Winlock’s plan to expand the city limits by annexing 1,355 acres east of the current boundary was given the go-ahead by a review board on Monday night.
It was the board’s third consecutive weekday meeting on the topic ahead of an Aug. 8 decision deadline. Last Thursday, the board kicked off with a public hearing that saw a mixed bag of people who were in favor and people who were opposed to annexation. On Friday, the board members deliberated on the topic before voting unanimously to approve annexation on Monday.
Barring an appeal on the Monday decision within the next 30 days, the proposed annexation will move forward. The proposed expansion into the city’s designated urban growth area (UGA) will now move to a vote by the Winlock City Council. The council voted four to one in favor of moving the annexation forward in August of last year.
Winlock Mayor Brandon Svenson on Tuesday didn’t have an exact timeline for the vote, but said it could take place any time in the meetings following the 30-day appeal period, the first of which is Sept. 11. The city also plans to hold another public hearing before voting, Svenson said.
The Washington State Boundary Review Board for Lewis County, which has five seats but currently just four members, examines requests for boundary changes by municipalities and taxing districts. The board is not invoked to approve or deny boundary changes unless those proposals meet certain criteria.
In Winlock’s case, about 23% of the 228 registered voters in the UGA signed a petition to invoke the review board. The petition needed a minimum of 5% of the area’s voters’ signatures.
Svenson said he has asked Kathy Chastain, the petition’s creator, to be on the city’s planning commission and/or to take a position as the city’s liaison with the residents of the growth area.
“We as a city have to gain the trust of the people in the UGA,” Svenson said, later adding, “We want to be one big community here. That’s the goal. I know I’ll do everything I can to that end.”
There was some discussion in Monday’s meeting over an email from Chastain, who was worried that boundary review board member Arnold Haberstroh may not be impartial because he had not disclosed that his daughter’s father-in-law owned property within the UGA.
Haberstroh said he has never spoken with the property owner about the annexation proposal and that he didn’t disclose the relationship because he didn’t even know it might be considered a conflict. The board members were satisfied with that answer and continued the meeting as usual.
The acreage in Winlock’s urban growth area, after a 2006 interlocal agreement with the county, has already been covered by some of the city’s services. Currently, the land is an unincorporated part of Lewis County and is already in the same school and fire districts as Winlock proper.
If annexed, the growth area’s 335 residents would see the following changes: lower property taxes, according to the city’s most recent evaluation; a switch in law enforcement jurisdiction from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office’s to the Winlock Police Department; and a change from county to city public works services. Residents would be allowed to remain on their own wells and septic systems as long as those are fully operational and continue to meet code standards.
Svenson said he is “confident” city staff and electeds can scale services to meet the UGA’s needs.
After Friday’s meeting, he found himself in the hallway of the Lewis County Courthouse chatting with some of the same locals who visited city council meetings to “rip us a new one” over opposition to the annexation, Svenson said.
“We’ve built a relationship,” he said. “That’s the silver lining.”
