Voting will be a happening in 2008.
Maybe it’ll be in vogue.
Even the most avowed cynics may break down and join in when the nation elects a president, the state picks a governor and communities choose representatives to serve them in the Legislature.
Washingtonians will likely consider an initiative granting terminally ill individuals the legal right to take their own life.
And Mukilteo’s Tim Eyman will push some sort of measure — you can bet on that.
The race for president likely will incite the electorate most because it is wide open with no incumbent president or vice president seeking the office.
In just six weeks ballots will get mailed for the Feb. 19 presidential primary — the state’s first such vote in eight years, and the first time voters will be required to declare a party affiliation, information that likely will wind up being made public.
The results will mean nothing for Democratic candidates because their party is doling out delegates to the national convention based on its Feb. 9 caucuses, not the primary. Republicans will apportion half their delegates using primary totals and the other half based on votes during the party’s caucus, also set for Feb. 9.
While it is unclear how many will participate in February, interest is expected to soar by November.
Snohomish County Auditor Carolyn Diepenbrock is predicting 400,000 people will be registered to vote by then and 90 percent of them will turn out.
“We have not had a presidential election like this in years,” she said.
The rematch of Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire and Republican hopeful Dino Rossi also is expected to fuel participation.
Their 2004 contest proved historic — multiple ballot counts, a court case and 133-vote victory for Gregoire. The GOP faithful have waited four years to avenge the defeat. In Snohomish County, Rossi won.
Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, said the governor’s race “is going to be fascinating and emotionally charged.”
Flipping through the calendar, six area school districts will put funding questions before voters in February. In May, Arlington School District will try for the second year in a row to pass an $8.8 million bond to build a library.
August is the primary for state officeholders. Eighteen state lawmakers with a piece of Snohomish County in their district will be on the ballot. So too will be candidates for Congress.
Finally, Nov. 4 will be the decisive day for all of those elected offices as well as the presidency.
State issues
Two Democrats and one Republican will be appointed to seats in the state House of Representatives in the next few days. They’ll have to run in November to keep the posts.
Former Gov. Booth Gardner plans to push an initiative to allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults in Washington who are diagnosed with six months or less to live to legally obtain and self-administer life-ending medication. The measure is modeled after Oregon’s right-to-die law passed in 1997 and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006.
Gardner intends to file the initiative in January and qualify it for the November ballot.
Education
The campaign to land a new University of Washington campus in Snohomish County now lies in the hands of the Legislature.
Lawmakers must decide whether to support the idea, how much money to provide and which of four finalist sites they like. Two are in Everett and the other two are in Marysville and Lake Stevens.
Land around the Everett Station is the top recommended site after a three-county search, but leaders in Lake Stevens and Marysville continue to push their sites.
Meanwhile, this is the first year students must pass the reading and writing portions of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or an alternative to the WASL to graduate in the spring. Some state lawmakers could try to delay that requirement as they did the math WASL during the last session.
More than $100 million worth of new school buildings are scheduled to open in the county thanks to voter-approved construction bonds.
The Snohomish School District plans to open Glacier Peak High School, its second large high school, next fall. At the same time, Marysville plans to open Grove Elementary School in September and begin work on a second large high school, Marysville-Getchell High School.
County issues
The county’s record-setting pace of housing growth is expected to slow some but a steady racket of power saws and hammering is expected to continue in urban and rural areas alike.
“We’re one of the powerhouses of Washington state, and growth and traffic are going to continue to be a huge issue we have to continue working on,” said County Councilman Dave Somers, who is expected to be the new council chairman.
Policies for where to allow future housing development will be debated by county officials.
The year will kick off as anti-growth activists turn out Wednesday for the swearing in of two new Democrats on the County Council. The group hopes the 4-1 Democratic majority on the council will prohibit suburban-style clusters of housing and mini-cities currently allowed by the county in rural areas.
Also, since voters in three counties panned a tax plan for roads in November, county officials are mulling whether to go back to the ballot with a smaller measure.
