Cities chart future of unincorporated areas

Over the past 2-½ years, planners from Snohomish County and the nine cities in the southwest part of the county — the most urban portion — have been divvying up unincorporated land.

According to their map, land north of Highway 524 will be part of Mill Creek, not Bothell. Land south of Larch Way Southwest will be in Brier, not Lynnwood.

But many places remain in dispute. Some, like an area south of Everett and west of Mill Creek, nobody wants. In others, cities are vying for additional sales-tax revenue or mediating among neighborhoods that don't want to be split.

Caught in the cross hairs are county residents who say they need road improvements, sidewalks and sewer service, and some say they don't care who pays for those items, even if they have to join a city.

"Maybe we ought to start our own little city," joked Corky Sbriglia, a 35-year resident of the Lake Stickney area. Sbriglia said traffic in his neighborhood has grown increasingly worse as the county allows more apartments. His house and some of his neighbors' still rely on septic tanks.

Cars take a shortcut past his house to get to Highway 99, but Sbriglia said that unless the area is annexed, there is no hope of getting sidewalks on the narrow, winding two-lane roads.

Eventually, the county expects all of its southwest portion to be part of cities. Now the county is in the process of sorting out the last sections of land in time for the state-mandated update of the Snohomish County comprehensive plan, which dictates development for the next 20 years.

To stay on schedule, cities and the county must decide who will get what land by the end of the summer.

The areas designated for cities to annex are called municipal urban-growth areas, or MUGAs.

The areas no city wants

Two pieces of Snohomish County are without takers. Both are residential areas with old roads and few sidewalks:

Everett recently lost interest in a piece of land between Highway 99 and Interstate 5 near Lake Stickney. The mostly rural neighborhood includes a public fishing pier and lots of old houses with weakening septic tanks.

And Lynnwood left a chunk of land west of 52nd Avenue West out of its growth area when the council approved its comprehensive-plan update in November. Residents of the area voted in the early 1990s not to become part of Lynnwood, and that nearly 10-year-old vote stuck, Lynnwood City Councilman Don Gough said.

"There is a concern that the roads and some of the standards at which the stuff was built at would be costly to maintain and costly to retrofit," said Dave Koenig, Everett's manager for long-range planning and community development.

Bothell's community-development director criticized the county for allowing development at "lower standards" than those used by cities. The county typically allows higher-density single-family housing and does not require sidewalks.

"When we annex an area, we want it to look like Bothell," said Bill Wiselogle, the director, noting that upgrading developments to city standards is expensive.

Lynnwood vs. Mill Creek

More difficult to resolve than the places nobody wants may be the problem of four areas that cities are fighting over.

Lynnwood planners in the mid-1990s agreed that Interstate 5 was a logical boundary for the growth area between Lynnwood and Mill Creek. The planners based their recommendation on lengthy discussions between the cities and with neighborhood groups, Lynnwood senior planner Ron Hough said.

But the Lynnwood City Council in November rejected the Planning Commission's recommendation and instead drew the boundary through Martha Lake and the adjacent neighborhood.

County planners say both Lynnwood and Mill Creek want the tax revenue generated by a Wal-Mart store at 164th Street Southwest and I-5, but Councilman Gough said it's not that simple.

"This isn't the grab-for-the-gold thing," he said.

Lynnwood planned to include that land in the mid-1990s, before the Wal-Mart was built, Gough said.

At some point, planner Hough said, "the county has to step in and make the final decision."

The county does have the final say, but planners there say they would rather wait for the cities to reach an agreement.

"It's something that we've made a lot of headway on, and obviously, we'd like to see a lot of those issues resolved, but right now we're optimistic that it's going to be worked out," said Richard Craig, a senior county planner.

Woodway vs. Shoreline

Woodway and Shoreline are waging a legal battle over Point Wells, a growth area at the southern edge of Woodway that can be reached only through Shoreline. Shoreline included annexation of Point Wells in its comprehensive plan. Woodway did the same.

The cities first took their dispute to the Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board. In 2001, the board agreed with Shoreline and wrote that Snohomish County must figure out how to avoid the overlap so cities and utilities could plan ahead to provide services. Now the cities are suing each other.

Mukilteo vs. Everett

Mukilteo still hopes to annex the western side of Paine Field, City Administrator Rich Leahy said. The county has designated Paine Field as an island of unincorporated land, but Leahy said more than 100 acres of developable property there would create much-needed tax money for Mukilteo — especially, he said, since the primary access to Paine Field is through what will someday be part of Mukilteo.

Both Everett and Mukilteo want a parcel south of Paine Field between Airport Road and Mukilteo Speedway. It includes commercial development along major arterials and some property that can still be developed.

"For the cities, residential is not as attractive as far as tax base," Craig said.

That's true, said Everett's Koenig, but the decision is mostly a matter of choosing a logical spot for the city to end.

Bothell vs. Brier

Bothell and Brier are trying to resolve a dispute over their shared growth-area boundary. Planners for the cities had a preliminary agreement to draw the line along Locust Way, Bothell's Wiselogle said. When some residents complained that would split their neighborhood, Bothell proposed using the Fire District 10 boundary about 700 feet to the west, an area now served by Bothell.

Brier will hold a public hearing on the issue during its Tuesday City Council meeting.

Wiselogle said the county initially directed the cities to try to preserve neighborhoods but also to follow waterways and local roads when drawing growth-area boundaries. As in the Locust Way example, Wiselogle noted, the two directives can be contradictory.

"Setting a MUGA boundary is not an end in itself," he said.

Although a growth area may identify an area for future annexation, he said, "the people who live there have to want to be annexed."

Emily Heffter: 425-783-0624 or eheffter@seattletimes.com

Lynn Thompson: 425-745-7807 or lthompson@seattletimes.com