Opinion: Metro’s parks and nature levy deserves a ‘yes’ vote

Bob Sallinger and Ashton Simpson

Sallinger is conservation director of Audubon Society of Portland. Simpson is councilor-elect for District 1 on the Metro Council.

The Metro parks and nature levy is up for renewal on the November poll. This levy, which has been in place for greater than decade, ensures funding to keep up and restore regional pure areas and supply grants for applications that enhance entry to nature. The levy, Measure 26-225, is crucial for supporting a system that protects water high quality, supplies habitat for fish and wildlife, creates resilience within the face of local weather change, and supplies equitable entry to nature for all of the area’s residents.

Metro takes a two-pronged strategy to funding our regional system of parks, trails and pure areas. Greenspace bonds, just like the one which handed in 2019, permit for capital bills similar to the acquisition of latest land. Levies fund operational bills similar to upkeep, habitat restoration and group engagement grants. They’re the flip aspect of the identical coin: Bonds permit us to broaden the system, and levies be certain that the system now we have is secure, wholesome and accessible.

Metro took on possession, administration and restoration of regional parks and pure areas greater than three a long time in the past particularly as a result of native jurisdictions weren’t geared up to deal with the complexity of huge regional parks and pure areas similar to Oxbow, Blue Lake and Chehalem Ridge. The regional company developed staffing, assets and experience for that goal. The outcomes are spectacular: The system grew, tens of hundreds of acres have been restored to well being and thousands and thousands of individuals now have the chance to take pleasure in nature. There isn’t any native park district—three a long time in the past, or now–ready to take this on.

And Metro parks are a number of the most visited in your complete area. Funding from levies, together with this one, are crucial to creating them extra accessible. Websites similar to Killin Wetlands and Newell Creek Canyon noticed enormous enhancements in public entry below the final levy. Renewal of the levy will permit for much more entry. Metro has a robust historical past of offering alternatives to expertise nature, whereas defending and restoring fragile pure areas in a means that additionally improves water high quality, will increase fish and wildlife habitat, sequesters carbon and makes our panorama extra resilient to local weather change.

Group partnerships and grant applications are so necessary. They get individuals into the parks now we have, in addition to convey nature schooling into faculties and group nature tasks into neighborhoods. For comparatively little funding, these levy-funded applications can assist extra children, of us with low incomes and other people of coloration entry and respect nature’s advantages with out vastly increasing the variety of nature parks or miles of path. The levy helps everybody, regardless of the place they stay, have entry to nature.

This renewal doesn’t elevate the tax charge. It merely maintains the present levy at 9.6 cents for $1,000 of assessed property worth—or about $2 a month for a house with an assessed worth of $250,000. There are such a lot of causes to put money into nature throughout the metro area: human well being, fairness, clear air and water, recreation, local weather resilience, carbon sequestration. The necessity and the demand have by no means been extra obvious. Now we have an important system of regional parks and pure areas, and by persevering with our current funding we are able to be certain that this technique is maintained, restored and turns into extra accessible over time.

We urge you to proceed to assist us put money into defending nature for our future generations to take pleasure in, by voting sure on the levy renewal.