The city is proposing to buy a 23-acre plot of woodland on Puget Sound from the Tacoma Boy Scouts. The lot is named Camp Kilworth, which was donated to the BSA in the 1930s with the express requirement that the land be used for the aims of Scouting. The Scouts want to sell the land, which they underuse, and use the proceeds to build amenities (such as a new pool and dining hall) at their other camps in Pierce County. Unfortunately, the trustees, a couple of banks and others to whom the land will revert if the deed’s terms are broken, say that plan is no good.

Pending the outcome of the current three-way legal wranglings, the City and Scouts had arranged a deal where the City would get the land as a public park, and the Scouts would get $3 million — and 40 rent-free days of use each year.

This isn’t going to endear me to many in quiet Federal Way, but I say no way. An organization like the Boy Scouts, which discriminates in its membership in two ways that fly in the face of state discrimination principles, shouldn’t get free use of a public park. They should pay any applicable rent or usage fees just like anyone else. I don’t understand why free use was part of the deal; I presume it got the Scouts to lower their asking price down to $3M even. But I don’t care.

I’m not suggesting that the Boy Scouts be banned or that they be denied access to the park. They’re a private organization and it seems they are permitted to discriminate however they want (I guess as long as that discrimination is popularly practiced). I’m saying though, that if they are going to reserve all or portions of a city-owned public park and its buildings for exclusive use for periods at a time, they shouldn’t get a special 100% discount, unless the city is willing to offer such a discount to anyone else who wants it. For what it’s worth, special treatment on the use of public lands by the Scouts has been successfully challenged elsewhere on these same grounds.

Now, the agreement also says the Scouts will “adopt” the park in that they will help clean it up, etc. That would be an okay trade, I think, as work-in-kind for the 40 days of free use the Scouts would get. But the agreement should make it explicit that this is the tradeoff, and that if the Scouts rescind or fail to uphold that condition, then they don’t get free rent. And the city would also have to be willing to offer the exact same deal — park cleanup for free exclusive/overnight park usage — equally to other groups.

I know lots of people probably believe that the BSA is one of the nation’s greatest youth organizations, and I was a Cub Scout myself, but I don’t think you can make a convincing argument that being the nation’s greatest youth organization grants you both freedom to discriminate and special treatment on the use of public land.

You’d better not pout
You’d better not cry
You’d better not shout
I’m tellin’ you why
Accountability’s coming to town

I never thought I’d agree with Frosty Hardison, but I agree with everything he said in his latest letter to the Mirror (well, except for the revolving restaurant bit, which was very strange). Granted, I’m confident my ulterior interest in an elected mayor differs greatly from his. And I don’t expect that an elected mayor will give the Hardisons any new traction on their myriad collection of urgent city issues (like, say, our lack of revolving restaurants). But, it’s telling, I think, that so many diverse interests agree that Federal Way is growing too big for the amorphous, detached twice-monthly booster club known as the City Council.