The recent recession has made it very difficult for cities to do anything but deal with budget deficits. Paying for facility upkeep, parks services and programs have taken a backseat to keeping public safety and essential services going.

Redmond and Kirkland city leaders met formally for the first time in two years on May 25 to discuss issues that impact both cities, trade ideas and to see if there is common ground that the neighboring cities can work together on.

Both cities need a community indoor recreation facility and pool. The two councils agreed to look into jointly using a Metropolitan Parks Department (MPD) to create the facility together. A MPD would be governed by a board with equal members from each municipality represented.

“I think it is a fabulous idea that the economies of scale really could pencil out here,” said Redmond City Councilmember Kimberly Allen. “I know that in Redmond we have done some community outreach on envisioning what we want our parks system to look like to see what people want and the Aquatics Center bubbles up to the top routinely. There is a great deal of interest and need. Our pool is on life support.”

The councils of both Kirkland and Redmond attended the meeting, including Kirkland Interim City Manager Marilynne Beard and Redmond Mayor Pro Tem Richard Cole. The only members not in attendance were Kirkland City Councilmember Doreen Marchione and her son, Redmond City Mayor John Marchione. Both were excused for an undisclosed family emergency.

The pool situation goes for most cities in Western Washington. The Lake Washington School District was forced last summer to turn the day-to-day operations of Juanita Pool over to WAVE Aquatics for lack of funds. The pool, which is apart of Juanita High School, is in need of upgrades and repair as well.

Council members from both cities cited the use of pools by Lake Washington School District teams as a big reason for the need.

City staff estimates for a new facility have been between $42-46.5 million. Most estimates for how much can be raised through a MPD are extremely preliminary and only include current Kirkland and Redmond residents. Annexation residents of Kirkland, which will nearly double the size of Kirkland’s number of residents, have not been factored in.

But the advantage of paying for a new pool facility with a MDP is that the financial burden would be spread out more than if one city attempted the project.

Bringing in county areas and even large institutions into the plan was also discussed to spread the burden further.

“There is potential to spread it out even beyond what you have discussed there,” said Redmond City Councilmember David Carson. “The more we can spread it out and provide benefits the easier it will be to do this.”

But one of the dangers is spreading it too far.

“We need to try to keep proximity to ground zero,” said Kirkland City Councilmember Bob Sternoff. “If you have to think about (the proximity), it is probably too far.”

Many cities and counties have turned to forming Metropolitan Parks Districts in the last year. In Washington State alone, 12 agreements were formed during the past year, the majority of which are used for aquatics facilities, said Kirkland Parks and Community Services Director Jennifer Schroder.

The City of Tacoma implemented the state’s first MPD in 1907.

A MPD would be governed by a board with equal members from each municipality represented.

Only a few have been formed to replace or combine existing multiple-city parks departments. The two council’s debated the usefulness of a MPD to take over and basically combine the two cities Parks departments.

“We have a wonderful parks inventory in Kirkland but we are having some trouble maintaining,” said Kirkland City Councilmember Amy Walen.

But the issue of using the MPD in this way is fraught with big questions.

“Trying to combine parks departments would create all sorts of complications that we are not even thinking about,” said Redmond City Councilmember Pat Vache. “Cities have different philosophies on how to run their parks.”

Another issue of combining the city’s Parks departments would be existing funding.