In last week’s Redmond Reporter, a letter writer listed six recent Redmond capital improvement projects totaling roughly $36 million and indicated his concern that Redmond taxpayers were footing the bill for projects that only benefit developers and businesses. While the total costs of each of these projects were listed correctly, Redmond residential tax-payers actually only paid $6.1 million of the total $36 million cost of these investments in our city infrastructure.

How is this possible? Let me explain. The City of Redmond has a policy that “development pays for development.” This is one of the guiding principles for funding new projects. In addition, when federal and state government mandates compel us to build specific facilities, the city always seeks funding from those same agencies to help pay for the projects.

By leveraging a number of alternate revenue sources including; developer impact fees, developer contributions, utility connection charges, utility rate-payer fees, business taxes and federal and state grants, the city reduced the burden on residential Redmond taxpayers for these projects by $29.5 million. In other words, development and other sources paid for 83 percent of the cost, and Redmond taxpayers paid the remaining 17 percent while everyone benefits from these investments.

The mayor and City Council understand that our community’s expectation is that we spend their tax dollars wisely and deliver excellent value to the community with our capital investments. The writer picked six projects that demonstrate that that is exactly what has been done. I hope you agree that the funding strategies used for those six projects represent six good reasons to vote “yes” on Redmond propositions 1 and 2.

John Stilin

Redmond City Council Member

Chair, Public Administration and Finance Committee