The Lewis County Board of Commissioners and the Chehalis City Council teamed up for a public hearing earlier this week to discuss potential expansion of Chehalis city limits with the public.
The joint public hearing on the city’s potential annexation plans began at 5 p.m. on Monday in the commissioners’ hearing room on the second floor of the Lewis County Courthouse. The meeting provided a public forum for attendees to ask questions and weigh in on the possible annexation of the urban growth area (UGA) to the south of the city.
It’s a process that was first set in motion in April.
Questions and comments honed in on the challenges the city will face in providing services to a larger city. A recently proposed interlocal agreement between the Chehalis Fire District and Lewis County Fire Districts 5 and 6 to help serve the expanded city limits became a brief point of contention during the public comment period, with some residents pushing back against the move.
After staff briefings and the public engagement period, no final decisions were made by either the county or the city.
The local elected officials instead advocated for taking more time to consider the questions asked and concerns raised and to get more answers before either moving forward or abandoning the annexation process.
“I understand the concerns. I definitely hear it,” Chehalis City Councilor John Six said. “We, too, want to understand and know all the details before we vote on this. We’re not looking to try and push anything through … We would like to see explicit details on exactly what this is going to cost for folks that are currently in the UGA area that may be annexed.”
During the question and answer period, residents sought more answers over the impacts to road maintenance, property tax changes and the possibility of imposing impact fees on developers to cover infrastructure costs.
Attendee Tim Potter questioned outright the city’s ability to maintain the roads it is already responsible for, not to mention the land included in the proposed annexation area. In asking the question, Potter referred to the poor condition of Market Boulevard in Chehalis.
City of Chehalis Public Works Director Lance Bunker fielded the question from Potter, saying that some roads, such as Market, might be in poor condition because of the cost of replacing the infrastructure underneath the roadway and not due to the city's inability to pay for the road itself.
“Market is a great example of a road that, what you don't see is much more expensive than what’s on top,” Bunker said. “But we are looking into … about the costs and the level of service that is being done for our south UGA.”
Bunker added that the city would work with the county to understand how much money it would need to put into the roads and receive help from the county over a year-long transition period.
Potter also brought up the issue of impact fees, to which Chehalis Mayor Tony Ketchum commented that the city is indeed considering charging developers to fund service improvements.
“We totally agree with you,” Ketchum said. “The city manager’s been directed to get something developed, because we think impact fees are important, and the developers need to pay for the stress they’re putting on cities and the schools.”
Julie Balmelli-Powe asked how the annexation would impact the property tax burden for residents whose properties were taken into the city and for those left in the county. In response, Community Development Director Mindy Brooks hinted that taxes in the county shouldn't change, suggesting that the annexation would not be problematic for the county budget.
While the county may lose tax revenue, it will also offload expenses.
On the city side, Chehalis City Manager Stacy Denham said he expects a new city resident's overall tax and utility burden to drop, but added that it's hard to give precise numbers at the moment as residents will stop paying some property tax levies and begin paying others.
“The way things are shifting around, there’s fire levies. There's Chehalis tax, as well,” Denham said. “You’ll lose some. Then you'll gain some. But, overall, the people in the UGA in the end should see a reduction in their overall taxes to include wastewater reduction and freshwater reduction as well.”
Concerns over the impacts to fire districts and emergency services came to the forefront during the public comment period.
Greg Cole, a resident of Fire District 6 and a candidate for a seat on the district's board of commissioners, testified in favor of annexation. Cole argued that the move makes sense to better cover homes that may be in one district but closer to another.
Bud Goodwillie, a former fire chief of Lewis County Fire District 6, came out against the annexation, airing frustrations over impacts to the local fire districts. Goodwillie argued that the proposed interlocal agreement between Chehalis Fire and Districts 5 and 6 wouldn't do enough to help the rural fire districts that cover parts of the UGA as it is now.
“The city cannot protect that which they want to annex,” Goodwillie said. “They’ve got a station that sits across the railroad tracks, and their border would be clear out on Jackson Highway to the river, and they expect District 6, District 5 to cover it for them.”
Potter again spoke in opposition to the annexation and advocated for the city to annex a smaller portion of the land.
After the public comment period, both the Lewis County Board of Commissioners and the Chehalis City Council moved to recess the decision-making portion of the meeting to later dates for each of the local governments. The City of Chehalis will revisit the issue on Nov. 10 and the Lewis County commissioners will do the same more than two weeks later on Nov. 25.
In order to move forward with annexation, the city council and county commissioners will both have to approve the move and sign an interlocal agreement that would transfer responsibility over the Chehalis UGA to the city.
If approved as currently proposed, the City of Chehalis would annex more than 1,000 land parcels and increase its population by more than 2,000 individuals.
According to previous reporting on the annexation process, Denham has estimated the city of Chehalis would bring in an extra $1.8 million in tax revenue due to the annexation and at the same time would need to spend an additional $1.67 million to increase staffing to manage the larger area, suggesting the process would allow the city to more or less break even.
More reporting on the potential impacts of annexation is available at https://tinyurl.com/musjfamu.
Separate, but related to the annexation, the City of Chehalis has also been pursuing an interlocal agreement between the Chehalis Fire Department and Lewis County Fire Protection Districts 5 and 6, which are both responsible for portions of the Chehalis UGA currently. More reporting on the proposed agreement between the local fire districts is available at https://tinyurl.com/yc53s8f9.
