2004: A Look Ahead

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, January 3, 2004

There’s no doubt that most of this year’s big stories will happen suddenly.

From this, our January vantage point, the crystal ball for 2004 is still a bit cloudy.

But in Snohomish County it is possible, even without the aid of tea leaves, to gaze at some of what the future holds.

Across the county, residents will see heaps of construction in 2004, everything from roads and bridges to sewers, as tax dollars fund improvements.

Planning for production of the new Boeing 7E7 in Everett will begin in earnest, and newly elected politicians, including new county executive Aaron Reardon, will dig in, beginning the long road to keeping their promises.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln will once again pull into Everett, another north county casino may be built, and like a Monopoly board, new businesses and houses will pop up across the county.

It will be a busy construction year, with roadway improvements galore, in addition to new buildings, both public and private.

Construction on the $170 million county campus redevelopment project in Everett will continue through the year. The project, the largest in Snohomish County government history, includes an expansion of the county jail, a six-story underground parking garage, a public plaza and a new administration building.

Construction of the garage is expected to be finished by Feb. 18, while the jail expansion and the rest of the campus should be completed by 2005.

Lynnwood’s new $31 million convention center will start to take shape for a spring 2005 opening.

Meanwhile, the Edmonds Public Facilities District will continue to raise funds for the city’s proposed $16 million performing arts center, which will be housed in the old Edmonds High School, built in 1939. Restoration is scheduled in 2005, with the center expected to open in December 2005.

At Paine Field, construction of the National Flight Interpretive Center, a $21.7 million flight museum, begins in July.

The 63,650-square-foot aviation museum will include a

conference center, a restaurant and an education center. Boeing also plans on moving the popular tour center for its Everett

assembly plant to the new facility.

Museum exhibits will be installed in February 2005, with a grand opening planned for May or June 2005.

The Everett-based USS Lincoln returns to Naval Station Everett in early May.

The warship returned in May after a record-setting 290-day deployment in which it played a role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since late June, the Lincoln has been at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton for $300 million worth of maintenance work.

Snohomish County’s new executive, former state Sen. Aaron Reardon, says he will use his first 100 days in office to scrutinize the way the county spends taxpayers’ dollars.

The executive oversees departments that have an annual general fund budget of more than $172 million, and has a staff of 14 that includes a deputy executive, two executive directors, analysts, administrative assistants and others. All told, the county has approximately 2,700 employees.

Reardon replaces outgoing County Executive Bob Drewel, who couldn’t run again because of term limits.

Marysville School District leaders and teachers hope 2004 will produce something the two sides couldn’t come up with last year: a labor contract.

Three newly elected school board members have asked for outside help to analyze how the district operates and how it spends its money, which was largely depleted due to enrollment losses during the 49-day teachers strike at the beginning of the school year, and due to the sour regional economy.

The post-strike turmoil isn’t over, however. A recall petition against incumbent school board members Helen Mount and Ron Young gets a court hearing this week.

Regional leaders hope the inauguration of Sounder commuter train service between Seattle and Everett will spur development.

The Everett City Council is expected to vote on a comprehensive plan for the area around Everett Station within the next several weeks, City Councilman Mark Olson said.

"We’ve seen a lot of great things happen in Everett in the last year and in the year before," Olson said. "Everett is riding a crest right now, and I expect that to continue."

King County’s proposed $1.35 billion Brightwater sewage treatment plant will be in the news as agencies, including Snohomish County, and citizens put together appeals to the project’s final environmental impact statement.

Opponents say King County didn’t adequately address the impact the plant will have on the area around Highway 9 and Highway 522 where it is to be built.

Big decisions are in store for Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Janice Ellis early in the year.

Prosecutors may seek the death penalty for John Phillip Anderson, 21, and John Alan Whitaker, 23, who are accused of aggravated first-degree murder in the September 2002 execution-style slaying of 18-year-old Rachel Burkheimer of Marysville. Both men are from Everett.

The prosecutor has until the end of this month to decide on whether to seek the death penalty. Two other men also face murder, kidnapping and other charges in connection with the case. Jeffrey Scott Barth, 23, and Yusef "Kevin" Jihad, 33, both of Everett, are scheduled for trial early in the year.

Also on the court calendar for 2004 is a second death-penalty trial for Richard Matthew Clark, 33, who was originally convicted in 1997 of abducting and killing 7-year-old Roxanne Doll in 1995.

He was sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction but ordered a new sentencing trial. A jury likely will have to hear most of the details of the original case to decide if Clark is to be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Everett and Snohomish County leaders hope two of last year’s big news items — the new Everett Events Center and Boeing’s announcement that it will assemble the new 7E7 Dreamliner here — will spur economic development in the city this year.

The 7E7 is still in the planning stages, but the announcement this month "will be a catalyst for development," said Everett chief administrative assistant Larry Crawford. "It says this area is a positive and competitive place to do business," he added.

The Everett Events Center continues to expand its offerings, which now include Silvertips hockey, public ice skating and an upcoming Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

A few miles northwest of Arlington, the Stillaguamish Tribe continues to line up investors for a new casino. It hopes to break ground sometime this year.

The tribe submitted an application to the state Gambling Commission for a 45,000-square-foot, $36 million casino, but the project fell apart in May when financial backers balked at routine criminal background checks.

With the success of the new Tulalip Casino, the Tulalip Tribes will continue plans to sign a deal with the Chelsea Group, a corporation that plans to develop an upscale mall on tribal land. Eventually, the tribe plans to build a hotel, water park and amusement park, an amphitheater and other facilities near the casino.

Mukilteo’s Tim Eyman wants to take another whack at Washington’s property taxes this year. If voters approve it, his 2004 initiative would cut local tax bills by an estimated $550 million a year across the state.

The initiative would save homeowners, property owners and businesses hundreds of dollars a year in taxes. Local governments said such a tax rollback would knock a huge hole in their budgets.

To earn the initiative a spot on the November ballot, Eyman and his political action committee, Voters Want More Choices, have until July to collect about 250,000 voter signatures.