Talks also are planned over a new county justice center, a $20 million emergency headquarters and a possible joint animal shelter with Everett.
Public safety
For the first time in 12 years, Snohomish County will have a new sheriff starting on Jan. 1.
Former state legislator and retired Washington State Patrol trooper John Lovick is scheduled to take over for Rick Bart, who was forced by term limits to step down.
Lovick will face the same problems that challenged Bart, a county that already spends nearly 70 percent of its budget fighting crime, but is still faced with increased violence connected to indoor marijuana growing operations, burgeoning identity theft and property crimes, and an ongoing battle against methamphetamine.
Lovick appointed his two election opponents from the sheriff’s race to serve under him. Sheriff’s Chief Tom Greene will oversee support services and Lt. Rob Beidler will run administrative services. Lovick named Capt. Tom Davis, the police chief in Stanwood, to be undersheriff.
Transportation
The state Department of Transportation expects to finish widening I-5 in Everett by spring, putting the finishing touches on a $263 million project that will extend carpool lanes north from the Boeing Freeway to the Snohomish River. The road project is the most expensive in Snohomish County history and the third costliest in state history. It was funded by the 5-cent-per-gallon gas tax approved by the Legislature.
Washington State Ferries expects to learn soon whether it will get funding to replace its 80-year-old Steel Electric-class boats. The Steel Electrics, which served the Whidbey Island-to-Port Townsend run, were tied up before Thanksgiving because of safety concerns connected to hull corrosion. Gregoire has asked the Legislature for $100 million to build new boats as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the state plans to borrow a car-carrying ferry from Pierce County to serve the run.
In Marysville, state planners hope to begin designing and buying right of way for a concrete barrier for the median along an often deadly segment of I-5. The concrete will be in addition to cable barriers that state officials in 2007 conceded haven’t stopped enough cross-over accidents.
Several safety improvements also are planned on U.S. 2, where a mounting death toll from crossover accidents — including a crash in which one person died Friday — on the two-lane highway has fueled interest in widening the road.
Snohomish County may turn the frontage road underneath the U.S. 2 trestle into a carpool lane, a way to move those who share vehicles across the trestle quicker, said Steve Thomsen, the county’s public works director.
Development
Everett’s much anticipated riverfront redevelopment project is expected to clear a significant hurdle early in the year with the $8 million sale of 221 acres of land on the Snohomish River to developer OliverMcMillan.
The San Diego developer proposes building up to 1,400 housing units, more than 1 million square feet of shops, a movie theater and a hotel with up to eight floors on land southeast of downtown and near the proposed University of Washington branch campus.
Meanwhile, the face of downtown Everett is changing as the old Elks Lodge at Rucker Avenue and California Street is torn down and replaced by Skotdal Real Estate’s Library Place development.
The 200 residential unit project with commercial space is expected to draw hundreds of people to live in the city’s core.
In Snohomish, new businesses are set to open at Snohomish Station, a 400,000-square-foot commercial development along Bickford Avenue. The single biggest retail development in Snohomish for years is expected to feature a mix of small, midsize and big stores.
Fred Meyer is expected to open in early March, Kohl’s in April, and Home Depot in May, city manager Larry Bauman said.
In addition to the commercial space, 100 units of condominiums are being planned at the site, Bauman said.
Development is expected to continue changing the landscape of north Snohomish County.
In Arlington, city officials hope to begin using a transfer of development rights program to steer new homes and businesses away from farmland and into more urban areas.
The city of Marysville expects to continue planning for a new city campus in either the Comeford Park area or near the site of the current planning and public works building, not far from Ebey Slough.
The city has yet to estimate costs for the project, city administrator Mary Swenson said.
In Lake Stevens, the city is expected early in the year to begin moving on its new civic campus on Grade Road.
The city has outgrown its current building at 1812 Main St. and would like to open up more space near the lake for redevelopment.
Herald writers Eric Stevick, Jeff Switzer, Lukas Velush, Jackson Holtz, David Chircop, Bill Sheets and Yoshiaki Nohara contributed to this report.
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