Thank you, Mr. Bremner, for providing statistics on the road materials and conditions that contribute to the major ongoing damage caused by the thousands of trucks that use Kent’s streets and roads. Let me add a friendly correction regarding the Kent valley’s trucking volume: the Kent valley houses the fourth-largest manufacturing business complex in the nation, not the state.
I live very close to the east-west 228th corridor and that street is an ugly, bumpy patchwork of asphalt over concrete. Sysco’s trucking firm is located on 228th and it’s huge 16-, 18-wheelers lumber through this corridor every day.
Despite Mr. Bremner’s good evidence about the subpar engineering road work that wasn’t/isn’t meant to handle the kinds of heavy trucks abundant in the area, the business community (led by our Chamber of Commerce) fights off every effort by councilmembers Jamie Perry and Elizabeth Albertson to get sufficient funds allocated through a robust business and occupation (B&O) tax on the very businesses that cause the damage to our streets and roads.
The council finally adopted a puny $5 million dollar B&O tax with more loopholes than Swiss cheese. The list of exempted business types reads like the business section of the Kent phone book. Businesses like Boeing and other major companies and warehouse distributors can surely afford to pay more to the city in which they do business.
It’s obvious that chamber bigwigs lobbied for exemptions for their businesses. Even with that minimal B&O fund, the chamber now wants to dictate to the city exactly how the city can use the funds and on which projects.
We paid a hefty tax to pay for the installation of 228th years ago. Because of the constant severe abuse to the roads by heavy trucks, we now have a lumpy, bumpy second-rate stretch of road that needs a major overhaul. Mr. Bremner and Kent residents, including myself, would like to know why the culprits are not paying up for the damage they cause. And there is no doubt that the manufacturers and distributors in the Kent Valley are the responsible parties.
Also, the city’s engineers need to explain why they are building roads that are insufficient to handle the types of heavy loads they must handle.
– Sandra Gill
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