I find that it is time to speak out publicly. I believe Mayor Joan McBride is doing the City of Kirkland a great service by not running for council.
In watching council meetings on TV for several years, I find she comes unprepared, shuffling her papers in front of her and expressing that she cannot locate the agenda. As for the council, most of them are rubber stamp “yes” people when called upon to vote, especially when it is about spending tax payer dollars.
I campaigned and voted for Ms. Walen when she ran for council. Now I believe as does Bob Style does she is a socialist. As chair of the Finance Committee, she thinks nothing of spending money the city doesn’t have for certain projects, such as the Cross Kirkland Corridor.
The proposition on which the citizens of Kirkland voted yes was to maintain the parks we now have. Kirkland doesn’t need any more parks. We are park poor and yet the council can’t seem to keep their hands off of this money. They are ready to siphon some of it off for tearing up a rail corridor that could be an asset to Kirkland in the future.
The rail corridor is not going away. We have time to develop both rail and trail as other Eastside towns and King County have proposed. But wait, Joan McBride has a “really good interim plan” before she leaves office. Let’s siphon money from the park maintenance proposition and tear up the railway bed and construct a paved walking path using taxpayer dollars that we don’t have for this project.
Transportation manager David Godfrey said the vision for Kirkland’s corridor is to make the corridor available to the public as “quickly as possible.” Why? Doesn’t the public have a place to walk now? Are people scrambling over each other because they don’t have a place to walk?
After Mayor McBride’s meeting with David Godfrey she said we’re not hurting any sort of rail company in the future by removing them. They’re unusable.
As I travel on Willows Road in Redmond I see piles of railroad ties and steel rails strewn like tinker toys and no one hauling them off. You can’t get rid of creosoted ties and someone has to hire a contractor to haul off thousands of tons of steel rails. Where is this money coming from?
Leave the damn rail corridor intact until such time as a host of people put their ideas together and get funding for a wine tasting train traveling through Snohomish to Woodinville and Kirkland like the Dinner Train used to do.
The only urgency for Mayor McBride’s demolition derby is in her very small tunnel vision mind. If the council approves her idea they should be run out of town. Whatever happened to working together for the good of every community involved instead of what we envision in our very small minds.
Snohomish Mayor Karen Guzak and The Eastside TRail Alliance has a plan and a vision to save the corridor. Once the rails are taken out they will never go back in. In 2002 I traveled to Scotland and witnessed an excursion train of three or four cars traveling through a beautiful countryside valley.
Europe and Canada have wonderful rail service for travelers through mountains and valleys. Let’s not trash this very important asset that we still have and can save for the good of all not just for a few narrow minded people. I rest my case.
Duane Illg, Kirkland
