In the spring, the Protect Our Parks initiative nearly made it to the ballot. The effort fell just short of the required signatures. This immense level of community support is reason enough to revise the initiative and try again.

In the past, citizens have protected our parklands from a golf course, a parking lot, a Civic Center and a fire station. With 3,000 signatures, citizens will have the opportunity to vote to protect all Mercer Island parklands so that they will be preserved for future generations, as they were preserved for us.

The Concerned Citizens for Mercer Island Parks, representing every citizen who signed the previous petition, has revised the previous initiative and modified it, based on the advice we have solicited and received from consultants we have been working with over the summer, so it more closely follows the successful 1997 Seattle Protect Our Parks Initiative.

The new initiative protects our parkland while it grandfathers all existing park uses and allows for future temporary/short-term uses. It retains the “no net loss” of parkland policy of the previous initiative, and it emphasizes the “public” nature of parks while it allows for the construction of publicly owned parks-related buildings. It also states that the transference of park property, except for short-term rental and/or limited usage, would trigger a public process.

The need for this initiative is based on a variety of general concerns expressed by many Islanders who signed the previous petitions. General concerns included the critical need to protect public parkland from private development, and the essential need to require a transparent public process with community involvement when parkland is threatened by those wishing to adopt it for non-park uses.

Many Islanders who signed the previous petitions also mentioned specific issues of concern related to the proposed private development at Mercerdale Park including, among others: (1) lack of parking for employees and attendees, (2) increased traffic congestion, (3) size and scale of the proposed project, (4) loss of open parkland near Town Center, (5) the destruction of historic Bicentennial Park, (6) potential financial liability to the city for projected annual operating budget shortfall, (7) terms of a long-term lease ($1 a year for 50-80 years) of public land for private development under private management, (8) threats to wetlands, woodlands and habitat for native birds and animals, (9) increased likelihood of steep slope landslides (due to soil disturbance) in the event of an earthquake, and (10) setting a precedent of leasing public land for private development.

We heard you loud and clear, so we are offering Islanders another chance to vote on preserving parkland for future generations. Please visit our website at www.protectmiparks.org to print and sign a petition, or email us at protectmiparks@gmail.com and request a volunteer to bring or mail a petition to you.

Please talk with your friends and neighbors and encourage them to sign a petition, too, in order to protect their right to vote on how our public land will be safeguarded for future generations. Such an important and irreversible decision should be in the hands of the public.

To help defray printing and mailing costs, we welcome contributions mailed to Concerned Citizens for Mercer Island Parks, PO Box 1337, Mercer Island, WA 98040.

Baron Dickey

Concerned Citizens for Mercer Island Parks