There is a more efficient way to not only maintain the parks system, but also work with the various community groups. That is to create a funding source that will support hiring additional staff members. Within Attachment C, you will see a table that reflects the wages and benefits for additional staff members. The attachment details the salary and benefit costs for a Parks Coordinator position as well as Parks Maintenance staff. A Parks Coordinator would be the liaison with the various community groups. This will allow the City Clerk and Public Works Director to focus on key projects and programs. The next two employees would be parks employees. Currently utility workers work between 2800-3000 hours a year on the parks. This ranges from maintenance to repairs and capital projects. The parks’ employees would be able to invest 4000 hours a year in the parks. 

The additional staff would allow the utility team to focus on water, sewer, storm, and a wide range of maintenance projects. Projects that often take a back seat to needs within the parks system. Some of the utility workers’ time would still be used in parks during peak seasons but it would be less than is currently used.

How a Parks Levy works:

Taxing districts in Washington state are subject to levy limits of no more than a 1% annual increase in total regular levy amount collected from current assessed value. Cities and other taxing districts that are collecting less than their maximum statutory levies can pass levy lid “lifts” to increase their levies more than 1%, up to their statutory maximum rate, for a specific time or in perpetuity. As of February 2023, Sultan’s regular levy rate was $0.9258 per $1000 of assessed value compared to the city’s statutory maximum rate of $1.60 per $1000 of assessed value. Therefore, Sultan can pursue a voter approved levy lid lift to fund additional park capital and operational needs. To approve a lid lift, the City Council would need to propose a ballot measure which would need to be passed by a majority of voters. There are no minimum voter turnout requirements for levies. There are several types of lid lifts and parameters that Sultan would need to consider in designing a successful levy lid lift for voter adoption:

1. Single-year lid lifts allow a one-time bump in the levy rate above the 1% annual limit. This amount then serves as the base for all subsequent 1% increases throughout the duration of the measure. In a temporary single-year lid lift, after the lid lift expires, the levy rate reverts to what it would have been without the lid lift. With a permanent single-year lid lift, the lid lift does not expire, and all future increases of up to 1% are built on the one-time “bump” in levy rate in perpetuity. Single-year lid lifts can be used for any purpose and last any number of years but cannot exceed 9 years if being used to service debt. 
2. Multi-year lid lifts allow Sultan to exceed the 1% limitation multiple times – every year of the measure for up to 6 consecutive years. With this option, the ballot measure would need to specify a “limit factor” – usually a percent increase or a specific inflation index on which to base annual percent increases. Like the single-year lid lifts, there are temporary and permanent options for multi-year lid lifts. Although multi-year levy lid lift funds may be used for any purpose, the ballot language must include a statement of the limited purposes. 

Metropolitan Park District with City of Sultan boundary

The city may form a metropolitan park district (MPD) under RCW Chapter 35.61 to manage, control, improve, maintain, or acquire park and recreation facilities. The formation of an MPD requires voter approval with a simple majority vote. MPDs are funded primarily by a regular property tax levy up to $0.75 per $1,000 assessed value, which is approved as part of the initial ballot measure establishing the district. 

Finally, an MPD may be formed with a separately elected legislative body, or the City Council may be designated to serve in an ex officio capacity as the board of metropolitan park commissioners if the district’s boundaries are the same as the City’s.

In reviewing this option with the staff, the MPD would be the best option for the city. It would provide a dedicated revenue source for the parks system. 

Timing of a levy:

If the City Council supports an ordinance to establish an MPD, the recommendation is for it to appear in either February or April 2024 as a special election. This would allow the city to refine its request, draft the required ordinances to create an MPD and submit the documents to Snohomish County Elections.

Higher Level of service: 

With the additional funding for staffing, we will be able to provide a higher level of service to the park users. A few of the enhancements that the community could see would be:

• Increased park checks: Currently staff are performing park checks twice a week (Monday’s and Friday’s). The additional staff time would allow daily park checks. While performing a park check, staff clean bathrooms, pick up trash, and inspect the facilities for any damage and reactive maintenance needs. Any maintenance needs that are found are reported to the Operations Manager and then placed on a work list and eventually worked into the schedule. 
• Increased Reactive Maintenance: As stated above, when maintenance needs are found on a park check they are added to a list of other scheduled work. Sometimes it can take staff weeks to get to a maintenance need if it is not a safety issue. With the increased staff time, you would have dedicated park staff that will have the ability to handle these maintenance needs in a timelier fashion. 
• Increased Proactive Maintenance: Proactive maintenance is things such as mowing, weeding of flower beds, ballfield, and trail maintenance. Staff currently work on the baseball fields once a week and it is up to the league that rents the facility to do any additional maintenance. 

