers are trending downward and how we must be cautious with our commitments looking out into the future.

The funding source for the Carnegie Library is Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) monies. This money is earmarked for certain kinds of projects; one of which could be restoration of the Carnegie. So technically, it qualifies. But the larger question that should be answered first is “What other projects might this money be used for that actually serve the needs of our city and citizens?”

I would hope the Snohomish City Council would do a thorough budget analysis regarding our REET funds to insure that committing millions to one project won’t handicap us in other parts of the city where there is an actual need.