Kitsap Caucus

Brynn Grimley writes:

At the end of last week I wrote about a meeting held between Port Orchard city officials and Kitsap County officials, at the request of Mary McClure, executive director of the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council. The topic: a revenue-sharing agreement in place that dictates how annexation or incorporation should proceed between the county and the surrounding four cities. (Read that story here).

A revenue-sharing agreement has been in place for almost a decade through the KRCC. The county and the four cities all agreed to adhere to the rules of this document. It spells out how an annexation or incorporation should proceed by way of sharing the cost of services and revenues. Under the agreement the transition takes three years and goes as follows: Year One: the city takes 25 percent of revenue, the county 75 percent; Year Two: it’s a 50-50 split between the entities; Year Three: the city takes 75 percent of revenue, the county 25 percent.

The city of Port Orchard has made its intention known that it no longer wants to be a part of this agreement. Under the laws of the agreement it states a city or the county wanting out may request an immediate reevaluation of the agreement by the KRCC’s revenue sharing policy committee. If a resolution/reevaluation is not agreeable to the requesting party within six months, the party can initiate the steps to get out of the agreement. That’s what Port Orchard has done at this point.

Termination is a 12-month process, and Port Orchard has about five months to go before its free and clear, Mayor Lary Coppola said last week.

But just because the city asked to get out of the revenue-sharing agreement doesn’t mean they will, he said. Ultimately the city feels a “one size fits all” approach to handling revenue sharing is not the answer. Port Orchard learned this after annexing McCormick Woods last year, Coppola said.

That’s why they’ve proposed some alternatives. Those alternatives were presented in a letter written by Coppola to McClure. I’ve attached them below through Scribd. As you read through Coppola’s proposal, remember he wrote this letter to get the conversation going about changing the agreement. What is detailed in the letter IS NOT what the final agreement will look like. As Coppola says in the letter this is “boiler plate” language to give the county and future annexing cities a place to start the conversation.

You’ll note his letter includes suggestions for annexing Port Orchard’s Bethel Corridor from the county into the city. One example gives a one-year transition period, where the city and county split everything 50-50 the first year; while the second example suggests a two-year transition period starting with a 50-50 split the first year, following by a 75-25 split the second year in favor of the city.

It sounds like from last week’s meeting the city, county and KRCC folks realized this was a good thing to start talking about. No one was against it, and everyone (at this point at least) sounded ready to work together on a solution that would benefit the county and cities.

This makes sense when you look at state law. As much as some people don’t agree with it, the law is written so that urban growth areas will annex into neighboring cities (or in Kingston and Silverdale’s case they’ll incorporate). As a result the county will lose a significant portion of its tax base, and will be forced to reduce the services it provides from a more urban level to a regional level. (Regional services include: assessor, auditor, prosecutor, district and superior courts, and coroner).

Below you’ll see Coppola’s letter to McClure (again remember this is just a letter to get a conversation going); and if you really want to geek out, I’ve attached a KRCC analysis titled “KRCC Urban Services Delivery Project” from 2007. I found it interesting and easy to understand. (While it was written three years ago, it does a good job of explaining what needs to be done when looking into annexation/incorporation).

Coppola Letter

KRCC Annexation Report_07

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 4:00 am by brynn grimley and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.