City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw attended the Ballard Disctrict Council meeting last night to answer questions and present an update on Seattle parks and waterfront.

Bagshaw chairs the Committee on Parks and Seattle Center committee as well as the Council’s Special Committee on Viaduct, Seawall, and Waterfront

"We have quite a budget problem in the city," she said. "We had a 67 million deficit in our budget last year and unfortunately, parks is always the one that takes the cut first. It kills us but that's what happens."

Bagshaw said Seattle has 6,000 acres in parks, 400 individual parks, and 900 people are employed to run and maintain them.

"Parks are so important to our quality of life in the city," she said. "And our focus is to improve and maintain our existing parks."

The City is looking at Portland for ways to improve parks and transit. Bagshaw was part of a delegation that went to Portland last week to take a close look at their transit system.

"Portland has this thing called neighborhood green ways," she said. "They connect the parks and provide alternative routes for biking and walking away from the arterials."

Bagshaw said trees line the planting strips separating cars from the pathway and large speed bumps slows down traffic.

"You can still park your cars alongside them but neighbors feel save enough to let their eight-year old daughter bike on them on her own," she said.

"The wonderful thing is that they weren't very expensive but very appealing. It's an exciting idea."

But in the meantime, they're looking at how to handle the budget problem. "We're going through and analyzing everything," she said.

She said Neighborhood Community Centers cost upwards of $500,000 to keep open, more if they have pools and Parks pays for all the maintenance and the people to run them.

"We're nowhere near breaking even," she said, revealing that the city is looking into public-private partnerships to manage Parks as well as the waterfront.

"We're at the mega bucks point," she said. "Cookie sales aren't going to cut it. We're looking for sustainable, long-term options."