To the Editor:
The proposed $72.7 million new Snohomish Town Hall and Police Department Campus will cost each man, woman and child in the city of 10,000 residents $7,200.
In 2022, Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers announced the county’s purchase of two motels, America’s Best Value Inn located in Edmonds and the Days Inn located near the Everett Mall, with $19.1 million Federal dollars of COVID relief designated for the homeless and under-resourced who strongly objected to the purchases because of fear of drug contamination in the air ducts. When purchased the motels fulfilled the fears of the homeless and were condemned. $19.1 million misspent with nothing to show for it.
The annual Point in Time Count of the homeless in 2202 indicated a count of 1,184 homeless individuals in Snohomish County. The county spent $16,790 in Federal tax dollars on each of these homeless people with only two motels to be torn down to show for it. The public did not have full participation in the purchase of these motels.
I am one of the 1,184 homeless counted in 2022. I became homeless as a victim of fraud. If I was given $16,790, I would have successfully rebuilt my freelance photography business.
Recently the state of Louisiana spent $17.5 million dollars in a no bid contract to relocate, under threat of arrest, approximately 100 unsheltered homeless individuals from the area around the Superdome to an unheated warehouse just prior to the Super Bowl. That was at a cost of approximately $175,000 per homeless individual.
Spending other people’s money must involve their participation.
Les Fetchko
Homeless in Snohomish County
