The solstice recently delivered some wonderful weather, and the Island’s kids celebrated their emancipation by pouring out of classrooms into the sunshine that lit up streets and public parks.

As I drove around, I passed through a collage of images depicting youthful vitality in our public spaces. Such sights and sounds are invigorating to us old men. The Mercer Island City Council are also probably looking forward to a pleasant summer respite from the toil and strife of this past political season. However, that may be wishful thinking.

The council may not understand the depth of feeling that they have generated with their stubborn refusal to revisit some old but unfortunate decisions they made in haste in 2013. That is when, it seems, the council locked itself into a moral obligation to privatize a beloved public park. This is real estate that is irreplaceable. The sitting council of 2013 solved a small problem by promising to create a larger one.

No one wants to see Youth Theatre Northwest fail, but their needs are modest and reasonable. Somehow, the worthy effort to help a homeless theater group evolved into a grand plan to donate a public park to a private owner.

Over time, the modest needs of Youth Theatre Northwest got translated into a rather grand private enterprise that certainly has merit, but that requires a huge capital investment up front, and eternal commitments of future subsidies to cover anticipated operating deficits. A wonderful new performing arts center may very well be worth every penny, but the citizens of Mercer Island will not be the owners.

If we are to give up our park, and our municipal government is going to make some ambiguous public commitments to support a private enterprise that cannot be allowed to fail because it is cast in $25 million of gorgeous concrete and tapestries, shouldn’t we be fully informed and given a chance to be heard?

These documents will tie the hands of all future city councils. Such iron clad, irrevocable surrender of public control over this park will be a reasonable requirement that the private investors demand. They will also need some commitments of future public subsidies to insure the success of this private enterprise. They will require a “lease” document that, for all intents and purposes, is a deed. No one plants a $25 million building on ground that can be taken back when the former owners change their mind.

These investors are not bad people, but they also are not fools. Their enterprise will have to compete for ticket sales in the entertainment marketplace. It cannot, therefore, be like the current Music in the Parks program, subject to the budgetary whims and evolving priorities of future city councils. It has to be cast in legal concrete.

Those who think MICA will be booked exclusively for performances of the Philadelphia String Quartet and the Bellevue Symphony do not understand that the need to fill those 300 seats will necessitate booking the kind of “art” that pulls in paying customers from anywhere. The Mercer Island Parks Department will have no “quality control” authority because, unlike our current Music in the Parks programs, this new stage will be private property.

The decision to donate a public park to a private corporation, who must be guaranteed operating autonomy and immunity from public control and interference, is a very serious decision. It is a permanent decision that deserves far more public review and input than the council has permitted so far.

This may still prove to be a long hot summer for the City Council that has repeatedly chosen not to seek informed public consent or opinion, of any kind, for this lifetime commitment.

George Lewandowski

Mercer Island