Two Snohomish County councilmen accused County Executive Aaron Reardon on Tuesday of slipping a property-tax increase into the 2011 budget without their knowledge.
Reardon, who is up for re-election this year, has made a campaign issue of avoiding new taxes. He denied the charge.
The t
ax increase in question owes to recent large-scale annexations. It’s raised by about 7 percent the amount of county road tax that people in unincorporated areas are paying this year. It amounts to an increase of $27 or so for the owner of a house with an average assessed value.
Reardon’s staff responded for him Tuesday, saying it’s been the executive, not council members, who has been working to save people in unincorporated areas from paying an unfair share of road taxes.
Councilman Dave Gossett and at least one of his colleagues, however, see things differently. The issue came up at the council’s public works committee on Tuesday.
“We took the executive at his word when he said there were no property tax increases” for 2011, Gossett said afterward. “There was no reason to believe he was sneaking this by us.”
The tax increase owes to recent annexations by Marysville and Lake Stevens. The cities gained about 30,000 new residents when they expanded in late 2009. As part of the shift, the county handed over responsibility for about 100 miles of roadway. Under state law, the county last year paid the cities about $3.2 million from road taxes it collected.
Rather than subtracting that $3.2 million from the total roads budget for this year, however, the county has continued to collect about the same roads levy in 2011 as in 2010. That’s about $52 million.
The scenario could play out again for people in unincorporated Snohomish County if Bothell succeeds in annexing about 22,000 new people. The impact would be greater. The county estimates about a $4.6 million hit.
“As you continue to do this, you’re putting this on the backs of a smaller and smaller group of people,” Gossett said.
Gossett and fellow Councilman John Koster said they thought the budget they approved for 2011 would keep individual rates of the road tax the same. The wording for the roads levy appeared to suggest that’s what they were doing, they said.
“I assumed that once the cities got it, that was it,” Koster said.
The increase amounts to an approximately 7 percent increase in the portion of the property tax that goes toward county roads.
The owner of a $283,500 home in unincorporated Snohomish County, the average assessed value for 2011, can expect to pay about $27 more this year than if no annexations had occurred.
The average total tax bill for that home would be $3,279.24. The largest portions of that bill go toward funding schools, firefighters and emergency medical services. About $423 would go to the county’s road district.
Reardon’s deputy executive, Gary Haakenson, maintains that his boss has consistently opposed the council’s attempts to raise road taxes, not the other way around.
“He has never proposed a property tax increase in the roads budget,” Haakenson wrote in an email.
It’s an issue Reardon has raised repeatedly with the council since taking office in 2004, the deputy executive said. Except for the past two years, budgets since have consistently raised the county roads levy by 1 percent.
In late 2008, Reardon sent a memo to the County Council opposing a plan to raise the levy by 1 percent, or about $500,000.
In last year’s annual budget speech, Reardon promised that the 2011 budget would provide services and a plan for the future, “without relying on increased property taxes that the public simply cannot afford.” Reardon often points out that the county’s general property tax levy has not gone up during the seven budget cycles he’s been in office.
Gossett also used Tuesday’s council meeting to sound the alarm about the county’s long-term budget for roads.
Reardon’s projections assume that the county would continue collecting the same amount in road taxes from the areas that Marysville and Lake Stevens annexed. The estimates also assume the county would continue to collect the same amount if Bothell’s annexation goes through.
Inexplicably, the draft road budget put forward by Reardon’s office also factors in an additional $20 car-tab fee. Reardon has strongly opposed the fee. The County Council in July declined to enact it. Without those sources of money, the county’s roads budget doesn’t work, Gossett said.
“It looks like unless we’re willing to have two very large property tax increases and the ($20 car-tab fee) then the executive is driving us off a cliff,” Gossett said.
The state estimates that about 304,000 of the county’s 717,000 people live in unincorporated areas. That’s about 42 percent of the population.
The proportion has been shrinking as cities grow. In late 2009, Lake Stevens added more than 10,000 new residents and Marysville about 19,000.
Bothell city leaders hope to put the annexation of about 22,000 people on the Nov. 8 ballot, though a recent appeal could disrupt that timetable. If approved in the fall, the annexation could go into effect by early 2013.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
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