With three pedestrian fatalities during a five-month period, the Kenmore City Council has been forced to face what they have been quietly ignoring since we became a city 16 years ago: our roads are highly dangerous and fail to meet legal state safety standards. The council’s high density zoning only exacerbates the problem for decades to come.

When it comes to a financial solution however, the council steadfastly refuses to face two realities. First, road safety taxes are paid annually: Since 1998 the city has actually collected more than $75 million in “road taxes” from us. At current rates they will collect more than $90 million more during the next 16 years. Yet the council is trying to convince the public that none of these taxes are available for road safety.

Second, the council has a legal obligation to spend a “reasonable” amount of our annual road taxes on safety improvements: Under Tortious Conduct laws the council owes taxpayers a “duty to care” and they must exercise that duty in “good faith.”

Nothing says that “I don’t care” like the council’s position that “none” of the taxes we pay every year are for road safety improvements. The council has only three core operating responsibilities: roads, police and land-use regulations, and they want us to believe that none of that money is available for life saving capital improvements?

Nothing demonstrates “bad faith” as the council’s omission of material facts in a statement read into the record on February 14, 2011 when they attempted to mislead the public into believing that our original policy of imposing property and utility taxes “were not” for road maintenance and safety improvements.

If they cared about the loss of life and the future loss of life on our sub-standard streets they would stop using semantic word games and be straightforward about the fact that Kenmore residents have always responsibly paid road taxes every year. If they cared, they would perform a risk management assessment and set aside a reasonable amount of those taxes every year for long-term safety improvements.

If they cared, they would admit to using our road tax surplus dollars to build a bureaucracy that is three times larger than what was objectively determined to be affordable at incorporation.

The council has been using our road taxes as an operating slush-fund for so long that they can’t face these realities.

Talk is cheap and apparently so are the lives of Kenmore’s pedestrians. Follow the money and you will see the extent to which the council accepts their responsibility under the “duty to care” laws.

John Hendrickson, Kenmore