Everett School District officials are threatening to condemn local homes so they can build new schools in the south end of the district.
Janel and Howard Baker own one of those homes, and they, like many of their neighbors, don’t want to sell.
“This is too much for our family to handle,” Janel Baker said. “We can’t replace this. They don’t make pieces like this any more.”
The family has spent seven years landscaping the vast yard, which includes a memorial garden for Janel Baker’s twin girls who died in childbirth last year.
“This is our blood, sweat and tears,” she said.
District public information officer Mary Waggoner declined Enterprise requests for an interview.
The Bakers live on 45th Drive Southeast in Bothell, just north of 169th Street Southeast. Their son attends Forest View Elementary.
According to district maps, there are several other plots in the same neighborhood that district officials are looking at. Most have homes on them. The parcels are bounded by 164th Street Southeast on the north, 169th Street Southeast on the south, a Seattle City Light transmission line on the west and the Olympic Pipeline on the east.
Baker said that 16 other families she knows also face eminent domain.
Among them is her neighbor Sandy Magin, who’s addressed the Everett School Board about her unwillingness to sell. She did not return a call by the Enterprise’s deadline.
“She designed that house,” Janel Baker said of Magin. “They are just sick to pieces.”
The district, in its missives to the Bakers, has offered to pay “fair market value” to acquire their two-and-a-half acre property. They’ve also stated in writing that “the school district is empowered if necessary to acquire the property by eminent domain.”
The district’s formal offer is just over a million dollars. That’s about $600,000 less than what the property is worth, Janel Baker said. They have had their property appraised.
Officials are also asking to come on the Baker’s property to study it, for example, surveying and testing the soil.
The Bakers have refused to sign the right of entry papers. They also contacted a lawyer.
Baker met with superintendent Carol Whitehead and begged her to take their home off the table, considering all the family had been through. Whitehead gave her 20 minutes to speak, then dismissed her, saying there was nothing she could do, Baker said.
When the Bakers call the district to ask about their status, they are told they must sign the right of entry papers, she said.
“We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said.
She wonders why the district isn’t looking to buy land people don’t live on instead, to avoid displacing families.
That and other questions remain unanswered.
In response to Enterprise requests for an interview, Waggoner sent this statement via e-mail: “There is no new information. The process continues, but we don’t have any decisions or purchases to report. This is a long process that is likely to take months or years.”
In response to a second request for an interview, Waggoner wrote: “All the info we have is on our Web site at www.everett.k12.wa.us/facpla/landaquisition/Home.”
This winter, district officials announced what “land parcels” they were looking at in the south end of the district.
After months of study, the district identified 24 individual parcels totaling about 68 acres. Another group of parcels, aside from the Baker’s neighborhood, is about 20 acres, bounded on the north by 174th Street Southeast, by the Seattle City Light transmission line on the west and the Olympic Pipeline on the east.
If the district takes over and buys the land, it could build new schools on the parcels any time in the next 20 years.
The state Office of Financial Management predicts population increases of 15 to 20 percent over the next 20 years. That means that the district will need to build three new elementary schools and more classroom space for middle and high school students, officials said.
In February 2006, Everett School District voters approved a capital bond that included funding for land purchases for future schools.
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