INSIDE

Donor offers up to $50,000 for
purchase of proposed Lily Point park

By Meg Olson

An anonymous donor has approached the local taxpayers association through a third party offering to provide matching funds for local donations towards the purchase of property at Lily Point for future public use.

“I was talking to a friend and he became pretty excited about it,” said Ed Park at the September 6 meeting of the association board. “He has good feelings for Point Roberts and he also has money he could devote to this effort.” Park added his friend, who wished to be known only as “a Canadian friend of Point Roberts,” hope the grant would serve as an impetus for local fundraising efforts, establishing strong evidence of local support being essential to securing outside funding needed to buy the land. “His idea is to make a challenge grant for matching funds up to $50,000,” Park said.

Park also said his friend had some questions for the association to look into before he could commit funds, including which entity would officially take on the task of pursuing the acquisition of the Lily Point property, including fundraising, and did that entity have non-profit tax-exempt status. Association president Michael Rosser said while the taxpayers association did not, the association’s legal defense fund did.
However, Rosser added later, members of the association interested in pursuing the project would be forming an independent group and pursuing tax-exempt status. “We don’t feel we, as the taxpayers association, are the appropriate group to do that,” he said. “We have other things we need to do and this needs to be pursued by a single purpose organization. This is just starting with us.”

Park also asked whether the intentions of property owners at Lily Point were known, and if they planned to develop, such as the Stanton Properties proposal for up to 100 homes west of Lily Point, would they be willing to financially participate in a public park in the area. Finally he asked, “What happens to all the donations if the deal falls through?”
Association board member Marc Robbins recommended all these questions be looked at in the larger context of an acquisition strategy. “This is such a huge issue for our association I think it would be best if all of this became part of that discussion,” he said.

In a later interview Rosser said Park was not the first to approach the association with an offer to help financially in pursuing the goal of Lily Point as a public park. “We’re not quite ready to be accepting money but people are already coming out of the woodwork,” he said. Several taxpayers association members will be putting together an independent group whose only task will be Lily Point preservation, and who will start with fundraising locally. “Lily Point is not going to be preserved by moral persuasion,” he said. “We’re going to have to raise the money.”