With a projected $19 million defecit dealt with, Kirkland City Council returned to the city’s on-again off-again relationship with the annexation of several large neighborhoods to the north at City Hall Jan. 6.
Designated the Kirkland Potential Annexation Area (PAA) by King County, the fate of residents living in Kingsgate, Upper Juanita and Finn Hill was deferred last spring after council members were briefed on the city’s worsening financial outlook.
Annexation
Now that the city has reduced services and raised taxes to address the budget, council members asked City Finance Director Tracey Dunlap to run the numbers again for annexing the PAA. The hope is the previous revenue gap had subsided enough, after adopting a slimmed down biennial budget, to move forward.
Councilman Bob Sternoff pleaded for futher reviewing a funding scenario that would identify the revenue generated by the PAA and what services it would support.
“That buys a level of service,” he said. “ Then our experts here can tell us what that will buy.”
Mayor Jim Lauinger sounded a pessimistic note, however, at bringing back the vote on the annexation issue.
“I think we’ll be looking at what we looked at before and we’re going to say no.”
After five years of serious consideration, the city now finds itself in competition for the area with its neighbor to the north, Bothell. Given state and county agreements, a Bothell annexation of the PAA would require approval of the City Council. Annexation by either municipality will cause deficits in the future, off-set by state funding for 10 years. Some question remains over services each city provides and how the citizens there would benefit. In public safety, Bothell’s 31,353 residents currently have a higher ratio of officers per resident at 1.68, according to an 2006 US Census estimate. Kirkland’s ratio is 1.44 offficers per 1,000 residents. Response times for emergency calls, however, are faster in Kirkland (less than 5 minutes) compared to Bothell (less than 6 minutes). Both cities also vary widely on public safety estimates of how to serve the additional area adequately. Kirkland projects 26,000 calls for service will occur there per year and will need an additional 52 to 62 police personnel, while Bothell estimates 9,500 calls for service will occur and that they should hire 48 more personnel to deal with it.
Bothell City Council will discuss the matter Tuesday, Jan. 13 after the Kirkland Reporter’s deadline.
Eastside Rail Study
The Council also approved, on a unanimous motion, to send a letter by Mayor Lauinger to Puget Sound Rail Council (PSRC) Director Charlie Howard regarding the Eastside Rail Study for passenger rail on the BNSF corridor.
In the most tepid terms possible, the letter endorsed a recent study by the PSRC and Sound Transit, determining that passenger rail use on the rail line from Snohomish to Renton was “feasible”. The rail line runs through several Kirkland neighborhoods. Lauinger wrote that answering the question of whether rail service was possible wasn’t the right question to answer.
“Perhaps the better questions are: is rail practical or desirable?,” he wrote. “Given the cost estimates; about $1 billion in capital costs … plus about $350 million for the multi-use trail along with maintenance and operating costs of about $28 million, we believe it will not be practical for a private party to operate passenger rail.” Council members Hodgson and Burleigh are the city’s representatives on
the PSRC.
Kirkland’s lobbyist in D.C.
Examining a recommendation by Erin Leonhart, the city’s intergovernmental relations manager, Council approved $26,000 of reserves and $5,000 from economic development funding to pay for Jake Johnson, senior counsel at APCO Worldwide consulting, to bring Kirkland’s agenda to the US Capitol. The recommendation was made in light of what is expected to be an extended period of federal investment in the county’s infrastructure under an Obama administration.
On the city’s wish list are: Training finds for police and firefighters ($675,000), Emergency Services equipment ($500,000), N.E. 120th Street Extension funding ($1.5 million) and funding for non-motorized facilities for the 116th Ave. N.E./Bridel Trails area.
