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Sarah Becker asks for Council assistance regarding the taking of property near Renton High School
Many long-time residents are being forcibly evicted from their homes by a new ballfield being built with the rebuild of Renton High School. These residents have been seeking assistance from Renton’s Council and Mayor in recent City Council meetings. City officials keep ducking the spotlight, either saying nothing or insisting it’s the School District’s jurisdiction. This is a shirking of their responsibility, for half a dozen reasons.
(1) These are Renton residents, seeking help. Their City officials should be willing to use their influence to help them. Some of the affected residents have put forward more cost-effective alternative designs that don’t take their homes, like fitting a ballpark into the Renton Memorial Stadium parking lot, or building a pool (or both) instead of building another ball field in the middle of Tobin Street. These suggestions have been ignored by the District, but the City owns part of the property too, and therefore has bargaining clout.
(2) Renton’s streets are impacted: The School District has made the assumption that they will take over Tobin, Tillicum and Shattuck Streets, which are all city-owned property. This should have been negotiated with Renton Council before the District ever made the choice to expand the school into these streets. When I was on Renton Council, our Fire Department did not even let Tobin homeowners have a speed bump installed on their street, citing the concern that Tobin provides an important alternate street for emergency vehicles in the event of an Airport Way collision. Now, without discussion, the Council acquiesces to losing the entire street without a single discussion. With this closure, emergency vehicles will have to go all the way to the one-way couplet of South 2nd and South 3rd if Airport Way gets jammed, a long way around that can add critical time to emergency responses– this was worthy of a public discussion.
The School District assumes Renton will hand over parts of Tillicum, Shattuck, and Tobin Streets; Renton Council has apparently never discussed it
(3) Renton is losing housing: Ask anyone in our area what the number one concern is, and they’ll probably tell you its housing and homelessness. Renton officials claim to be concerned about homelessness and evictions, and they have a chance to demonstrate it by weighing-in on the school district’s plan. They do not have to give up Tobin Street and all its homes.
(4) Renton is losing businesses and economic vitality. Renton works hard to attract business to our city, and should have at least asked questions before sending at least eight businesses packing. The new Chihuly-style glass studio coming in would have had positive city-wide economic development impact, and it has been prevented from locating here. A new restaurant was days away from opening, and the School District has now paid $6,000,000 (six million) dollars for their meticulously-remodeled property so that the District can tear it down.
(5) Renton is losing substantial tax revenue. Renton’s taxable property will drop by 50-100 million dollars with this change, since school property is exempt from property taxes. All the rest of us will have to pay more to make up for the lost property tax on this lost valuation (around a million dollars per year currently). In addition, the businesses won’t be paying sales tax to the city. We will all make up the difference by paying higher taxes ourselves.
(6) There were process issues. The Renton School District was not forthcoming with voters that passage of this bond issue would lead to mass condemnations and evictions. Ideally Renton officials should have been aware of this, and should have made it public. If they didn’t learn about it until after the election, they could still take action to help the residents deal with the cruel surprise. It was unseemly, if not illegal, for this kind of information to be withheld from the voters, and Renton officials by their silence appear to be endorsing it.
Meredith Farmer shared several concerns with Renton Council on Monday, including the condemnation of property near Renton High School.
32 homes and 8 businesses are being destroyed to make way for a new baseball field at Renton High. Affected residents keep suggesting other options for the fields, but the School District and City leaders will not speak with them. This home on Tobin is one of the homes.
The Council Meeting can be viewed here.
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