The $750,000 Question Tacoma's Park Board Couldn't Answer
Days before a citywide bond vote, an editorial demanded specifics on parks, playgrounds and boulevards—while a Twelfth Street improvement club secretary insisted the plan had backers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
What Are the Bonds For?
Voters in Tacoma Wednesday will decide whether or not to issue $750,000 in bonds for the park board.
What is to be done with it is a little indefinite. The bluff boulevard, Point Defiance boulevard, boulevard to the South, park improvements, new parks in the South and West Ends and some playgrounds the board says it contemplates, but no specific nor definite plans have been given the people.
And if the project is killed it will be because of the indefinite presentation of the matter by the park board.
By three to one the people voted for power plant bonds, for bridge bonds, for sewer bonds. They are ready to vote bonds for the acquisition of new features of progress. If this money was to go to buy new parks and to dot the town with playgrounds for the children, with one or two boulevards, the people would probably endorse bonds, but they are not going to vote bonds to pay running expenses of the park board if they know it.
And there is much inquiry on the part of the voters as to just what the park board will do with this $750,000 jack-pot. How many playgrounds will there be and where are they? Have any options been secured? How many parks and where will the new purchases be? How much is to be spent for boulevards? How much is to be spent for improvements in the present parks?
These are all vital queries the people are asking and they are unanswered as yet.
Tacoma, Wash., April 8, 1909.
Editor Tacoma—Sir: In your paper of April 7 I note your statement that the Twelfth Street Improvement club was opposed to the park and boulevard bond issue. Allow me as secretary of that club to deny that statement, as our Twelfth Street Improvement club has as yet taken no action on this matter. It was the West End club which opposed the park bond issue, but the proposition was presented to the club for discussion and action at the next regular meeting, Monday evening.
The park and boulevard committee of the Twelfth Street Improvement club, consisting of fifteen members, is in favor of the bond issue and the securing and improving of parks and boulevards, and will recommend the endorsement of the bond issue to the club.
The citizens of this city recently voted bonds for a power plant, also bonds for bridges and drainage, all of which were for the benefit and improvement of the city of Tacoma.
As a member of an improvement club I consider it the duty of every member of an improvement club to do all in his power towards building up and improving the city, when the same does not in any way work to future disadvantage.
With a Metropolitan park board composed of men such as we have at this time, we as citizens of the city of Tacoma can vote for the bond issue with the assurance that the money will be spent properly and equally distributed throughout the city, and when the work is completed Tacoma will point with pride to its parks and playgrounds and its boulevards and paved streets.
Many strangers and investors will visit our city the coming year, and our appearance and improvements will in a great measure determine their future actions and investments, and it behooves us to awaken from the stupor into which we have fallen, and take advantage of the resources that nature placed at our door and build up this, the City of Destiny, and place it where it belongs, at the head of the list, “the largest and best city on the Pacific coast.” We will not do this if we are always divided upon all questions of improvements and seek by insinuations and innuendoes to tear to pieces each good project as it arises.
The buying and building of the present high school is a recent reminder of the way all good projects have heretofore been received. Every known excuse was presented to kill the issue, but, thanks to the energetic citizen, we bought the site and built the school, and today even the most pernicious kickers against its purchase point with pride to “Our High School.”
When a matter of this kind handled by such men as compose our present park board comes up for our consideration let us bury our hammers and boost as true Tacoma Boosters should boost.
Respectfully yours, A. D. Beckley, Secretary Twelfth Street Improvement Club.
“How many playgrounds will there be and where are they? ... These are all vital queries the people are asking and they are unanswered as yet.”
In 1909 Tacoma voters were asked to approve a $750,000 park bond on the promise of boulevards and playgrounds, but the park board had not said exactly where the money would go. The same tension—public money, vague plans, and a city selling itself to future investors—shapes infrastructure debates today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.