City has long history of citizen involvement

It appears that the political silly season in conjunction with the Office of Misinformation is now working in Shoreline.

Several citizens of Shoreline are stating some of the silliest comments that have been around lately. The first comment was that Shoreline was incorporated to save the school district. This is only marginally correct. It was incorporated because the state Legislature passed the Growth Management Act, which stated (because of the excess of minor taxing districts primarily) unincorporated areas contiguous to incorporated cities should either annex or incorporate.

The Shoreline Chamber of Commerce then, in response to a letter I had written them, sponsored a community meeting to decide if we should indeed annex or incorporate. Since no attendee would speak in favor of annexing to Seattle, I was asked to take it on.

My arguments were, although we would likely see a reduction in our tax base due to the many businesses in Seattle, there also would be a chance we would, in time, be asked to have our school district taken over by Seattle. Obviously, it was a non-starter with the people at the meeting.

We collected many more signatures asking for a vote on incorporation and when we did vote, while other prospective cities often had to vote more than once, we voted the first time to incorporate by 82 percent.

In accordance with our wanting to include as many Shoreline citizens as possible, several committees were formed called the Pre-Incorporation Transition Teams. They were asked to look in depth into various issues: public works, parks, finances, etc. These committees did yeoman’s duties in compiling both financial and practical issues and the City Council benefited greatly from their work.

Many, many citizens followed our progress, helped along by the fact that Chamber’s cable dedicated a separate channel for the City.

Let’s not hear any more about the lack of citizen involvement!

Connie King

Shoreline