I would like to thank those who came to the recent taxpayer roundtable meeting. I apologize to those who couldn’t make it owing in large part to the start time of 4 p.m.; unfortunately, that was unavoidable owing to the library’s calendar.
However, I am going to hold another roundtable as it was obvious one is needed to continue the dialogue about taxes. It got a bit heated around the utility tax discussion, but cool heads prevailed. There was also angst regarding marijuana (aka pot shops) being considered for licensing by the Federal Way City Council. In fact, this topic got pretty hot and passionate.
It was calmed down by my suggestion that those who oppose or are in favor simply write their city council members on their positions. It was interesting to go through the tax revenue charts on the city’s website. I will bring those again for further discussion at the next meeting.
We did touch on the public market idea that I’ve been promoting, but we were running short on time and I closed with expressing my thoughts that the public market that I envision will work in unison with the current Federal Way Farmers Market.
Many people do not know this, but Farmers Market leader Rose Ehl and I are close friends, and at one point we both thought that it would be good to purchase the former Federal Way Public Schools warehouse on the former bus barn property where the new apartments are situated across the street from Safeway on 320th Street.
In hindsight, that would have been a wonderful location, but the school district needed to sell the entire piece in order to afford to build their new bus barn shop facility and warehouse, which today is located across the street from Celebration Park.
If anyone would like to join our discussion group, we have formed a Google group and you can reach me via email at RGFlygare@comcast.net. There are over a dozen people interested in helping put this into reality.
Our biggest challenge seems to be location. Many have expressed the idea that it has to be in the city center, but I am not so sure. I like the city center, but there’s not much available space for a public market.
I am working on a location for the month of September for the next meeting, so please keep an eye out in the paper and on social media outlets such as Facebook and Next Door.
Roger Flygare
Federal Way