With the additional staff, we would be able to maintain the ball fields daily. Currently the weeding of the flowerbeds happens on a semiannual basis and unfortunately the beds get full of weeds before we can get to them. The dedicated staff to parks would have time to weed these beds more often. The trails are currently maintained on a reactive basis. This is mainly because we do not have the staff bandwidth to maintain the trails on a more routine basis. With additional staff time, we would be able to patrol the trails on a weekly basis finding maintenance needs before they are reported.

City Parks

Below is a description of each park with the estimated hours invested within a year for maintenance and grounds keeping. 

Garden Park:

This park is located along US-2 from 5^th Street to the Sultan River. This park is roughly 1.87 acres and a grass maintained open area. The area is not a destination park but could eventually be part of connecting parks by a walking trail.

Staff invest an estimated 248 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

Osprey Park:

This park is located at 814 1^st Street and offers different types of recreational opportunities. It is 76.2 acres in size. It is the city’s largest park. The park itself offers 25 parking spaces within the park property. These spaces are typically used for the newly installed playground, basketball court, walking trails, and sporting events. The park has vehicle parking along 1^st Street as well. This park has the most parking within our city parks.

Park elements:

• Covered basketball court/reservations vary on this covered area.
• Playground 
• Walking trails that connect all the way to River park with access points to the river and side channels.
• Just under 3 acres of sports fields that are annually used by local soccer, baseball and cross-country teams. It has also hosted organized running events within this park and trail system.

Staff invest an estimated 685 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

We have 10-20 reservations for private parties and organized events per calendar year. There are also sports reservations for youth baseball and soccer six days a week from April to June and September to October each year.

Reese Park:

This park is located at 15101 Old Owen Road. This park is 18.78 acres and offers a baseball/softball field, two gazebos, men’s and women’s restrooms, playground, and a drinking fountain. This park also offers parking and has a trail to the Sultan River. The 2 gazebos are a great spot for any gathering.

Dyer Park:

This park is located at 800 Dyer Rd. Just under a half-acre of flat open area. This park property is not widely utilized. Currently the park offers a trash receptacle and dog waste bags.

Staff invest an estimated 105 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

Travelers Park:

This park is located along US-2.  This park is roughly 2 acres. This park has a gravel parking lot with 2 portable restroom facilities and 2 trash receptacles.  The park offers seating within a willow structure.   The city has a water feature, Freedom Rock in memory of local veterans, and a large Douglas fir round that was locally sourced and donated for people to see the history of our logging heritage. This park now has an off-leash dog park as well.

Staff invest an estimated 293 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

River Park:

This park is located at 100 Main Street.  This park offers a gazebo that is powered and attractive to community gatherings and events. Community groups including the Sultan Community Alliance and Sky Valley Chamber of Commerce host events here to include, but not limited to: farmers markets, community easter egg hunt, the Sultan Shindig, homecoming pep rally, National Night Out, and the annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament.  Our open grass fields offer parking for downtown events.

This park includes an All-Veterans Memorial honoring local veterans. The Veteran Memorial is a concrete area lined with boxwood plants as a border and has historically been maintained by volunteers and community members. Recently, staff have stepped in to assist with flag replacement and lighting.

Staff spend an estimated 525 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

Susie’s Trail trailhead is located within this park. Susie’s Trail follows the Sultan River and connects to the trail system at Osprey Park.

Sportsman Park:

This park is located at 30501 US-2 and includes 3.56 acres of gravel parking with grass areas throughout and a boat launch. This park is a great access point for the Sultan River as it flows into the Skykomish River. Within the park is a covered shelter with picnic tables and trash receptacles. A vaulted toilet system is included in this park. 

Currently this park does not have many park reservations. Most activity we see within this park is boat launch use and river access. The recently constructed pedestrian bridge connects Sportsman Park to River Park and our downtown. 

