News - Local News

POSTED: Saturday, May. 23, 2009

Effort to merge Everson, Nooksack voted down by council

Discussion about a potential merger between Everson and Nooksack was killed this week as officials from one community decided not to move forward.

Nooksack City Council members Monday, May 18, voted unanimously, with Councilman Scott Bodven absent, to not continue with the merger discussions.

Everson City Councilman Andy Rowlson, who was the main organizer looking into the issue, said he will not pursue it further because, as of now, officials have spoken.

Nooksack Mayor Jim Ackerman said the council decided to not move forward based on citizen input.

"I've had like 20 calls from citizens and they've all been against a merger," Ackerman said. "To me, the squeaky wheel gets the oil."

Mayors of both cities said they believed Rowlson was trying to push the issue himself and make it look like there was a committee of supporters, including the mayors.

"To me it was not a concerted effort. Yeah, I'm not opposed one way or the other, but I didn't like the way it went down," Ackerman said.

Everson Mayor Jaleen Pratt had a similar take and thinks that as of now, no merger should be discussed until Nooksack residents and officials come to her city to work it out.

Rowlson said he believes the leaders are trying to back away from their involvement. He insists they were involved by attending an early discussion about the issue as well as being consulted several times - in person and through phone calls and e-mail - throughout the process before a draft study about the costs and benefits of a merger was released to the public.

That report said that it appeared that a merger might save the cities about $124,000 annually after one-time costs of more than $98,000.

Rowlson said Pratt had expressed concerns about how her involvement was portrayed and that he tried to leave her out of it more and more as she requested.

"I don't want this to be negative towards folks," Rowlson said. "These things cause tension and the bottom line is the report was put together, everybody had multiple opportunities to see the report on the way in and provide input."

He said that the report will likely "sit on a shelf," but he had no problem with the decision of Nooksack officials.

"That's great, I would have liked for them to perhaps wait for citizen input, but we're a democracy, that's exactly what the Nooksack council gets to do, and that's important," he said.