Shoreline incorporation Part 4: Final Comments regarding incorporation

Investigation of Shoreline incorporation and of discussions during incorporation regarding the wastewater utility

By Chris Eggen, Deputy Mayor, City of Shoreline

PART 4. FINAL COMMENTS REGARDING INCORPORATION

I will finish by making a couple of comments regarding these events. First, the formation of a new city was not inevitable. It required a large number of people to decide to put in the time and effort to learn what needed to be done, to work with their fellow Shoreliners to decide what was required, to persuade their fellow residents to support them, to collect signatures, and to do the campaigning. Many of the same people also participated in the formation of the new city. Granted, at this time a number of formerly unincorporated areas in King County had provided examples of the process, so the participants weren’t totally inventing procedures of incorporation as they went along. Still it required a great deal of creativity and hard work. 

After almost 20 years of being a city I believe that incorporation has proven to be good for Shoreline based on achievements of the city and on knowledge of the alternatives. Therefore, I would like to express my gratitude to Scott Jepsen, Mike Brownstein, Leon Zornes, Claudia Ellsworth, Connie King, Maggie Fimia, Brian Wahl, and to the uncounted other volunteers who were involved in this effort.

Second, it is interesting to speculate on what the alternative to incorporation would have been.

Could Shoreline have remained a coherent region without incorporation? Could they have remained as an unincorporated area, perhaps with a community council participating in county decisions regarding Shoreline? (Note that in 1995 there was no allowance for community councils in state law, so remaining part of the county was totally inconsistent with having any local control.) Perhaps Shoreline could have done this? After all the Esperance neighborhood in Snohomish County is totally surrounded by Edmonds but has resisted annexation. However, the laws in 1995 were more favorable for annexation than current law. Under certain circumstances, annexation could take place without a vote of the local residents. 

Edmonds had expressed interest in annexing down to 178th to include Aurora Village and Mountlake Terrace had similarly expressed interest in the Ballinger Neighborhood. Granted, cross-county-border annexations were looked at with suspicion by boundary review boards in 1995 and later by Growth Management Planning Boards. However, King County has never had a policy of opposing such annexations as Snohomish County now does. So I would say the odds were about 50% that Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace would have annexed the northern parts of what is now Shoreline had Shoreline not incorporated.

One Seattle Council Member also expressed interest in annexing parts of the Shoreline area served by Seattle Water and Sewer. I believe that had the opportunity to do so been available Seattle would have been interested in going beyond that to annex as much of West Shoreline as possible since that represented a good property tax base. This is what prompted King County Councilmember Maggie Fimia to push for establishment of the King County Shoreline Governance Committee and give Shoreline a chance to vote for incorporation.

At the time, Lake Forest Park was not aggressively pursuing expansion by annexation. In particular, it did not appear interested in annexing older neighborhoods without a high property tax base. However, when Shoreline was proposed, Lake Forest Park took the opportunity to expand to include Sheridan Heights and Sheridan Beach. With all this, I can easily see that Vision Shoreline’s fear of piecemeal annexation might have come about, with Seattle getting the lion’s share.

It is worth noting that Shoreline was the first of the new cities formed in the 90’s to vote “Yes” for incorporation on the first try by a huge majority. There was some indication that the three cities interested in attempting annexation in the area would have tried to move forward if the initial vote had failed. 

If piecemeal annexation had occurred, would the Shoreline School District have been affected? Opponents of incorporation were correct in their argument that annexation of all or part of the Shoreline area to the city of Seattle did not legally require that the all or part of the Shoreline School District would be absorbed into the Seattle. However, consider that in 1995 Seattle was still under court order to bus children to schools around the city. If this had been applied to the Shoreline School District, would Lake Forest Park and possibly Edmonds and Montlake Terrace parents have stayed in the Shoreline School District? Would local voters have supported bonds and levies under these circumstances to maintain the excellence of the Shoreline School District? Frankly, I doubt it. I very much fear that the Shoreline School District would have dissolved under those circumstances and surrounding school districts would have expanded to the political borders of the annexing cities.

Finally, I would like to point out the Shoreline Chamber of Commerce was the nexus that connected the people who championed incorporation, with a great deal of support also from the 32nd District Democrats and Republicans. We owe the 1995 members of these organizations a debt of gratitude for their forward thinking.

Previously:

Part 1: Setting the stage for incorporation

Part 2: Local actions leading to incorporation

Part 3: Promises regarding the wastewater utilities