Neary-Sighted

Welcome again to the second floor of City Hall, 7:23 p.m. as I type this. It's already been a longer than usual evening, because several council members were at a meeting of the Clover Park School District that began at 5. The district board had a special meeting to discuss ways to improve learning and test scores. So several of us wanted to hear their ideas.

By the way, if you want to attend school board meetings and put the results on a blog, feel very free. At times I am very conscious that there do not seem to be a lot of us posting material about Lakewood.

Back to one of tonight's subjects for the budget, our parks and recreation system. Among the projects in the proposed 2008 budget is a $15,000 study for providing sewers in Fort Steilacoom Park. The study would estimate how much it would cost to hook up the park to the county sewer system, or 1,600 feet of pipes, as well as provide engineering information.

This is one of those topics that you may hear first in this column, but about which you are going to hear a lot more.

Those of you who use the park know it does not have restrooms. Boy, do we all notice that sometimes. Our parks director, Mary Dodsworth, said tonight that service clubs here in town would gladly build the restrooms. But they can't - the park is not connected to the county sewer system. The shortage of facilities will only become more acute. Some people, such as State Sen. Mike Carrell, have proposed putting a Farmer's Market in one of the barns at Fort Steilacoom Park. But at some point, we have to provide toilets.

To attach Fort Steilacoom Park to sewers, we have to connect to the county sewer system, where they could, in theory, ask us for a ton of money. So it is going to take some fancy planning to find a way to reduce costs. By the way, it is not too early to ask candidates for the position of County Executive - aka the Emperor of Pierce County - whether they think the county, which owns the park, should help pay the sewer costs.

Don't worry - I'll remind you about the question as we get closer to the County Exec election.

Among other projects in the draft 2008 budget:

- Replacing the docks at Harry Todd Park, which are 30 years old.
- Coming up with a plan for the Fleet Creek area, including blueberry fields that the community would maintain with help from local schools.
- Interpretive signs in Fort Steilacoom Park, to highlight aspects of its natural history and the incredibly dramatic story of its human history.
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