Putting his money where his mouth is, Mayor Ed Murray contributed $500 to the Seattle Parks For All campaign earlier this month, according to Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission records. The campaign is backing a ballot initiative that would create a metropolitan parks district in Seattle. The district would be governed by the members of the City Council, acting as the district's board, and would levy property taxes to help cover the cost of parks and other recreational facilities. Murray sent legislation to the council earlier this year that paved the way for the district measure to get put on the ballot. The mayor see the district as a way to provide a stable source of funding for the city's parks and to help take care of a maintenance backlog that is apparently around $267 million. He stumped for the initiative Monday with a number of other supporters at the Yesler Community Center. — B.L.
Murray pitches in bucks for parks
Republish Article
You can republish articles in print or online. Simply copy the HTML below, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline, and credit to Cascade PBS. Republishing of the photos or videos embedded in an article can occur only if the photo or video is a copyright of Cascade Public Media ("CPM") and not of a third party. Photos and videos that are a copyright of CPM are not required to appear in the republished article, but if they are used, they must be embedded where they appear in the original article and must include the attribution to the CPM photographer.
- You may reprint in any medium
- You may edit only for tense and timeliness
- If republishing in print you can edit for length if you follow our print republishing guidelines.
- You may write your own headline
- Include a byline and shirttail with credit and link to Cascade PBS
- Include our tracking pixel
- Remove if we ask

Our members' donations make local journalism happen.
Support once for $1
Support monthly for $7
- Cascade PBS Passport
- Mossback members-only newsletter
- Monthly Viewer Guide
Support monthly for $25
- Invitation to quarterly news and original programming video conference
- Annual in-person meet-up with news & programming teams
- Special event perks (reduced price or free tickets, cocktails, etc.)
By Bill Lucia
Bill Lucia writes about Seattle City Hall and politics for Crosscut. He can be reached at bill.lucia@crosscut.com and you can follow him on Twitter @bill_lucia.
Bill Lucia writes about Seattle City Hall and politics for Crosscut. He can be reached at bill.lucia@crosscut.com and you can follow him on Twitter @bill_lucia.