Cheney park bond won’t make ballot
Previous attempt to build sports fields failed by slim margin
The city of Cheney will not have a proposed park bond on the ballot in November.
Paul Simmons, the parks and recreation director, said the department has done some polling of voters in the area and found about 58 percent were in favor of the bond, which is about what the polls said last fall when the city put the bond on the ballot. That proposition failed to gain the required supermajority by just 59 votes last November. “It makes more sense to wait until the economy improves,” said Mayor Tom Trulove.
Trulove said the council would have had to approve putting the proposal on the ballot Tuesday night in time for the November election, but the council agreed with the recommendations of Trulove and Simmons.
The proposal would have funded a $2.5 million, scaled-back version of last fall’s proposition. It would have built ballfields for baseball and softball and a couple of multipurpose fields for soccer or football. Taxpayers would have paid 39 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, or $58.50 per year for a $150,000 house.
“It really makes sense to me (to wait),” Simmons said. He said the community is not 100 percent confident about the economy, there will be other tax initiatives on the ballot, and the parks department is busy with two other projects.
The first is the reconstruction of the Wren Pierson Building, which sustained serious damage in January 2009 when heavy snow caused the roof to collapse. The City Council decided in March to begin reconstruction of the existing building rather than build a community center at the proposed Betz Park site.
Trulove said the building is still in the design phase of the project and many people notice the large tarp covering areas that were demolished. He said it will be a rejuvenated community center when it reopens.
Simmons said the other project is to have an engineer conduct a full study into crossing options across Betz Road into Betz Park.
“We’re not abandoning the project at all,” Simmons said Tuesday afternoon. He said he is waiting to see where the conversation leads at the council meeting Tuesday and will re-evaluate the project again sometime next year.
“We’ll carry on one way or another,” he said.