This Renton School District chart is deceptive. It shows taxes dropping on a home “valued in 2025 at $750,000.” But the value of the unrealistic house in this chart is $750,000 every year (not just 2025). Real Renton houses doubled in value during these ten years and had major increases in their taxes.
Renton School District is preparing to ask voters to renew operating and technology levies on the November ballot. While I support schools, I’m alarmed (again) by the misleading and unethical way District leaders are making the case for the money.
Their current website has a chart for an “Example home valued in 2025 at $750,000,” and shows the taxes dropping from $4,012 in 2016 to an expected $2,542 in 2026. That sounds great, except it is completely wrong.
A typical home worth $750,000 in 2025 would have been valued at about half that in 2016, or approximately $375,000. Hence the Renton School District local taxes would have been $2006, not $4012 back then.
So 2026 taxes on an “Example home valued in 2025 at $750,000” have risen about 25% over the time period, NOT dropped by 37% as errantly shown.
This chart has earned an “F” in both mathematics AND in ethics.
Months before the news broke this morning that the Asphalt Plant was halted, “Save the Cedar River” leader Bob Baker was on record with a Churchill-like fortitude “We have every intention of stopping this project. We will take this to the very end. If it takes another five years, it takes another five years.” Similarly, County Councilmember Reagan Dunn made his position clear in an open letter to the King County Council, calling the plant a “Mistake of Monumental Proportions” which threatened the “Cedar River- the drinking water source for 1.4 million people in the region, and critical habitat for Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, and Kokanee salmon..”
Bob Baker’s “Save the Cedar River” organization and Councilmember Reagan Dunn worked to protect salmon spawning grounds and our drinking water aquifer
In contrast, Renton’s Mayor Armondo Pavone published a lengthy press release five months ago undermining Mr. Baker’s and Mr. Dunn’s strong positions, titled “Word on the Street.” This press release attempted to assure the public that the Asphalt Plant proposal was “relatively low” risk. It included two pages of arguments like “The contamination risk is further lessened by on-site requirements of the asphalt plant.” and “Any spills from those tanks would be confined to the containment areas to allow for cleanup.” The Mayor’s press release characterized the many environmental concerns broadly as “misinformation.”
The ridiculous “misinformation” label frustrated Mr. Baker so much that he confronted the Mayor and Council directly on the environmental issues at a Renton City Council Meeting this past March.
Now that Bob Baker, Reagan Dunn, and Lakeside Industries have succeeded in saving the Cedar River and its underlying aquifer from the risk of contamination by the asphalt plant, the Renton Mayor’s office is scrambling to articulate a new position.
Renton School District has sent out another quarterly mailer that misleads 130,000 residents about their taxes. Renton’s school taxes have been on a fast-rising trend since 2020 as shown in the chart below. Where the mailer says “we continue to see a decrease of our school district total combined tax rate even as our voters support school construction measures,” district leaders appear to be either: (a) trying to mislead the public into thinking that taxes are dropping because of their good stewardship; or (b) demonstrating they don’t understand math. Either way, it raises issues about whether they are qualified to teach our children math. School tax rates-per-thousand are dropping simply because assessed valuations are skyrocketing, and the net effect is that our actual taxes paid for schools are going up sharply.
The District did drop the most flagrant sentence from their last mailer that said “that’s a $1500 savings for the owner of a home valued at $715,000” after I posted about it, but even without this statement the graph and verbiage remains misleading.
Since they are leading an educational system, I look forward to one day receiving a mailer that says “Yes, we acknowledge your school taxes are going up, and here are the reasons we think you are getting good value for the extra money you are giving us” followed by a list of achievements and plans proving they are spending every dollar wisely in a way that improves student performance.
I’ve voted for every school bond issue in the past, and I care deeply about our schools. In return for this support I expect an honest accounting of the cost trends and results from the district. Whoever is suggesting that they make it look like our taxes are dropping in every one of these mailers should be sent for retraining or serve a time-out in the corner.
