White Center Now: The blog about White Center

(Added 5:39 pm – video of the full council meeting – public comment starts at 2:30, annexation discussion starts at 42:30)
3:07 PM: The Seattle City Council‘s Regional Development and Sustainability Committee has just started its meeting, with North Highline annexation on the agenda. You can watch live at seattlechannel.org (or Channel 21 if you are on the Seattle cable system). The meeting is beginning with public comment; Peggy Weiss is speaking first. She notes that she has been speaking for years about how wonderful White Center is, and she says “It’s even more wonderful now,” listing businesses and development. “White Center is a huge benefit to the city of Seattle … I think we offer the city of Seattle as much as we stand to gain. … Let’s please get this done; let’s put annexation on the ballot in November.”

Brad Truesdell of Malo’s Auto Body is speaking second, in favor of Seattle annexation, as is Weiss. He told the councilmembers that Roxbury makes no sense as a boundary – it’s artificially dividing what is one community.

Speaking third, Lois Schiffer, saying she thinks the “rich depth of services” offered by Seattle, even in financial crunch times, would benefit White Center. “It has been a long, long journey and we are ready for it to come toward the end,” she adds.

Fourth is Gill Loring, saying he’s lived in the area for 13 years, and talking about his involvement in myriad community groups and improvement efforts. He says he feels North Highline would be better served by being part of Burien, “being a large part of a smaller city, rather than a small part of a big city.”

Fifth up is Karen Veloria, who says she has lived in the White Center area for 15 years and is now technically within Burien boundaries, but still favors Seattle annexing what remains. (The speaker after her is commenting on an unrelated subject – the comment period before council committee meetings can be used for any item on the day’s agenda.)

2:20 PM: Kathi Wheeler is next to speak, in an “I (Heart) White Center” t-shirt with a “We (Heart) Seattle” sign. She is speaking emotionally in favor of “Dub-C” joining the city of Seattle, noting she lives there and has a business in South Park but sees no extra burden from the latter.”The city of Seattle needs our strength, and our drive, and our ambition … because we’re awesome. I would like to ask the city of Seattle to join in growing our global village – we’re well worth it.” She is the final person signed up for public comment on the topic – but after another unrelated speaker, Liz Giba2:46 PM: Now on to the annexation-related item. Council President Richard Conlin notes that the question is not whether Seattle will annex NH but whether Seattle will seek an election to ask NH residents if they want to be annexed. He notes there is a fairly tight deadline for them to get the wheels in motion for an election this fall. He says they are deciding whether to take the issue first to the Boundary Review Board, while noting that if they do that, it’s a “fairly strong” signal that they would be intending to pursue an election. Conlin reveals the mayor’s office did send out some official notifications to neighboring cities in the past week or so, which is part of the mandated process. Now council staffer Christa Valles is reviewing the report that estimates what annexation might cost Seattle. “The primary issue is going to be … whether you think this is affordable,” she reiterates.

2:56 PM: Much of this is ground trod during last week’s full-council briefing, which we also covered, in terms of “high end” and “low end” potential costs for the city. Valles notes that the $5 million sales-tax credit from the state is not a sure thing forever, but once the city decides to proceed down the road of annexation, it would be hard to turn back. She also notes that the “low-end” estimates “would provide a comparable level of service to the area, compared to what Seattle is getting … some Seattle residents may feel the level of services they are getting is insufficient, and therefore it might be so for North Highline,” but she wanted to note it would be the comparable level. She also reveals that some departments aren’t agreeing with the “low-end” estimates – such as Seattle Municipal Court, which apparently has sent a letter saying they take issue with the “low-end” estimate of what handling North Highline might cost them.

3:10 PM: The participating councilmembers, by the way, are Conlin, who chairs the committee, plus Councilmembers Mike O’Brien and Jean Godden. Valles, meantime, notes that one big question is whether the two cardrooms in the potential annexation area would be grandfathered in, or not. She says she has “heard from several councilmembers that they are not comfortable with allowing the cardrooms to continue.” Upon followup questioning, she says those were conversations she had had “over the years,” not recently. Regarding some one-time expenditures like buying new police vehicles, Conlin asks if there might be a potential way to get the cars that King County Sheriff’s Office would theoretically be not needing if the area were annexed; council staffer Doug Carey says they didn’t get much info from KCSO regarding potential cuts in their ranks if they didn’t have to cover the rest of NH. She also says Steve Cox Memorial Park is not included in potential Seattle Parks operations costs because they’re assuming it might stay part of the King County regional system, but they won’t know for sure until and unless they make “interlocal agreements … on how these things will work out.” She says many departments don’t have much of a “swing” between the high-end and low-end estimates – except “core” departments Fire, Police, and Transportation. For Fire, for example, Valle says, the North Highline station would have to be retrofitted for “gender separation” among other things; that alone, she said, would cost more than $1 million. Carey then noted that on the long term, SFD might want to relocate the station rather than spend a lot of money on it, given that it’s on the far south end of what would be the new city limits; a new station, he said, would cost $13 million.

3:24 PM: On to SPD’s potential costs – Valle says the high-end proposal would be 66 full-time employees, low-end 53 full-time employees (FT equivalent) – 7 of them civilians, 46 sworn officers. Valle says that’s a higher level of service than NH currently gets through the county. Kenny Pittman says right now he understands there may be as few as 2 to 3 deputies in the unincorporated North Highline area; Seattle would have at least 5 or 6, council staff says. Valle notes that 31 miles of arterial would be added to Seattle if it annexed the remaining NH area. “You can’t put it away and assume that it’s not adding more pressure to our backlog of maintenance,” she notes. (Again, this is the report they are reviewing.)

3:34 PM: O’Brien asks how annexation would affect levies. Pittman says it would mean that the amount levied on city residents would drop a bit since the capped levy amount would be spread among more residents. Conlin points out some levies are structured differently and might not have those results. It is then stated that North Highline property tax rates would apparently go down. Would Seattle city services be reduced to existing residents? Depends on how the council and mayor fill the budget gap, is the reply. Councilmember O’Brien says “I’ve been down to White Center a few times and it would be a really good fit for Seattle,” while also acknowledging the big question is where the extra money would come from. And Conlin concludes, “We’ve got two weeks to figure out” what to do next. The committee meets again March 18th.

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