I like trails. I like Legacy Lands too. What I don't like is when they tell me it will cost $4M, and 2 years later it ends up costing $22M. Roundabouts, bank buildings, traffic lights, legacy lands- it's all the same.

Nobody likes it, yet it keeps happening. Nobody is held accountable. Nobody gets fired. Nobody even explains it. They just do it. And keep doing it. All while you're talking about how trails lower taxes.

#smh

Thanks for your perspective Doug. I think you may have misunderstood citizen concerns here. The issue isn’t buying land for trails especially around Lacamas Lake. The trails and so much untouched natural beauty is what has drawn most people to Camas. The greatest fear of those who love it here is seeing it destroyed by growth designed by a few that does not align with the views and wishes of the many. It’s a very good thing that the city is able to secure land around the lake for trails and nature preservation. I have heard nothing but support for that particular purpose from a wide range of folks. But why overpay beyond appraised value? That’s the issue being discussed in various threads on this site. If there‘s a post complaining about more trails in Camas perhaps you’d be kind enough to link to it because I seem to have missed it.

Could you elaborate how your great city had rising values and lower tax rates? The laws must be very different in Texas. In Camas rising home values equal rising taxes. Washington state law governs property taxes. The State of Washington requires property to be taxed at ”100% of its true and fair market value in money according to the highest and best use of the property”. Because of this it is IMPOSSIBLE for property taxes to decrease while values rise.

More trails in Camas are a wonderful thing! There’s not much argument they will increase property values. However, stating that more trails = rising property values = lower taxes is demonstrably false.

So in we go in some detail.

To start, you said, "Our data" but you don't cite that data Doug?

You said that data, "showed that communities which invested in parks and trails saw property values rise and business revenue increase resulting in a net positive contribution to city revenue." but you don't set context with any numbers at all to speak to scale.

You said, "We proceeded with an aggressive trail and park plan". A town that spent $10 on parks in one year and $100 in the next has increased their budget by an impressive order of magnitude, but they are not going to be doing much substantive work with that budget.

You said, "a decade later we were named 7th Best Places to Live in America by Money Magazine." I imagine you're familiar with the old saying, "correlation does not imply causation" Doug? That means if my grandpa wore bolo ties for an entire summer in 1992, and a decade later he passes away in his sleep, that I can't convincingly attribute the loss to the famous "summer of bolo ties".

You said, "Home values increased at a greater rate than surrounding communities because of the parks which resulted in tax rates being adjusted LOWER than those in other communities." You say the raise was BECAUSE of the parks, which speaks to my previous point with some volume. You also say tax rates adjusted lower than other communities but again... no numbers to consider the larger reality. For example, did those surrounding towns build $78 million dollar pools while your town saw large levies temporarily expire before you renewed them?

You said, "Our local businesses also saw increased sales from customers outside of our city which brought in additional tax revenue." Help me to tie this directly to whatever your parks improvements were please.

You said, "one of the best investments a city can make is in it's parks and trails." You should follow something like this with one of two things; the words "in my opinion" or a nice link to hard data.

To help going forward Doug, a GREAT way to think of a Camas (in my experience) is as a room full of reasonable, responsible, intelligent adults and not small children taken with fantastical sounding stories. We're actually pretty great with language around here and generalities about "good" and "great" and "rising" and "trust me" just don't really hold water.

If you'd like to add some factual support to your claims, I'd personally take the time to reconsider your post. To my original point though, about how inappropriate this conversation and this spend is during a pandemic, it's still not the time for this spend by any measure. Very interested if you did have justification as to why the properties the city purchased rose by an average of 700% in value right before their offers? or why the city actually borrowed the money to pay for these properties before they "voted" on Monday on whether or not they would purchase the land.

Looking forward to a lot of little blue, underlined bits of text in your followup post.

To preface my response to the specifics of your statement Doug, I wanted to state one thing that several people involved in the city's process have either repeatedly missed or have chosen to overlook - The conversation at this moment is not about IF we spend the money - It's about HOW we consider spending it now with a likely pending recession and millions in potential dollars needed to support failing businesses, sick and dying people. Doug, you have to know this as someone with a background as an elected official.

The fact that your initial statement doesn't even touch the topic that dominates all of our lives currently is a bit concerning, to say the least.

More detailed response to your full statement to follow.