In reality, the taxes for the school district are rising quickly. This is a typical Renton Highlands house (owned by my son) valued at $723,000 in 2025. This house appreciated at a normal rate with all the others, with no remodeling. The local school taxes went up significantly.
This 2021-2025 chart for my son’s typical Renton home comes directly from King County’s Tax Transparency Tool. The red bar is the local schools tax, and the blue is our state school tax. 56% of our property taxes goes to schools. Total school tax has increased from $3,134 to $4,092. Local school taxes have increased from $1,658 to $2,469, up $811, a 32% increase (about twice the rate of inflation).
As several controversial projects and long-festering problems reached a boiling point in last night’s Council Meeting, residents urgently requested more detailed and specific information, and intervention from their elected officials. But at the meeting and its aftermath, it’s clear that most residents felt they were just getting a story from the council, not the facts.
This appears to have been by design by the City, and it failed pretty spectacularly last night.
The Council has recently adopted a new communication plan and funded two additional new communication positions in the Mayor’s office (adding to several already there). The plan literally focuses on “storytelling”, and very little on providing comprehensive information and easy-to-find public records.
Perhaps “Storytelling” has a place in a marketing campaign, but this Communication and Engagement plan provides the structure for government officials and city employees to communicate with their constituents. We’re looking for data and assistance, not a story. Large companies get in trouble when they tell stories to their regulators.
The Mayor issued a statement on Friday about the Renton Airport which focussed on specific subjects I had been covering in my blog. I’m not sure who prepared the statement for him, or if he did it himself, but it has numerous errors in it. If it was prepared by individuals making decisions at our airport, it unfortunately validates concerns I’ve heard voiced about a shortage of experience and engagement in Renton’s airport leadership.
I have reviewed the Mayor’s statement paragraph-by-paragraph, and inserted my comments in bold or in blue or purple underline. My blue or purple underlined comments link to more detailed blog entries, which in turn link to the source data (like leases, emails, documents, etc).
The Mayor’s words are in italics.
_______________________________________
April 12, 2024
Good afternoon, Renton –
I’d like to take a moment to address a few points of interest I’ve heard garnering a lot of attention around the Renton Municipal Airport. There’s a lot of speculation out there, and some misinformation – and the fastest way to address that is to focus on the facts.
A primary source of misinformation is this Mayoral statement. If someone wrote it for the Mayor, they need some retraining. I’ll respond with accurate blog posts that include proof.
1. Is there a brand-new business coming into the Renton Municipal Airport?
One of our longterm existing airport tenants (Pro Flight Aviation) has sold their existing business to a new operator (Dark Horse Aviation). Under the terms of the 35 year lease, the existing tenant has the express right to do this. The only role the city can play is in evaluating the new operator’s financial capacity, experience in running an FBO, or fixed-based operator business, and compliance with Airport Leasing Policy.
FBOs are required to maintain public buildings, like customer lobbies, offices, pilot lounges, restrooms, and adequate parking. They also have to provide a ramp area for aircraft parking for at least five aircraft. An FBO is also mandated to have regular operation hours schedule, open for a minimum of eight hours per day and seven days per week. After-hours fueling services must also be available either through on-call employees or shared schedules, but the operational and regulatory demands contribute to the limitations on the airport’s 24/7 operations.
3. Shouldn’t this have been reviewed by the Renton Airport Advisory Committee? In short, no. The only role the city has in this scope is to review the new operator’s feasibility and have city council approve this. There are specific provisions noting that consent should not be “unreasonably withheld, conditioned or denied” by the council. If we took any other action beyond what is described in the lease, the city could have been open to an FAA Part 16 Complaint, or a potential lawsuit for damages as a result of losing the sale of the business.As stated above, there are many ways to influence the lease, and they are encouraged by the FAA-sponsored Renton Airport Sustainability Plan.
A statement from the Mayor claims the historic old control tower building, along with two popular airport hangars, were “originally scheduled for demolition in 2015.” This is false.
