Snohomish County NewsLions Club sponsors First Street flags
Photo courtesty of the Lions Club
U.S. flags are again visible on First Street in downtown Snohomish. Twenty-two flags are now hanging from lampposts on First Street, from Union Avenue to Avenue D, in a project sponsored by the Snohomish Lions. The flags will fly 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the end of September.
Tribune archive photo
Cannon tradition over
Teen who nearly lost his leg in the 2006 cannon accident settled with the Snohomish School District earlier this year. Brett Karch, who suffered permanent injuries, will be paid $660,000. The district, regretful of the accident, will be covered through insurance, officials said. The cannon, found to be faulty at the time of the accident, was a fixture at Snohomish High School football games, shot off when the team scored touchdowns. There are no plans to bring the tradition back. “We have heard the last of the cannon,” Superintendent Bill Mester said.
City Council moves forward on annexation plans
By KATIE MURDOCH
The Mukilteo City Council voted to move forward with a proposed annexation that has divided the council and two fire unions, offended unincorporated citizens and angered city residents.
The decision came after more than six hours of deliberations and listening to comments from approximately 30 city residents and unincorporated residents.
The council voted 5-2 with Councilmen Tony Tinsley and Kevin Stoltz voting against moving forward. Some council members would like additional information by the end of June. The city has until late summer to put the annexation question on the November ballot.
The city is working from a 2007 consultant study.
Tinsley said he asked the city to update the 2007 Berk and Associates study after the economy tanked, but no one acted on his request.
“The economy has melted down,” he said. “What would’ve made sense eight to nine months ago probably doesn’t make sense now.”
But Mayor Joe Marine said the information from the study is not outdated because the second phase and a boundary update were both released last year. In March 2008, the Tribune reported the city planned to rework its annexation boundaries after its first annexation attempt was denied by the county Boundary Review Board.
Tinsley said he wants the estimated costs of maintaining streets, sidewalks and walkways in the annexed area and the costs of needed capital facilities projects.
Stoltz said he wants to know how the costs of annexation will be paid off and hitting the brakes on the annexation would be the fiscally responsible thing to do.
“We don’t have an updated capital facilities plan, we don’t know where the money is going,” he said. “What it comes down to is I’m not comfortable with the financial situation — we need to understand what it looks like.”
Stoltz said spending money is a sure thing but it is uncertain the city will recover the costs through revenues.
“The Berk study is outdated — why not use updated facts instead of burdening staff that is already overstaffed,” he said. “I don’t want to be associated with the council that drives Mukilteo into bankruptcy and I can see that happening.”
Council President Randy Lord’s compromise to postpone the annexation six months to one year failed.
Lord said he was looking for solid, qualified information and he wanted to listen some more and not squash the option to move forward.
“It’s a reasonable compromise,” he said. “Let’s not jump hastily into something we can’t jump out of.”
Finance director Scott James and Marine said the annexation will diversify the city’s tax base. Also, annexation will decrease the city’s reliance on property tax revenue because the added residents will bring in sales tax and user fee revenues.
The annexation would bring in about 11,000 people, increasing Mukilteo’s population from 20,000 to 31,000. In 2009 and 2010 combined, the city will owe approximately $2.5 million but the state sales tax incentive could recover $611,000 of that.
The annexation area includes the Picnic Point and Lake Serene neighborhoods and a commercial strip along Highway 99.
James said if the annexation goes through, the Police Department would hire 14 officers, one support services employee and one detective between 2009 and 2011.
Rebecca Hover, sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said there are higher levels of crime along stretches of Highway 99 compared to residential areas because of the higher volume of people.
“We receive calls for services for many businesses along Highway 99; we wouldn’t single out any particular business,” Hover wrote in an e-mail.
Hover said unlike cities, the sheriff’s office does not dispatch officers per 1,000 people as it’s archaic and misleading. Instead, the department dispatches officers based on the situation.
If the annexation goes through the Fire Department would staff a temporary fire station that would cost more than $608,000 or contract with Fire District 1 or Lynnwood’s fire department for services.
A few Mukilteo residents urged the council to postpone making a decision in order to include city residents into the discussion and stop pitting residents against each other. Other Mukilteo residents said they would like to incorporate the neighborhoods, but the numbers don’t jive and the city simply cannot afford to annex anyone right now. Last month residents spent eight days gathering 400 signatures of Mukilteo residents that oppose the annexation.