Lack of access to park is ‘criminal’

I tried to go to the beach recently at Howarth Park. Not only is the bridge access (and all access to the beach) closed for the entire summer, but then the beach is going to be closed from September through spring 2016 for renovation.

People in Everett wait all year to finally get beach weather, and tis really is the only decent beach access in all of Everett. Sure, you can go to Mukilteo, which is much further away, very crowded and hard to get parking. And although the upper park area has been made very nice, and views are great, the beach itself is basically nothing but rocks. The jetty is a lot of fun, but won’t open for well over a month. For that you have to take a ferry, which usually involves a lot of waiting. Also parking is usually very bad. It’s a great place to go for a special little day trip, but is nowhere near as easy to get access to as the Howarth Park beach. There you can drive and park, go over the foot bridge, and you have a lovely, sandy beach, not too crowded, children playing on the actual beach, dogs chasing sticks into the water, people swimming and playing on logs, and everyone having a generally lovely time. It is peaceful and just beautiful. And now no one can use it for nearly a year.

That bridge has been down there for decades. It has been rusty for decades. Just last week the bridge did not suddenly develop a problem that could not easily have been seen or anticipated months before, if not a year before.

I think what the city of Everett should do is make a fix that allows this bridge to be used over the summer (fixed in the next couple of weeks.) They can close it in the fall to do a more complete job. They want to run things this badly, they can pay for their mistake and still give the people of Everett access to the beach when it really matters. Give what our weather is like around here, it basically is “criminal” to have that beach access closed over the summer.

Leslie Peterson

Everett