On July 8, the Greater Bothell Chamber of Commerce hosted guest speakers from legislation to speak about how elected representatives are working for citizens at a county, state and federal level.
“Today we’re going to focus on things that I get to spend a lot of time on – legislative work,” said Kelly Snyder, UW Bothell vice chancellor and moderator of the candidate speakers.
Guest speakers Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, Rep. Derek Stanford, and King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski were on hand to speak about the important issues they are tackling on behalf of local constituents, including transit and transportation which are always a dominant topic at any level of government.
“Bus service is always a big issue,” said Dembowski, who represents Bothell and Kenmore from district 1 on the King County Council. “When they were talking about cutting buses, many non-Seattle people said ‘This doesn’t look fair.’”
Dembowski signed off on rejecting cuts to King County Metro, which would have cut 16-percent of services, and staved off bus service cuts to the 522 corridor. The Kirkland and Finn Hill areas are still without metro services.
Other locally important projects that were funded include $8 million to rebuild the West Sammamish River Bridge in Kenmore, connecting more than 26,000 vehicles with SR 522 each day. Kenmore previously secured $12 million in federal grant funding to construct the bridge.
“We are thrilled that our state legislature has recognized these projects as a priority,” said David Baker, mayor of Kenmore. “These routes in Kenmore represent a third way to cross Lake Washington, and the region will benefit from these investments.”
The North Creek Forest was also granted $1 million, coupled with two grants worth $500,000 needed to complete the purchase of the remaining 22 acres.
According to the contract with the owners of the land, the city of Bothell has until the end of July to procure the money for the purchase of the 22 acres.
Another large piece of land that will receive funds in the new state budget is the purchase of the front-nine of Wayne Golf Course in Bothell.
“Oh I think it was the Wayne land, the Wayne Golf Course,” said McAuliffe, who represents Bothell from the 1st District. “That was brought to me by a group of people, OneBothell. When they came to my office and told me about what they knew of the Wayne Golf Course and how it could be sold off, we went into action. We wanted to save that property and we did.”
While it was the legislators that landed a total of $2 million to go toward the purchase of the front-nine of the Wayne Golf Course, Forterra, a non-profit conservation organization, is currently working towards purchasing the back-nine of the course.
There were other issues that needed discussing, including the highly debated topic of class sizes and educational funding.
“We’re basically down to one main conflict and that’s whether to suspend Initiative 1351, which passed last november, calling for smaller class sizes in all grades,” Stanford said.
“Now, that would cost around $2 billion, which is a lot of money, but it’s also a very significant thing to do for our kids.”
The Senate has since voted to hold off on implementing Initiative 1351 for four years.
“The capitol budget is really most of my time in the capital,” said Stanford, who represents Bothell from the 1st District.
One of the bills championed by Stanford was the passage of bill 1422, which would prohibit larger national chains of florists from marketing themselves as ‘local’ florists.
He also championed a granting program that would have brought money back into the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, which is supported by tobacco settlement money. By focusing the bill on cancer research funding, they would have been able to save the life sciences discovery fund and be able to invest in local businesses working on biotech cancer research, however the bill failed.
