Decision time on Arboretum expansion funding

As I discussed at length way back in September (see here), the funding of the Arboretum expansion project will be done entirely out of hotel occupancy tax revenue. But there are still two ways to go about this. One way requires a vote of the citizens of Woodway to approve, the other does not. What I said in that earlier post still holds: there are advantages to doing this without the approval vote. I had asked my blog readers for their opinions on this, but received none at all. So I conclude that there are no strong feelings on this issue among Woodway residents. And that makes sense, because restrictions on how the occupancy tax revenue is spent allow for funding of almost nothing outside of the Arboretum anyway (except advertising, which is already ramping up significantly; more on that later).

This issue will be discussed at the January 24th Council meeting, which I cannot attend, but I have let the City Manager Yost Zakhary know that I support the non-election option. If you have strong feelings about this, you should attend the meeting and speak during the "hearing from visitors" time.