Kent residents could see over the next couple of years pedestrian improvements along 132nd Avenue Southeast, a new swimming and fishing dock at Lake Meridian Park and a new synthetic turf field at Hogan Park at Russell Road.
Those are three of numerous capital improvement projects proposed by Mayor Suzette Cooke as part of her 2015-16 mid-biennium city budget adjustments. Now the City Council must decide over the next several weeks whether to approve the projects along with the mayor’s proposal about how to pay for them.
A reimbursement to the city’s street fund of about $2.3 million, left over from earlier special assessments (including local improvement districts), would fund six street projects in 2016. The city would spend about $1.2 million for pedestrian improvements along 132nd Avenue Southeast from about Southeast 248th Street to Kent-Kangley Road.
“This would be an interim solution that could last a long time to have asphalt paths on the side,” City Public Works Director Tim LaPorte told the council at a Tuesday workshop about the 132nd Avenue project. “We would leave the power poles up and not change the lighting, but we would stretch the dollars as far as we could to provide a decent path for people to walk on the west side only.”
LaPorte said the city’s transportation master plan calls for a five-lane project with sidewalks, curbs and gutters and street lights that would cost more than $15 million and he doesn’t see any federal or state grants available soon to help pay for all of those improvements.
The deteriorating dock at Lake Meridian needs to be replaced at a cost of about $1.7 million. Kent received a $500,000 state grant this year toward the project. Cooke wants to use $1 million of unspent resources from the city’s 2008 bond sale to help pay for the dock. That money is left over from a bond sale to build a new city operations and maintenance facility on the East Hill that the city decided not to construct.
Parks director Jeff Watling said the new dock could be in place in 2017.
“It’s taking an immensely popular and immensely well-positioned asset, and replacing it because we know it is so immensely popular,” Watling said.
Cooke proposed using $1 million from real estate excise tax funds to help pay for an estimated $1.8 million project to convert a field at Hogan Park at Russell Road from grass to synthetic turf. The city also received a $500,000 state grant this year for the field conversion.
The field is currently used about six months of the year for baseball and softball. Watling said the synthetic turf would allow use all year and turn it into a multi-sport field, including soccer and lacrosse.
The mayor’s capital improvement budget also includes about $700,000 to expand Morrill Meadows Park on the East Hill as part of a partnership with the YMCA to build a recreational facility on the site.
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