Rural Island Tries To Stay That Way -- Unhappy With King County, Vashon Residents Ponder How To Run Their Own Affairs

VASHON ISLAND - Pastures, pottery shops and U-pick farms dot the road into town. Sunshine sparkles on apple trees. Deer darting through the forests, and heron perched upon the shoreline, are not uncommon sights.

Neither is the Metro bus roaring toward the Seattle ferry.

For now, Vashon Island remains a charming and rural part of King County, and most residents want it to stay that way.

The question is: How?

As islanders watch more buses and ferries bringing growing numbers of residents to Vashon, driving the island's population up from 7,800 eight years ago to more than 10,000 today, it's a question being raised with increasing frequency - at coffee shops, during lively town hall meetings and in the island's weekly newspaper, the Beachcomber.

Fed up with a Metropolitan King County government that seems too big and too distant to deal with their daily needs, many residents want more local control. They are debating the pros and cons of forming their own city, or perhaps becoming something called a "rural township." At one point, they even considered seceding from the county.

For now, they plan at least to try to strengthen their own local community council. On Nov. 8, after punching the "official" ballot for congressional and state legislative races, islanders for the first time will be able to go to a card table and vote in community-council elections.

"It's an experiment," Vashon/Maury Island Community Council

president Pat Lawler says. "Instead of trying to get new laws passed, we're going to try to get more organized on our own."

Even county officials acknowledge the county's "one-size-fits-all" approach doesn't always work on Vashon, and support the desire for local control.

But the question remains: How?

Outside the Portage General Store, sunlight sparkles on Tramp Harbor. A light wind rustles gently, a whiff of saltwater fills the air.

"It's beautiful here, it really is," says Mark Salkind, a Vashon resident since 1969. "We want to keep it the way it is."

But in some parts of the island, that rural flavor has already been replaced. On a weekday morning, for example, islanders en route to the Seattle ferry pull up to Bob's Bakery to buy chocolate croissants, coffee and fresh-baked bread.

Bob's is a busy place in the heart of the island's "town," an almost urban enclave complete with banks, supermarkets, restaurants and three hardware stores. Unlike most of Vashon, the town has sidewalks, a stoplight, crowded parking lots and, occasionally, a traffic jam.

Though county government has not been a disaster, many residents feel officials in downtown Seattle cannot understand a rural island's needs.

They point to a local park that used to be a peaceful place for picnics and swimming lessons and for simply enjoying the sunshine - until the county took over its marina. Now, residents say it's overrun with boaters from other areas.

Others say the county passes strict environmental regulations but doesn't enforce them unless residents call to complain.

"This creates an atmosphere that pits neighbor against neighbor," says Jay Becker, who publishes the Beachcomber. "You always know who ratted on you."

Often, county building-permit laws can be inflexible. One man's story illustrates the point. The man used to have a small garage. One day, while trying to remove moss, he fell through the roof.

Wanting to repair the structure, he called the county's permitting office. The woman he spoke with responded that he would need a design plan approved by an architect or an engineer, a survey of his property and certification that his septic system worked before he could receive a permit.

When he explained he lived in an area where septic systems were failing, he was told he could not get a permit, period.

"So, well, I built a new garage without a permit," the man said. "I guess I broke the law, but really what choice did I have?"

How the county has handled Vashon's multitude of failing septic systems also is a point of contention. The county now is recommending that areas where it found problems join a sewer district, which some believe will force residents who happen to live in those spots to pay thousands of dollars for sewer installations.

Two years ago, King County, realizing its merger with Metro would make it harder for a regional government to be responsive to rural areas, began encouraging Vashon citizens to study different governance approaches.

After 18 months, Vashon's governance committee came up with three options: forming a separate county, trying to work with King County through an elected community council or incorporating as a rural government, such as a township.

All of these options would require changing state laws. So some in the group considered a different option: creating a city.

The state Boundary Review Board was a sticking point. In the past, the board mainly studied whether an area proposed for incorporation had reasonable boundaries and a strong enough tax base to provide citizens with city services. Now, with the 1990 state Growth Management Act, the board believed Vashon - as a rural area - could not legally become a city.

Growth laws require cities to plan for urban growth; King County, which writes regional growth policies, has designated Vashon a rural area.

Though incorporation supporters argued otherwise, many worried that if Vashon became a city, the island would have to allow industrial, retail and dense residential development.

"It's ridiculous," says Carol Campbell, an island resident who supported incorporation. "We aren't trying to become the Manhattan of the Northwest. We just want some control over our way of life."

While Campbell and other incorporation supporters plan to appeal the boundary board's decision and a subsequent King County Superior Court decision to the Washington State Supreme Court, other advocates of local control are hoping to lobby the Legislature to let them form a rural township.

Current state laws give townships the power to authorize digging ditches and putting up fences. Laura Wishik, a land-use lawyer who lives on Vashon, believes islanders could press for a law change so an elected township council could maintain roads, enforce land-use policies and control such services as issuance of building permits.

"There's precedence for this idea in New England," she says. "It's essentially a rural government for a rural community."