Evidently you haven’t followed what’s happening in Kirkland. Even with the state’s 10-year reimbursement of a percentage of sales taxes, the city’s indebtedness will be $40 million greater than it would have been without annexation. Add to that the $30 million plus for buildings and millions more for roads, bridges, surface water management and parks being brought up to city standards, you have a huge financial burden on the taxpayers brought on by the legislators failure to act responsibly.
Kirkland’s quality of life will decrease; citizens will be paying more for fewer services, and they will be forced to pay for broken promises in an area that cannot have the services they want without having someone else pay for all or some of them. All of this on top of the council preventing the citizens to even take an advisory vote on annexation.
Promises were made by Jane Hague without King Council’s approval at her meetings with just two Kirkland council members (Joan McBride and Mary-Alyce Burleigh) who also did not have their council’s approval in their discussions with Ms. Hague.
Add to that the efforts for Mr. Toby Nixon trying to regain political power with hopes to become a Kirkland Council member from the newly annexed area and he ran a successful hypocritical campaign against Jessica Greenway.
Then, State Rep. Larry Springer collaborated with the now Kirkland Mayor McBride to pass state legislation to assist with the cost of annexation. They were in cahoots with each other in trying to gain political power for the council.
He’s now saying: don’t blame me for not knowing what the Governor would do in the budget crunch. Why didn’t he become aware of the risk of budget reductions and alert the citizens of the pending possible actions. He made many phone calls and had many meetings with state, county, and city staff and elected officials. He knew of the risk and kept the citizens in the dark hoping it did not happen.
I also cringe when I hear that Kirkland cherry picked all the revenue-producing areas leaving the county bearing the cost for urban services in the unincorporated areas. Over the years, the unincorporated areas have had the same opportunity to become incorporated or annexed to gain revenue producing areas.
Bob Style, Kirkland
