“Growth” has become a dirty word in South Snohomish and North King counties in the past few years.
To residents, growth has come to mean more traffic and more crowding in neighborhoods. To city officials, growth means the absorption of more people into city limits and the stretching of already limited resources.
But with an expected influx of more than 1 million people in the next 30 years and a state Legislature that wants more land under control of the cities, there’s no avoiding the issue or the heated discussions that come with it.
Shoreline is facing a possible annexation of a potential 1,000 condos on Point Wells. Although the land is in Snohomish County, the only road to Point Wells runs through Shoreline, and the area is serviced by the city’s fire and police departments.
Voters in Esperance, a piece of unincorporated land surrounded by the Edmonds, have rejected joining the city, but annexation is almost inevitable in light of the Legislature’s move toward incorporation.
In Lynnwood and Mill Creek, city officials have butted heads with county leaders over housing developments in the cities’ Municipal Urban Growth Areas. Currently under county jurisdiction, these developments are cramming more people into an area that will one day be annexed by the cities — at a significant expense to budgets already strained to the breaking point.
“(The county’s) done such a poor job developing … 164th Street that we can’t possibly afford to annex there without major assistance,” Mill Creek Mayor Terry Ryan has said.
It’s time to stop pointing fingers and blaming others for the current problems of development and annexation; the damage has been done. All we can do now is work together at all levels of government — state, county and city — to mitigate the impact our 1 million new neighbors are going to have on the area.
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