Seven islanders vying for three seats on the park district board discussed the VES Fields, improving the Vashon Pool, the possible return of programs to the park district and other topics at a candidate forum last week.

About 60 islanders attended the Tuesday, Oct. 6 event, the second of the candidate forums in this election season. Susan McCabe moderated both events, sponsored by The Beachcomber and the Voice of Vashon, which recorded the forums and has made them available online.

While the seven seats at the candidates’ table were filled, one was by proxy. Joshua Weil, running opposite Bob McMahon for position 3, was in Africa, and CC Stone filled in for him.

Although some of the issues the park district has faced in recent years have caused passions to run high and tensions to surface, the evening drew no fireworks, and most questions and answers were forward-looking, though lessons from the past were mentioned frequently.

Early in the forum, islander Joe Wubbold, who worked on a financial plan the district submitted to the state auditor as follow-up to the most recent audit, asked the candidates their feelings about relying on borrowed money and non-voter approved bonds.

In recent years, the park district has taken on debt to build the VES Fields and has relied on borrowed money through TANs, or tax anticipation notes, to meet its operating expenses while waiting for the dispersal of levy funds twice a year. In 2012, the King County treasurer expressed concern about the district’s reliance on TANs, and the state auditor took issue with the district’s debt load in the most recent audit, conducted last year.

Six of the seven candidates said they would prefer to avoid debt, and many added that they would prefer that any bonds be voter-approved.

McMahon, who has a 40-year career in shipyard management behind him, noted that borrowing might be necessary in some instances, such as for major capital expenditures — and then must be planned for accordingly.

“If borrowing is to be done, there has to be a line item in the budget to cover the debt service,” he said.

Rick Skillman, running for position 1, noted that when he was a hospital CEO, borrowing money for operations was not done.

“If you had to do that, it generally indicated you weren’t managing your money very well,” he said. “So I don’t support having to go to tax anticipation notes to run the operation.”

Bill Ameling, a former CPA who has served on the park board for 30 years,  took a different approach, saying he is comfortable taking out a yearly TAN.

“It is designed for this purpose,” Ameling said. “I have no problem taking cash flow early in the year and then you repay it in May when you get your first paycheck. … I have no problems with that at all.”

Scott Harvey, a banker running for position 5 against Ameling on a platform of fiscal accountability, disagreed.

“Borrowing money for operations is bad fiscal policy,” he said, noting the findings of state audits.

Later in the evening, islander Kate Hunter asked Ameling specifically, if he is serving his last term, will he be proud of the VES Fields.

Ameling, 68, responded passionately, noting that he coaches his 10-year-old grandson’s baseball team. When he was at the fields not long ago, he said,  boys were there playing baseball and soccer and girls were playing lacrosse.

He noted when he was young, girls did not play sports and were considered the weaker sex.

“I looked out at that field, and I thought, ‘How could anybody say this (the fields project) is wrong?’” he said.

While many other candidates agreed the fields are an asset and well used, they questioned how the project was managed and the cost, which more than doubled during the course of construction.

Candidate Peter Ray, one of two islanders opposing Ameling and a videographer that has filmed park district meetings for three years, said the VES Fields project is the reason he started attending park district meetings in 2012. He said that he believes the public process was flawed, with a lack of accountability, and he expressed concern about the amount of water used for irrigation; so far this year it is more than 2 million gallons, he said.

“That to me seemed like an awful lot to just water grass and keep it alive over the summer,” he added.

He also questioned the need for the fields, as they are an improvement over the fields there before, not entirely new construction.

“I do not know that there was a need to begin with,” he added.

Position 1 candidate Karen Gardner, a retired computer scientist with a degree in horticulture, also expressed questions about water and the process around creating the fields.

“I would agree that the fields are quite lovely,” she said. “I too looked at the amount of grass and how much water was probably used to keep them green.  I would also agree that the process was flawed and that we could have done something less expensive that would have been probably quite doable.”

Shortly afterward, a question followed on how to prevent the mistakes of the fields projects from happening again. The candidates weighed in on a range ways to do so. Stone — for Weil — called for electing generalists instead of those with specific, vested interests. Skillman said that the board must be certain to know both capital and operating costs, while Gardner called for careful risk assessment up front and skillful project management throughout.

In Ameling’s response, he noted that none of candidates were there in the beginning of the project and so were unaware of the board’s initial work.

“If we did everything that this panel says that they would do, right now we would be sitting here with a pile of money and no fields,” Ameling said, adding, “You cannot have accountants and lawyers and things on a park board because a park board is not a bank. It is a human organization and we have to provide things for people even when it is tough.”

Harvey, who was called on to speak directly after Ameling, disagreed.

“A park district is a business. It is a public business, and we have 11,000 customers, but it is a business, and we need to serve all of our customers,” he said. “Bill mentions the pile of money. If we had the pile of money then we could do the project properly.”

Soon afterward, a member of the audience changed course and inquired about the pool, which was built in the 1970s. King County owned it until 2010, when the Vashon Park District took it over after the county indicated it planned to close it. The questioner inquired when a pool adequate for all groups would be built, saying the current pool is sub-standard.

All commissioner candidates agreed about the need for improvements, and McMahon noted that, as a Friend of the Vashon Pool, he believes a feasibility study on the pool and its immediate and potential long-term needs and costs is essential. His group has proposed such a study, he noted.

Stone commented for Weil, a father of two young children who works for Conservation International, a global conservation organization.

“Josh would like to explore opportunities to work with the school (district) in terms of improving the pool,” she said.

When the park district took the pool on, the school district was experiencing budget contraction, Stone added, wondering if the school district might be more open to taking some of the pool’s cost on.

“Now that revenue has stabilized and the school is looking to improve its athletic facilities, perhaps now would be a good time to begin a dialog with the school (district) to see if there is a way we could share expenses,” she said of Weil’s position.

Nearing the end of the forum, Truman O’Brien, who previously served on the park board for eight years, inquired about bringing programs back, as the district used to have robust program offerings.

All candidates indicated they had at least some interest in the doing, with Gardner, McMahon and Weil all indicating the question of programming and what might be offered is for the community to decide. Skillman noted that the full name of the Vashon Park District, which has been shortened over the years, includes the word “recreation” in it and that he believes programs should be at the heart of what the agency provides.

King County Elections will mail ballots to voters this week. For more information about the candidates and their views on a range of issues, see the Community section of The Beachomber’s website and VoiceofVashon.org, which has recorded candidate statements for the fire, parks and school board elections, as well as both forums.