A public statement issued by the Mayor two days ago provided inaccurate information about the buildings occupied by The Landing Gear Works. “The City of Renton is moving through the legal process of eviction of a tenant for a long-standing non-payment of rent. The occupied buildings in question were originally scheduled for demolition in 2015.”
The statement says “buildings” plural, indicating that the old tower building together with the hangars leased by Landing Gear Works were all scheduled to be torn down in 2015. Discussion of tearing down the hangars in 2015 is nonsense, as they were in good shape and in high demand. They should only be demolished if better replacements are planned and shovel-ready.
Potential long-term replacement of the old tower building has been discussed notionally for years, and an appropriate advisory statement was added to the lease. But the building was never “scheduled for demolition”, and still isn’t to this day. The building was designated Aircraft Manufacturing space in the 2017 FAA-approved Renton Airport Layout Plan with no reference to possible removal, and this status was unchanged until 2022.
The lengthy process for demolishing and replacing this building involves an airport layout plan revision, public notification, RAAC review, Council approval, FAA approval, environmental review, Requests for Proposal, bid openings, new building plans, lease negotiations, and many other steps– a process that generally takes years. In the nine years elapsed since 2015, the only step taken has been the first one, the 2022 Airport Layout Plan now says the building might possibly be replaced at some future date.
So why does the Mayor’s statement say these building were scheduled for demolition? Unfortunately, this looks like an excuse for the airport neglecting the old tower building since 2015.
According to a 2019 email from Landing Gear Works to the Airport Business Manager, the airport stopped repairing the un-leased sections of this building– the historic tower, hallways, bathrooms, and other public areas– many years ago. (These areas were not leased to The Landing Gear Works.) One would expect these areas to be professionally cared for by the airport.
It is not okay to stop maintaining a building in Renton just because the owner decides it will be torn down at some future date. This is unsafe, and contrary to building codes. They city should set a good example, not a bad one.
Renton’s code enforcement division has allowed vacant buildings to become hazards in our city. For instance, the large seven-story glass office buildings on Park Avenue, that served as Boeing offices until 2021, have become dystopian and deadly, with broken glass, missing fire protection, and reported open elevator shafts. Residents have been pleading for action from Renton code enforcement. City officials say not to worry because the buildings are scheduled for demolition in the future, but the danger is real today. Will the Landing Gear Works building be next?
Missing doors and broken windows allow thieves to steal metal from fire protection systems in the seven-story office buildings on Park and 6th, vacated and sold by Boeing in 2021. Broken glass, fire hazards, and fall hazards put curious youth in peril.
Just a few days ago Landing Gear Works repaired a leaking 2 inch water main in the old tower building. Fortunately, they discovered it quickly, repaired the pipe, and cleaned up the mess. The leak would have flooded the entire building if it had been vacant.
A few days ago Landing Gear Works made an emergency repair on a gushing 2″ water main in their ceiling; if the building had been vacant it would have flooded
We need our Public Works office and Code Enforcement to help keep all of Renton’s buildings looking their best, regardless of how many years the buildings have left. Working with Landing Gear Works on roof repairs would have been the easy, cost-effective approach to protect the airport’s old tower building while they complete the lengthy public process for making eventual improvements. If they insist on going through with the eviction, they must have a plan to keep the building safe and looking good until final decisions are made about its future.
Below is an email from Tom Anderson, President of Landing Gear Works, in 2019, asking the the Airport Business Manager to properly maintain the public parts of the old tower building. Tom eventually did the maintenance himself.
———- Forwarded message ———
From: Thomas Anderson <tom@tlgw.aero>
Date: Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 2:15 PM
Subject: Building issue/Leven Lease
To: Casey Boatman <CBoatman@rentonwa.gov>
Casey,
I hope you had a great week.
