News - Local News

POSTED: Monday, Oct. 05, 2009

Law change allows annexations without public signatures, votes

A new state law lets local governments pull unincorporated areas into city limits without any public vote or signature from landowners, but it may not get much use in Whatcom County.

The law also makes it easier to request annexations to Bellingham using the current method, where landowners sign or refuse to sign a petition.

Under state law, unincorporated urban growth areas just outside city limits can be annexed into a city. In Whatcom County, land generally must be annexed before utilities are made available, which allows for urban development. That can be controversial because people often choose to live in those areas to avoid urban living.

Whatcom County cities currently use a landowner petition method for annexation. But under the new law, it could be done without a petition. If landowners oppose or support annexation, their only voice would be through lobbying elected leaders.

That's worrisome to some.

"That wouldn't sit well with me," Bellingham City Council member Gene Knutson said. "That won't work in this county and this community. People won't stand for that."

The City Council plans to discuss annexations soon, and Knutson said he'll bring up discussion of this new method.

"If they want to talk about annexations, we have to talk about this crap, because it's not good at all," he said.

PETITION METHOD

The law makes it easier to propose annexation under the petition method, but in Whatcom County the change affects only Bellingham.

Currently for Bellingham to consider annexation, petitioners, who are often developers, have to gather signatures of owners of 75 percent of the area's land value. The City Council must still hold a hearing before passing a law officially annexing the land.

Under the new law, petitioners need signatures from owners of 60 percent of the land's value, although the City Council still gets the final decision.

The change applies only to Bellingham because the county's smaller towns are considered "code cities" and have always required only 60 percent.

Ralph Black, a developer who recently spearheaded annexation of land on King Mountain (generally east of Wal-Mart and south of Van Wyck Road) said he doesn't see the change "in and of itself an incentive for developers to run down to the annexation bandwagon."

It's still one of the pieces of the puzzle, and a big hurdle is getting the City Council to even consider the annexation before you seek signatures on a petition, he said.

"All the residents still have all the protections of all the public hearings," he said. "This is really just an application-based issue."

Still, the change could make signature gathering more efficient in situations where many landowners are in a large area. Gathering hundreds of signatures from landowners is very time consuming but necessary, even when many of them may agree to sign, he said.

"I think it's a little more manageable," Black said.

NEW ANNEXATION METHOD

The bill behind the law change, ESSB 5808, mostly dealt with the rights of fire district employees when land is annexed. But it also introduced a new way of annexing land. Under it, the city, county and fire district could all sign an agreement to simply annex the area.

Or if the city and county agree on annexation but the fire district opposes it, then the annexation goes forward but it's subject to a 45-day referendum period. If voters can't gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot, then the annexation becomes valid.

Under the current petition method, if someone opposes annexation they can ask the county's Boundary Review Board to hold a hearing and consider denying or approving the annexation. But under the new method, no board review would be allowed.

Annexation is controversial for fire districts because it removes taxable land from their jurisdiction, and it's often highly developed land that holds a lot of a district's value.

Under a deal, Bellingham is paying Whatcom County Fire District No. 4 to soften the blow from when it annexed 635 acres (now the King Mountain neighborhood) in March. When the payments end in 2012, it'll cut the district's budget by 8 percent to 10 percent, which may mean laying off firefighters, said Bill McLaughlin, district fire chief. About half of the district boundaries' property value is in the Bellingham unincorporated urban growth area, he said.

Fortunately, the bill lets the fire district object to annexation under the new method, giving some protection, McLaughlin said. But the change to 60 percent makes it easier to do under the petition method.

"For the landowner-initiated ones, we've lost a little bit of protection there," he said.

WILL IT BE USED?

In Bellingham, Mayor Dan Pike said he didn't really foresee the new method being used, although he's still not fully informed of the new law's implications. Still, it "doesn't set off alarm bells" because "I think there's still plenty of public process so people will have plenty of opportunity to weigh in," he said.

He pointed out that Bellingham City Council members in June rejected a proposal to annex 302 acres, called the Dewey Valley/Mount Baker Highway Annexation, after hearing strong opposition from a family living in the valley.

For Lynden, the new method is probably something the city wouldn't use, Mayor Jack Louws said. That's because the city has policies requiring it to infill inside city limits before expanding onto farmland. So the city ends up responding to petitions anyway, instead of seeking land, he said.

He could imagine cities, counties and fire districts using the new method only for economic development reasons, and he's skeptical that, in those cases, the public's need to annex the land would outweigh landowners' rights, he said.

HOW THEY VOTED

Local legislators who voted for the bill changing annexation laws:

• Rep. Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham.

• Rep. Dave Quall, D-Mount Vernon.

• Rep. Jeff Morris, D-Mount Vernon.

• Sen. Dale Brandland, R-Whatcom County.

• Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-San Juan Island.

Voted against it:

• Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale.