Kirkland Annexation, Part Four

Tomorrow night is the information meeting on annexation for Kirkland that I plan to attend, and although I said I wasn't going to form any more opinions until I went to that meeting, one of the comments in my previous post certainly gave me some food for thought.

Kirkland Yuppie-ized? You obviously have only been here for 5 years. I've lived in South Kirkland for the last 15 years and have come to play at the parks for another 5-7 before that. Kirkland has been a Yuppie town for at least 20 years or more! What's the problem with that? All the people that are fond of Kirkland clearly were attracted to the area for what it is. If you don't like Yuppie, Kirkland is simply not for you.

That is entirely a fair point, and it also underscores what I was saying earlier about the Save Kirkland campaign - if Kirkland is already Yuppie-ized, then keeping the "small town feel" is a strawman argument. Personally I have no problems with being a Yuppie - I mean, I kind of am one anyway.

Now, regarding annexation. The PAA knows what type of community Kirkland is as well. That being said, if you want to be incorporated, quit slamming that Kirkland is protecting it's Yuppiness if you want to be a part of it ultimately.
As a home owner I dare say the unincorporated folks beware of the Kirkland City Government's meddeling. It's quite unbelieveable. Don't be fooled by better services. You'll be fee'd all the way to the treasury. And don't touch a tree on your personal property. Especially the big ones that will fall on your home during the next wind storm.
Want to remodel? Shameless revenue producing permits/fees...
Finally- I agree with some that live in the PAA that logistically, they use and live closer to Kenmore/Bothell than Kirkland. Kirkland annexing these areas doesn't geographically make sense to me.
Hoping for a vote.

OK, this is the kind of information I'm looking for. Fees for remodeling. Not being able to dig up trees. That's not what I'm looking for at all. Would my selfish desire to have a Kirkland address raise my property value enough to make that worth it? It's hard to tell - frankly, I'm basing that assessment on a hunch.

It'll be an interesting meeting tomorrow night.

Kirkland Annexation, Part Three

I still haven't made up my mind, but I wanted to clarify, since I suspect visitors looking for my perspective on this subject will begin to arrive soon:

Although I'm certainly for annexation on an emotional level (it will make my house worth more money, and I want to sell in the next couple of years,) I can still be sold that it wouldn't make sense on a logistical level. I just need more information. Unfortunately, the anti-annexation sites aren't really doing a bang-up job of making the case against annexation.

I'm glad to be involved in this discussion though, it's nice to finally roll up my sleeves and hop into a local issue after living here for almost five years.

Add: I also think it's crap that Kirkland residents can't vote on this issue. Lame.

Kirkland Annexation, Part Two [UPDATE 2]

This being Seattle's Eastside, it's not surprising that there are a few other bloggers with some opinions on the proposed Kirkland annexation of my neighborhood. And of the three blogs I found about it, all three were anti-annexation. All three also happened to be located in Kirkland.

There's the rather alarmistly-named Save Kirkland [UPDATE: Since this morning, this blog has been taken offline; UPDATE 2: This blog might have been relocated to the still-rather-alarmistly-named "SaveKirkland.com, which has its own "Annexation Blog"], whose owner seems to have lost interest after last December, when the final update was made. And there are two others that express very rational opinions about the proposed annexation, both local bloggers who happened to blog their thoughts about it: the Kirkland Weblog and Steve Lacey's blog.

I'm not surprised that some Kirkland residents are against this; although the City Council's reason for annexation is to increase their tax revenue (and judging by the document "Dollars and Cents" (PDF) on their site, their current budget deficit needs to change somehow), the residents seem to think that the services they enjoy and we long for would be spread "far too thin" according to Steve Lacey.

Could be. I'd have to see some evidence of that either way, and the last thing I'd want is to go from crappy emergency service to crappier emergency services. The Kirkland Weblog goes into a little more depth:

Our small town would suddenly rival the size of Kent. Throw in another 30,000 people and we're Bellevue. That means big expenses to expand our police/fire services/city hall/sidewalks/sewers/garbage/etc. There is a proposed new 75 bed jail in the plan, but mysteriously no one seems to know where that would be located. The state offers a kickback type incentive to make annexation more feasible, but that's only for ten years. Then what? The financial picture is troublesome. Unfortunately, the 'PAA' is primarily residential and doesn't have many revenue producing/ economic development opportunities to offer up as an offset to the expenses it would create for our city.

But reading through some of the online conversation, there's also this meme:

[M]ost importantly, the small town feel of Kirkland is what makes it so charming.

To me, that smacks of the country club saying "well, there's plenty of economic reasons we shouldn't let them in, but the pale white color around the golf course is what makes it so charming (wink wink)." No, that's not an accusation of racism: it's a function of a close, united social group who naturally doesn't want to allow any newcomers into the group. It's no different than a social community online: how welcome are newcomers into tight-knit communities, especially specialized ones? Answer: not very.

Both blogs informed me of something I didn't know: that Kirkland residents don't actually get to vote on annexation. I don't know what I think about that. I feel like sure, I might be invited to the party, but the other guests really don't want me there.

I'm going to reserve further opinion until I attend one of the annexation meetings, but expect to see more discussion about this issue in this space soon.

Take Me, Please!

As Jeff Grubb has often reminded me in the past, all politics is local. So it was with some interest that I received a postcard in the mail this Saturday with a notice that the City of Kirkland is looking to annex my neighborhood and a couple of the surrounding areas.

My neighborhood exists in a really strange place. Right across the street - literally - is Kirkland, a really nice bedroom community synonymous with multi-million dollar waterfront condos, a picture-perfect downtown that has a reasonable (for the Eastside) amount of nightlife, coiffed lawns, coiffed dogs being walked by coiffed young women who are seeing very rich men who drive Lotus' and Porsches'.

And just up the street is Bothell, which is as if someone transplanted a small mountain town into the middle of the Eastside and slapped a bunch of industry in it.

My neighborhood sits in a kind of no-man's land between it all. We're technically "unincorporated King County," which means neither city claims us (although we're served by Bothell's post office, so technically we have a Bothell address.) It means we can't call the local smokies if there's trouble - we have to call the King County Sheriff. It also means that people in our neighborhood can turn our cul-de-sac into Little Beirut on the 4th of July with literally pickup-trucks full of fireworks. Not that I mind, but it makes it hard to sleep.

There's also a stigma against Bothell. "Bothell." It kind of rolls out of Seattlites' mouths like "Kent" and "Renton" and "Republicans." Kirkland, on the other hand, sounds like a fellow you'd want to invite over for dinner. I admit, there's a little bit of envy: a Kirkland address is desirable.

So that's my interest in annexation: I want a Kirkland address, because it ought to make the property value of my house go up. I also would sleep a little better knowing I could call the cops and they'd take less than an hour to show up. And frankly, the idea of putting the kibosh on Little Beirut kind of intrigues me to. Call me a killjoy if you want. I deserve it.

Kirkland did a fine job of putting all kinds of information about annexation online, including PDFs of economic forecasts and an FAQs. They're pretty upfront about the reasons behind the annexation - they're looking for more tax revenue - but the good news is that (according to their FAQ) we'd likely be paying less in property taxes and utilities.

I'm going to attend one of the meetings next week, but it certainly looks like a good deal on paper. Welcome to our new yuppie overlords!