ARLINGTON — The county, and now the city after a 5-2 vote Monday night, have thrown their support behind Dwayne Lane putting in a car dealership near the I-5 exit.
So, now it’s up to the courts and the Boundary Review Board if opponents are to have any hope.
In their first public meeting after taking over the issue from the Snohomish County Council, the Arlington City Council approved an annexation of 266 acres that in the past has been used for agriculture and is in a floodplain.
Council Members Ryan Larsen and Graham Smith voted against it. Both said they needed more time to study the issue.
"I would have liked another two or three days at least. I just think we’re going to fast," Smith said.
Once the boundary board reviews the proposal, it will be kicked back to the City Council for a final decision.
Included in the proposal is a lowland area that for years has caused a heated battle among Snohomish County’s elected officials, farmers, environmentalists, developers, Lane and even Gov. Gary Locke.
Representatives from most of those constituencies converged on the council meeting Monday for a public hearing about the annexation.
Farmers and environmentalists say the proposal would allow urban, commercial development in the 100-year floodplain; land they say is better suited for agriculture.
Lane and other proponents, including majorities on the city and county councils, say his car dealership can be built in a way that would mitigate flood hazards and boost city sales tax revenues.
Dan Flynn, who is working in public relations for Lane, said the city’s cost-benefit analysis showing potential revenues of $638,000 a year is probably low. He said the figure should be about $1.4 million a year.
Lane triggered the public hearing Dec. 4 by turning in petitions from 50 percent of landowners and 50 percent of residents in support of the annexation.
In front of a full house of more than 50 people, Bill Blake, the city’s environmental coordinator, described some of the flooding factors he is considering when reviewing Lane’s car dealership plans. In a memo he prepared before the meeting, Blake was critical of Lane’s plans to mitigate for floods.
Blake wrote that "an extreme amount of fill," perhaps 1 million cubic yards, would have to be trucked in to raise the dealership sufficiently above catastrophic flood levels.
Cliff Strong, the city’s planning manager, said the proposal appears to meet most of the state criteria that the Boundary Review Board would be looking at.
He did identify two potential concerns, though.
One is a rule that tells local governments to avoid creating irregular urban boundaries.
"It is a pretty odd boundary," Strong said. "We’re making the argument that this is the boundary the County Council sent us."
The other concern is a rule that requires local governments to protect lands designated as productive farmland.
Strong again deflected the issue to the County Council, saying its recent decisions do not appear to deem this land agriculturally productive.
Lane moved the proposal through the County Council this fall. That council approved a rezone that set the stage for Arlington to annex the area.
County Executive Bob Drewel vetoed that rezone, but the County Council overrode his veto. The proposal’s critics have appealed the county’s rezone to a state growth management hearings board.
Some have worried that a city annexation could make those appeals moot, but others contend they are separate issues.
Resident Patty Hinkle said she’s not happy with the process.
"Why didn’t the cost-benefit analysis cover the cost of the sewer and water utilities.
"And flooding mitigation, that’s another biggie. That’s millions of dollars."
Critics of the annexation seized on a technical error the city made. City staff sent out the public notice about Monday’s hearing before receiving approval by the City Council.
City Attorney Steve Peiffle advised the council to call a special meeting Wednesday to authorize Monday’s hearing. He said state law on annexations includes language that says legislative bodies, such as city councils, "may fix a date for the public hearing."
"Because it uses the word, may, a fair interpretation is to say that the City Council is not required to do what I made them do," Peiffle said before the meeting. "But out of an abundance of caution, they did."
Peiffle said the city did much more than the minimum requirements for public notification, anyway.
Kristin Kelly of the environmental group 1,000 Friends of Washington disagreed. In fact, she said, the notification process has been messed up for some time.
"I asked specifically back in early November to get all public notifications of hearings, and I didn’t receive anything," she said.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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