As I am sure you are aware that we have been fighting water leaks here ever since we moved in. The airport initially took care of us in 2013-2015. Fixing items as required and maintaining the grass that merged into the public ramp area. In 2016 we finalized and leased the whole building and three hangers in building one. There is also public areas still here that we do not lease, hallways, bathrooms, the tower, etc. We had always complied with the terms of the lease and made sure minor repairs were done.The airport leased us a supposedly turn key building as so we can make a living and contribute to the community. In 2016 the airport stopped or greatly cut down on the services we had depended on. The roof is in very poor shape and we have attempted under airport guidance to make repairs, bandaids at best. At first the trade off for reasonable lease rates made it possible for us to afford the maintenance. However the Airport and the transportation division of the city has used its advantage to reduce our working area in building 1 and thus we have now used every square inch of 295 prime space. Three times in the last 2 years we had to move everything out of 800 square feet to keep office furniture, office equipment, sensitive records, drawings and such safe from water damage. I am asking for help here as the public areas above the halls are the main area that the airport, in my humble opinion, should be maintaining.
The next question is where are we at with our lease application proposal? We are now more than ever wanting to take over the SW corner and move into a nice useful and mutually beneficial facility. There is an unconfirmed rumor floating around that the Leven Estate will be granted a 10 year extension over the original lease. Is this true? If my opinion is worth a nickel, it should be legally challenged. I am sure there is a way through our legal efforts to make sure businesses like ours are fast tracked into space that is GA community beneficial, safe, dry and spacious. I doubt if the original lease holder is true to the original intention. Bruce died and his estate really does not use the space as was intended. It probably can be shown one or two corporate aircraft and businesses are not related to the ideas of the original lessee.
Let me know as soon as you can what the airport can do for us, possibly a credit for currently condemned space, options for possible partial use of a closed building to the south, building 1 or the old Kaynan main hanger that does not have major leak problems. Any future ideas we may find attractive? I do wish and hope to grace these grounds as TLGW grows in support of Renton and this awesome airport.
A RAAC meeting was held in 2023, after a one and a half year period of no meetings
In a statement yesterday, Mayor Pavone dismissed one of the most important tools we’ve used to maintain a livable city; The Renton Airport Advisory Committee (RAAC).
I’ve written about this committee frequently, providing background here. In this entry I want to address a comment that shows his fundamental misunderstanding of the role and effectiveness of this committee
The Mayor diminished the effect they’ve had in the past by writing “RAAC has a limited scope as an advisory committee, and can make suggestions, but are not in charge of setting policy or changing lease agreements. “
The Mayor’s comment is wrong, just as it would be wrong to claim that the Chamber of Commerce is merely advisory to the City Council. The RAAC is made up of pilots, aviation professionals, and residents, who have authority in their planes and neighborhoods that the Renton City Council does not possess.
To put it succinctly, as soon as a plane is airborne, city council has no more influence over them. Residents can have some influence, lodging FAA complaints if they feel unduly impacted and they track airplane tail numbers. This is where RAAC shines. Pilots, aviation professionals and other airport users work with neighborhood representatives to establish voluntary standards that keep complaints to a minimum. The FAA has a representative on RAAC that participates, and so does city council. This work is not subordinate to Renton City Council.
When RAAC is working smoothly, it’s an excellent forum for creating operational documents, voluntary noise standards, airport layout plans, lease policies, fuel policies, and other important work. With such an organization at our disposal, staffed with aviation experts freely giving their time and talent, it’s a terrible waste to not activate them. There is strong precedent for them setting lease rates and providing other leasing decisions.
Unfortunately, because the Administration appears to think “they have limited scope as an advisory committee,” the RAAC has been effectively grounded most of the past few years. This has allowed relationships to get more tense at the airport, and noise levels to increase in our neighborhoods. Soon jets that are three-times noisier than prop planes will start landing regularly for fill-ups, and we will have missed our chance to engage RAAC to mitigate the issues.
All of this because the administration does not understand the RAAC’s capability or role.
Renton’s Pro-flight hangars are being marketed for jet parking.
In a statement yesterday, Renton’s Mayor claimed that there was nothing the city could have done to prevent Proflight from selling their facility for private jet parking. His capitulatory statement almost rolls out the red carpet to jets from Boeing Field.
