A new sewer plant seems more likely to spark a community fight than to bring a community together.
Yet the latter is taking shape in Lake Stevens, where the need for a new plant has prompted the pending unification of the Lake Stevens Sewer District and the city’s sewer system. Besides the obvious savings in overhead, the merger of these systems under the sewer district’s banner is a notable step toward an important goal: bringing the greater Lake Stevens community under one governmental tent.
Currently, about 7,000 people reside within the Lake Stevens city limits on the northeastern shore of the lake. More than 21,000 live outside the city in the booming Lake Stevens urban growth area, which is served by the Lake Stevens School District, the Lake Stevens Sewer District and Fire District 8. Other services to unincorporated Lake Stevens are provided by Snohomish County.
The city hopes to grow by annexing its urban growth area over time, as all cities should. In Lake Stevens’ case, such a move is overdue. The city’s anemic tax base, combined with a lack of cohesion in the greater community, leaves the area without the political muscle to attract state and federal grants for parks, community centers and road improvements.
Having a broader tax base would give Lake Stevens “the ability to apply for grants and use them, because we’d have the revenue coming in to match them,” Mayor Lynn Walty said. “Many times I’ve had to overlook grants, even though we need them, because there’s insufficient funds to match them.”
A larger city would also have greater bonding capacity for larger capital investments.
The big tax-base prize, of course, will be the eventual annexation of Frontier Village and the commercial developments west of Highway 9. First, the city must take in the areas in-between, one annexation at a time. To do that responsibly, the city has wisely hired an annexation coordinator, Carl Nelson, who will work with neighborhoods and help the city plan for the costs that come with residential annexations.
In the meantime, citizens throughout the Lake Stevens area will soon become part of the same sewer system. Growth and the danger of flooding have forced the need for a new plant to replace the current one that sits in the flood plain along Ebey Slough. A new, state-of-the-art plant is scheduled to open near the corner of Highway 204 and Sunnyside Boulevard in 2009.
When it does, it will stand as a symbol of one community living and working together. That’s the best possible future for Lake Stevens.
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