White Center Now: The blog about White Center

(Seattle Channel video added 6:15 pm – this is the entire council briefing; annexation is final portion, starts at about 82:00 in – you can pull the indicator on the playbar to the right to get to that point)
As previewed here, the Seattle City Council just got its briefing on last month’s report about the potential costs of annexing White Center and the rest of “Area Y.” However, no vote was taken and the few questions asked by councilmembers – whose schedule was rushed because a preceding, unrelated presentation took much longer than scheduled – did not tip any hand as to how they might decide on taking an annexation vote. As previously reported, and as reiterated at the meeting by city budget boss Beth Goldberg (we’ll add the full video clip when it becomes available via the Seattle Channel online), Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn does not favor moving ahead with annexation right now “because we just simply, in his mind, can’t afford it at this time.” City Council President Richard Conlin’s Regional Sustainability and Development Committee now will take over the issue for meetings on March 1st and 18th; Conlin pointed out that even if there were a vote this fall and annexation was approved, it wouldn’t take effect before 2013, and could even be scheduled for later implementation. It was also mentioned that (though Seattle’s council never ratified it), Seattle and Burien are continuing to observe the informal agreement that Seattle has dibs on Area Y through this year – after that, it’s up for grabs. We’ll add a few more details shortly; we’re also working with council staff to get all the documents that were presented today.

ADDED 1:04 PM: Here are both documents from today’s meeting:
PowerPoint presentation
Financial tables
Presenters had calculated that the potential $91 million one-time only expenditure mentioned earlier could be reduced to less than half that, if only arterials were addressed in the backlogged North Highline road maintenance that’s been mentioned – the higher number included non-arterials.

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