Annexation Tool Could Limit Residents’ Ability to Say ‘No’
September 18th, 2009 by Steven GardnerBesides an update on the Manette bridge and what will happen to that little park on the east side, I’m working on a story that shows how the Legislature passed a bill this last session that would make it fairly simple for cities to annex unincorporated areas, with residents getting no right to overturn it with a vote.
The language was in Senate Bill 5808. The bill itself deals primarily with how fire department employees are treated upon an annexation of an area. In the bill, however, is language that stipulates that if the city, county and fire district come to an agreement on the annexation, it happens. No referendum possible.
State Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard, was the only Kitsap legislator to vote against it. In fact, in the Senate the bill only received two “nay” votes. She said she voted against it specifically because of the annexation language.
State Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, ran for King County executive and on his Web site refers to 5808 in a section called “Hard Choices.”
“There are structural problems in the budget that must be resolved. Estimates are that the cost of providing services to the unincorporated areas inside the urban growth area exceeds the revenue from those areas by $25-30 million dollars a year, a substantial fraction of the CX fund deficit. The County has recognized this cost for years, but done nothing substantive about changing it. I took action this year in the legislature to address this. The package of financial incentives in SB 5321, plus the annexation tools in SB 5808 should result in almost all the major annexations being completed in the next 3-5 years.”
There was an effort to overturn 5808 by referendum, but it failed to get off the ground.
Cities are under some mandate to expand to take in urban growth areas. The annexations I’ve seen that are most successful are when the property owners come to the city. When Bremerton has tried to convince residents to come into town, the efforts I’ve seen have failed.
Andrea Spencer, director of community development, said the city has had no discussions about employing the tactic, but it did come up at the council’s budget meeting in the summer.
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