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The fate of Electric City’s potential Ice Age Park may be decided at the city’s Dec. 8 council meeting. 

At their Nov. 10 meeting, the council discussed the park following the failure of a levy to raise funds for maintenance of the park for one year. 

That levy failed 330-192 in the Nov. 3 election.

During the public comment period of the meeting, Mayor Diane Kohout read aloud an email signed by Ian and Cara Turner.

The email offers “some insight from the perspective of a community member, planning commissioner, and parent to young children.”

“Parks are critical for the well being of our children,” the email reads, “and if we want to attract families who are looking for a place to invest their lives, we need to invest in improvements that will tell them that they are wanted and welcome. … A large portion of our City’s residents are in their later years and if we want to continue to have a thriving, enjoyable, and interactive community, we need to recruit a diverse demographic of young families who want to raise their children here.”

The email also criticizes the levy as being used to help decide whether the park should be built at all, since it was described as being for 2021 maintenance specifically.

“I am concerned that the Council is using the levy as a proxy for the park itself,” the email reads. “It did not specify that the park would not be built if the levy did not pass, nor describe the implications of paying back current funds accepted via grant and private citizen monetary donations and labor. Using the levy as a proxy on the park is at best misleading and the City deserves better transparency if that is the case. …  I appreciated the Levy Info flyer but again, it made no mention of where the park funding sits, the current design status, the payback implications of not building a park, or whether the park itself hinged on the vote.”

Later in the meeting, Councilmember Brian Buche addressed the Turners’ point about the levy, citing an Oct. 21 issue of The Star with a front-page story headlined “Park levy vote to help determine fate of Ice Age Park.”

“The community has been informed on this, and I am surprised someone would say that they didn’t know what this was about.”

The Turners’ email further explains that they and others are willing to help financially with the park to get it built.

Another public comment from Steve McDaniel, read aloud by Kohout, offered $10,000 of his own money to help build the park if the project goes forward.

The Turners’ email goes on to say, “I believe that YOU can be the Council that shows our area cities what it looks like to invest in our children and the future of the Coulee!”

While discussing the park, Kohout said a decision needs to be made at the next meeting, and that they need the details on what money needs paid back if the park project doesn’t go forward. 

Out of $60,425 spent on the park project so far, $28,234.31 came from a $257,650 grant from the Washington State Recreation & Conservation Office, with the rest coming from the city itself.

The grant money would need to be paid back, if the park project were abandoned. 

City Clerk Peggy Nevsimal told The Star on Tuesday that the city’s money spent on the project came from the city’s current operating expense fund but had not yet been transferred from the city’s hotel/motel tax fund from which matching funds for the grant were originally intended to come.

Had the money come from the hotel/motel funds, it would have had to have been paid back into that account.

The next Electric City council meeting is scheduled for Dec. 8 at 6 p.m., with Zoom links to attend the meeting typically available a few days prior.