When Jim Ferrell was elected mayor, he promised downtown economic development as his primary objective.

When he said at the Council retreat that he was going to make improvements by planting grass and removing cement at the city’s acquired AMC site, I thought it was a good idea.

However, that plan has evolved into including a basketball court, and possibly other areas for sports activities, at the cost of many thousands of dollars. All, by the way, intended to be only temporary, and  to be completed by July 4.

My question is, why we are not spending our park development funds to create a park plan that is in sync with present day development? Would it not be better to create a partnership with a developer and offer to build the public park component as part of the overall plan? We apparently have the money available to do that.

If building a sports park in our downtown, where users will have to walk a distance, or drive to get to it, at a location where we want business economic development is the plan, I am baffled to understand the strategy.

Bob Kellogg, Federal Way