Staff invest an estimated 225 hours within the park. This includes mowing, weeding, emptying trash, and repairing anything that is broken or worn out. 

Sultan Basin Park

The park is located at the end of Dogwood Court. The park is just under 5-acres. The plan for the property is to develop a park with two distinctive sections. The section at Dogwood would include parking, restroom, play structures and picnic shelters. The section East would be a passive trail with an outlook. 

The maintenance of the park will include restroom checks, emptying trash, cleaning the hard surfaces, and mowing sections of the park.

Staff is expected to invest 540 hours within the park.

The city struggles to fund maintenance within the parks. With the age of some of our parks, there is a long list of items that will need to be replaced soon. Some of these include:

• Replacing Gazebos: The city has three older gazebos, two in Reese Park and one in Sportsman's Park that are getting close to the end of their useful life. The current engineers estimate to install one new picnic shelter and foundation in the new park in the basin area is $180,000.

• Coating and resurfacing of sports court: The basketball court at Osprey Park is now 23 years old and it needs to be resurfaced. This cost is estimated at $60,000-100,000

• Reese Park playground Equipment: Currently there is a small piece of playground equipment that the city received, used from the Volunteers of America (VOA). It was installed at Reese Park in 2018. It has received a significant amount of usage. If this were to be replaced with a similar set up to Osprey Park, the cost would be approximately $175,000. 

• Sports Field Lighting: With the increased demand for sports fields, replacing the lighting at Reese Park and adding lighting to the field at Osprey Park would allow time for later reservations. The city has researched the costs of installing lights at Osprey Park sports field and found that it would be $350,000. Even though there are lights at Reese Park sports field they are not actually sports field lights. They are streetlights that were installed around the field. Staff do not know when they were installed and the condition of the wiring. We would expect the same cost to replace the lights at Reese Park. Shown below is a layout for lighting options at Osprey park. 

• Installation and Rehabilitation of permanent bathroom facilities: Currently there are permanent bathroom facilities at Osprey Park and Reese Park and a vault toilet at Sportsman’s Park. River Park and Travelers Park do not have permanent restroom facilities. They are served with porta potties. The restroom facilities at Osprey and Reese are old and have experienced some damage over the years. They are both in need of new plumbing fixtures and potentially some increased lighting.

The restroom the city is looking at, for the park on the basin could be utilized within River and Travelers Park. This restroom is a 2-stall prefabricated bathroom facility. The engineers estimate $250,000. This investment does not include the installation of the utilities to the building. 

The City wants your input.

The council is considering placing a parks and recreation levy on the ballot for voters in 2024. Before they do that, they want your input.

The City held three open houses on August 22nd, August 29th, and September 9th. You can find the complete slides from the community open house slide information here (PDF): . 

If you missed the open house there is still time to provide your input!

Please take the short survey to provide us your input.

Survey can be found here

Three different levy options are being considered by council. All three are designed to where the city would create an Metropolitan Parks District with a levy term of six years.

The following assumptions were used when developing the options.

• The assessed property value for the city is a hybrid between the current year and next year. 
• We are projecting a 10% increase in costs each year. 
• To help the parks fund, we are removing 1 FTE (Utility Workers) time. 
• Each option will include at least two new parks employees. 
• Each option has a fixed annual rate. Meaning as more homes are added to the assessment and as home values increase, the amount the city collects does not increase. 

Option 1:

The levy rate with this option is $0.274 per $1,000. This would generate $342,000 a year. This option would include two dedicated parks employees. It would add $100,000 per year to the park maintenance and repair portion of the budget. Finally, it would allow the city to reallocate $76,000 from the parks budget to other pressing needs within the general fund. 

Option 2:

The levy rate with this option is $0.369 per $1,000. This would generate $455,000 a year. This option would include two dedicated parks employees. It would add $169,000 per year to the park maintenance and repair portion of the budget. Finally, it would allow the city to reallocate $120,000 from the parks budget to other pressing needs within the general fund.

Option 3:

The levy rate with this option is $0.482 per $1,000. This would generate $594,248 a year. This option would include three dedicated parks employees. It would add $208,000 per year to the park maintenance and repair portion of the budget. Finally, it would allow the city to reallocate $120,000 from the parks budget to other pressing needs within the general fund.