The city of Kenmore has agreed to sell the lower parcel of Kenmore Village for a $3 million loss. The sale price is half of what we paid for the property 10 years ago. The sale demonstrates the extent to which the city never cared about economic development.

Behind closed doors, the primary goal of the project was always to build a lucrative municipal administration. The city received an objective financial plan at incorporation that emphasized and reemphasized, in the executive summary, that we did not have the revenue and could not afford to staff such a City Hall.

This critical fact was never a consideration, and any responsible discussion of this issue was (and still is) taboo and met with hostility, both by city management and the Kenmore Council that follows them.

If you even questioned the financial consequences of the excessive City Hall, you were labeled a bad citizen who was against downtown economic development. The opposite was actually true.

The city’s ability to influence economic development depends on our ability to fund infrastructure improvements. Much of that annual funding was lost as the city’s expenses have steadily grown and consumed all of that funding with day-to-day administrative and operating costs. These costs are going to continue to grow during the next five to seven years, requiring further tax increases, as this is part of the plan.

To deflect attention away from the ongoing spending increases, and the upcoming parks bond issue, the council takes excess credit for state funding of the Bothell Way/State Route 522 project. The state owns Bothell Way and is supposed to pay for it. We own all the other roads in town and are responsible for paying for them. This includes keeping them safe and constructed up to current road standards, which they are not.

It is foolish to think that the state or the county will come in and significantly help pay for our substandard local roads.

All of the road tax money that we have been responsibly paying, since before incorporation, has been consumed by operations and the construction of the new City Hall. Just because the state meets their responsibility on Bothell Way does not excuse the council for failing to protect our limited resources that were supposed to pay for keeping our streets safe for children, bicyclists and all pedestrians.

With growing costs at City Hall requiring more and more tax increases, we are going to have to pay that much more to fund infrastructure projects that are needed to provide safety, quality of life improvements and true economic development.

Do not be deceived into thinking that the state funding of SR-522 means that your tax dollars are being spent responsibly. The correct way to judge the city council’s performance is to have an objective understanding of how well they have been spending our money on our responsibilities.

John Hendrickson, Kenmore