“One of our long-term existing airport tenants (Pro Flight Aviation) has sold their existing business to a new operator (Dark Horse Aviation). Under the terms of the 35 year lease, the existing tenant has the express right to do this. The only role the city can play is in evaluating the new operator’s financial capacity, experience in running an FBO, or fixed-based operator business, and compliance with Airport Leasing Policy.”….”The new firm is looking to try to service jets shut out of Boeing Field; however, this was going to occur naturally as Boeing Field is taking on greater importance as a cargo hub and site of large business aircraft. “
This position contrasts with many Renton officials of the past, who have worked hard to prevent a Jet Center in Renton. Mayor Jess Tanner, a former FAA executive living just west of our airport, become involved in city politics when he was appointed to the city’s aviation board overseeing the Renton airport after his retirement in 1980. He was determined to keep our airport focussed on prop-powered general aviation along with new Boeing takeoffs.
Mayor Tanner appointed an Airport Manager who shared Mayor Tanner’s affection for diverse, accessible general aviation, and understood the airport would thrive if it had both aviation community and Renton community buy-in. This manager helped draft the Proflight lease in a way that encouraged propeller airplane services, like flight training, aerial photography, rental aircraft, and repairs, ahead of jet parking. The lease was negotiated with the owners of Proflight when they sought to build their beautiful new building, and needed a long-term lease.
This effective Airport Manager took another important step, spearheading the city’s work in creating the Renton Airport Sustainability Management Plan. This plan, which the FAA helped sponsor with $150,000, could assure we had a sustainable, effective, neighborly airport into the future. The Renton Airport Advisory Committee (RAAC)– composed of industry representatives, airport tenants, residents, Renton officials, and FAA — worked with a consultant to create and approve this plan.
The Sustainability Management Plan would be an important tool for introducing new tenants and working with them toward a successful future. But for the plan to work, the Airport Manager has to make it work. There are daily, monthly, quarterly and annual, and biennial tasks for the Airport Manager in the plan, and few of these were getting done as the airport leadership changed five times in the past five years (with one airport director working remotely from out-of-state).
If the Airport Management sustainability tasks had been getting completed, and the RAAC had been empowered to meet regularly to assist, other attractive uses for Proflight might have been available. Or Proflight could have received a rent-reduction, in exchange for a lease that further limited future jet activity. Or when the new lease was signed with Dark Horse, they could have been advised that they would only be allowed to expand in the future under certain conditions, like preserving prop-powered airplane services. Or new voluntary noise agreements could be reached in exchange for future consideration, or operating hours might have been agreed to. The new tenant could have been informed they had to study the sustainability plan and commit to it, as is expected with other Renton standards and procedures. I’m sure many other levers for influencing the future were available, but cast aside. Instead, the Mayor’s statement says there’s no way to influence it.
Below is some of the specific language in the Proflight lease that encouraged a community-focussed facility over jet parking. With collaboration, this could have been further improved on over the years:
I was surprised to see the Mayor issue a statement tonight defending the Airport Director’s actions at the airport. In my blog entries on the topic, I had not mentioned the Mayor, but his statement shows that a lack of knowledge of aviation goes all the way up to the Mayor’s office.
I immediately spotted many errors in the Mayor’s statement, and I don’t have time to respond to all of them right now. I will point out a very obvious one for starters.
The Mayor’s statement includes this question and answer:
2. Will Renton Municipal Airport be opened up to 24/7 jet traffic?
No, any business operations will be subject to the air traffic control tower operation hours – from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM in winter; and 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM during summer.
But Renton residents under the flight path need to merely look up at night to see that our airport is open 24/7. When the tower is closed, pilots self-report their arrivals and departures.
Residents can confirm the airport’s hours on the City of Renton’s own website. Our airport is a 24/7 operation. Note paragraph 3 below says pilots can not be directed when or where to fly. Here is an excerpt.
After working for 33 years in aviation, with 28 years on City Council, I feel like this is a lop-sided debate.
Tomorrow I plan to address problems with the Mayor’s statement regarding the jet center, the RAAC, the lease policies, the current eviction, and the statement that the old control tower was scheduled for demolition in 2015.
