By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

If you ask Shoreline residents if they think cityhood has brought any improvements, odds are they will mention the police.

"I feel safer now," says Mickie Gau, the Richmond Beach resident. "If you have a problem, (the police) don't have to come here from Snoqualmie Falls."

The larger number of police cars on Shoreline's streets still are staffed by King County police. But now the city contracts with the county for police services and specifies staffing levels.

Gau also says she likes having the local government closer to home. "We know just who to speak to," she says. "It's not like having to go to the county, you know just who to say, 'Hey, cut it out' to."

The police also seem to be more a part of the community now, says Paul Willms, who lives in the Richmond Highlands area. "The police are very small-town now," he says. "It's not like a big city at all."

Gretchen Atkinson, a travel agent who is part of a group trying to spruce up the North City business district, says it's easy to get the ear of the new city's officials.

"It would be much harder working with King County," she says. "They're too big, and they don't have time to deal with projects like this."

Janet Way, who heads a neighborhood group trying to revitalize Paramount Park in southeast Shoreline, has a similar feeling. The nine-acre park, she says, "was a small site for the county, but for us it's a big wetland. It was hard to get the county to really take notice."

The new city government last year budgeted several thousand dollars so the Paramount Park group could try to reintroduce the native Pacific chorus frog. Way says that since the frogs are so tiny, it's still hard to tell if the project was successful. They'll have to wait until spring to determine if there's a an audible frog chorus.