Council backs ballot measures
The Spokane Valley City Council wants your vote.
On Tuesday, the council unanimously endorsed two items on the Sept. 14 ballot: increasing property taxes to pay for street improvements and permanently joining the two fire districts that protect the city now.
The council wants citizens to approve a tax increase of $0.21 per $1,000 of assessed property value, or $21 on a $100,000 home. The money collected would pay to fully repave roads when Spokane County installs sewer lines in Spokane Valley neighborhoods. If the bond fails, those roads would only be patched down the middle where the county digs a trench for the sewer. Paving them fully when the roads already are dug up is more economical than just patching them now and fully paving them later when they have deteriorated, council members said.
“All we need to do is to look at the city of Spokane to see what happens if you don’t take care of your streets,” Councilman Richard Munson said.
Currently, citizens pay $1.60 per $1,000 of assessed value. If the $0.21 increase passes, property taxes will return to the level citizens paid before Spokane Valley incorporated, breaking a promise that incorporation backers gave voters when they chose to form a new city in 2002.
Since the tax increase was introduced in late June, several citizens have said they’re against it. But only one citizen spoke against the council’s endorsement Tuesday.
“I think you should tell people how much it’s going to cost to put that on the ballot,” resident Tony Lazanis said. “How much is it going to cost to put something on the ballot that’s going to fail?”
The endorsement of the fire annexation measure went uncontested, but the vote itself will be a complicated one.
Months ago, the council decided against starting a city fire department. Instead, it wants citizens to continue to be served by Fire District 8 and Fire District 1, commonly known as Valley Fire.
For that arrangement to continue after 2004, four groups of voters will have to OK annexation Sept. 14. That includes District 8 residents living inside the city and outside it and District 1 residents living inside the city and outside it. If any one of those groups rejects annexation, fire protection could change in a yet undetermined way.
The September ballot will be crowded with other issues, including the state’s new primary election system.
“I’m hoping we don’t have too many people who just throw up their hands and give up,” Mayor Mike DeVleming said.
• In other city news, about 50 people from the Ponderosa and Rotchford Acres neighborhoods asked the council to approve a one-year zoning change that would limit developers from building more than one home per acre in their areas.
Council members will address the issue at a future meeting.
• Also, the council voted 6-1 to begin requiring businesses and nonprofit organizations to register with the city each year. The registration will come with an annual fee of $13 for businesses and $3 for nonprofits.
The council has said it wants to keep an updated database of businesses in case of emergencies, to track sales tax revenues and to better market the city.