Drafter
Clerk 10/21/2008
Title
AN ORDINANCE authorizing the King County executive to execute a thirty-year use agreement with the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association for the use, construction, development, programming, and maintenance of athletic fields and related infrastructure at Sixty Acres park.
Body
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. Findings:
A. The Parks Business Plan provides direction for the parks division to work in partnership with organizations to provide new recreational facilities.
B. There is an unmet demand for additional soccer fields across King County, and the county has negotiated a partnership with the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association ("LWYSA") that will help meet this important need.
C. The LWYSA represents a membership of almost seven thousand youth playing soccer in the Lake Washington school district.
D. The LWYSA will develop and maintain field improvements available at Sixty Acres South and at no cost to King County taxpayers.
E. The LWYSA will ensure that these improvements are available and accessible to the public as required by both Forward Thrust and the Washington state Recreation and Conservation Office.
F. Historical users of Sixty Acres South including users who fly radio-controlled model planes will continue to have access to the park for both passive and active recreation that may be either drop-in use or formally scheduled use.
G. The LWYSA will work with King County and the Seattle Area Soaring Society to establish an agreement that ensures continued opportunities for soaring to take place at Sixty Acres South.
H. King County will continue its good-faith effort to assist the Seattle Area Soaring Society to identify a separate, permanent site for soaring in King County, and to research various funding sources to acquire such a site.
I. Ordinance 14509 authorizes the department of natural resources and parks to create new public recreational opportunities by empowering user groups, sports associations and community organizations to operate, maintain and program mutually agreed upon capital improvements for public recreation facilities on King County land, and thereby address either or both regional and rural recreation needs without encumbering new tax-funded operations and maintenance costs.
J. Allowing the LWYSA to develop certain mutually agreed upon capital improvements, including soccer fields at the site, and allowing LWYSA to provide all maintenance for the soccer facility, will serve to implement the authority provided in Ordinance 14509.
K. In accordance with K.C.C. 4.56.150.E, the King County council may adopt an ordinance permitting the county to enter into agreements for the use of county property with bona fide nonprofit organizations if the property is to be used by the nonprofit organization to make improvements to the county property or to provide services that will benefit the public. The agreements are exempt from the requirements of fair market value, appraisal and notice.
SECTION 2. The King County executive is hereby authorized to sign a use agreement, substantially the same as that attached to this ordinance, with the LWYSA.
SECTION 3. The King County executive's quarterly Parks Omnibus Ordinance Report to the King County council regarding parks division operations shall identify and describe any significant dispute arising between Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association and any other user group or between Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association and the general public, all in regards to 60 Acres park; and the quarterly report shall also identify and describe King County's involvement, if any, in addressing such dispute as contemplated under section 2.9 of Attachment A to this ordinance. To the extent that any significant dispute arises regarding any other use agreements for other King County parks or recreation facilities, the King County executive's quarterly report to
the King County council shall also identify and describe such dispute, as well as King County's involvement, if any, in addressing it.