Letter: Island Rec Levy Supports Programs, Trails, Sports

By Travis and Jen­nifer Ayers, Fri­day Harbor

We encour­age all eli­gi­ble vot­ers to join us and vote YES for the renew­al of Island Rec’s levy on April 27.

This is not a new levy; it remains at $0.385 per $1,000 of assessed prop­er­ty val­ue. It is worth not­ing that this rate is only 64% of the amount allowed by law.

At the request­ed rate, a $500,000 prop­er­ty would pay $193 per year, which is a very rea­son­able amount of mon­ey when you con­sid­er all of the won­der­ful pro­grams that Island Rec provides.

The $0.165 of the levy would con­tin­ue to sup­port Island Rec pro­grams and trails.

The $0.10 would con­tin­ue sup­port for school sports, and the remain­ing $0.12 would con­tin­ue to sup­port oper­a­tions and main­te­nance of Island Rec Parks.

Over the past six-year levy cycle near­ly 18,000 par­tic­i­pants have ben­e­fit­ed from Island Rec programming!

We want to specif­i­cal­ly point out that, with­out a renewed levy, high school sports would not have any fund­ing. We’ve per­son­al­ly seen the immense toll that the lack of sports activ­i­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic has tak­en on high school stu­dent ath­letes. In our view, it is imper­a­tive to ensure that finan­cial sup­port for sports is pro­vid­ed well into the future.

You can find more infor­ma­tion at www.islandrec.org/levy

Island Rec is an inte­gral part of Island life. Please vote YES to renew the levy on April 27.

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