SEQUIM — A citizens committee working for the Sequim Aquatic Recreation Center is circulating petitions to place a metropolitan park district measure on the Aug. 4 ballot.
If it is placed on the ballot, the measure will ask voters to approve making the recreational facility known as SARC — a junior taxing district formed in 1988 as Clallam County Parks and Recreation District 1 — a metropolitan park district.
The petition proposes that the metropolitan park district would impose a property tax levy of 12 cents or less per $1,000 assessed valuation — the same amount voters failed to approve by a 60 percent supermajority in a levy election in February.
The drive for signatures gathered 500 in the first five days, said Judy Rhodes of Sequim, who is leading the effort to gather 3,500 signatures on the petition.
“People are excited,” Rhodes said Saturday.
3-pronged approach
The drive is the first step of a three-pronged approach board members approved Feb. 26 to obtain levy revenue.
If the citizens committee fails to get enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot, then the board will pursue an interlocal agreement between the city of Sequim and Clallam County to place it on a ballot.
And if that doesn’t work, the board decided, it will offer voters another opportunity to approve a six-year property tax levy in November.
Before end of year
The board direction is “a road map, a call for action,” to find funding before the end of the year, according to Frank Pickering, SARC board president.
“SARC has a financial deadline of Dec. 31, 2016, when our reserves are depleted,” he said.
The Feb. 10 proposal was the first public funding sought by the district since 2003.
After running for its first 13 years with public funds as a junior taxing district, SARC had relied on reserves, which will fall below $350,000 at the end of 2016, Pickering said.
“As we look at operating SARC, we realize that we must get a levy, whether by the metropolitan park district or by levy election, early enough to establish the financial stability of SARC,” the board president said.
If the facility appears to be in financial difficulty, “people will stop buying passes and revenue goes down,” he said.
“We have to get this solved before people start doing that.”
Taxing authority
A metropolitan park district would have taxing authority without going to the voters, as opposed to junior taxing districts, which must ask for voter approval for property tax levies.
Once voters approve the concept of a metropolitan park district and a board, the board sets a levy rate.
A metropolitan park district needs only a simple majority for passage, Pickering said.
Although voters did not give the February levy a supermajority, they did approve it by a simple majority of 57.5 percent approval.
That wasn’t enough for passage but was an indication of support, Pickering said.
The SunLand area approved the measure by 66 percent, while the city of Sequim’s approval rate was 62 percent, he said.
“We need about half the people who voted yes,” he said.
By law, the petition must be signed by 15 percent, or 3,247 of the 21,647 registered voters in the SARC district, according to Rhodes.
The SARC district has the same boundaries as the Sequim School District except that it does not go beyond the county line as the school district does.
The goal is to gather more than needed in case some signatures are invalid.
The signatures will be turned in to the Clallam County Auditor’s Office for validation.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
