Fielding A City Some Question Wisdom Of Including Rural Otis Orchards In Proposed Valley City

The people leading an effort to form a city in the Spokane Valley may want to stock up on aspirin.

Their decision to include the Otis Orchards area within their proposed boundaries appears likely to cause them headaches now and into the future.

There is a large number of people living east of Barker Road and north of the Spokane River who don’t want to be in the city.

And many residents - both incorporation backers and critics - desire to keep the area rural, but that’s unlikely under incorporation.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Irv Reed, an Otis Orchards resident who doesn’t want to join a city if it forms.

But incorporation leaders and some other Otis Orchards residents say joining a city is the area’s best chance for self determination, local control and retaining the rural flavor of the area, which includes small farms and ranches as well as a few high-density subdivisions.

“We want to have control of our own zoning issues, and we feel this is our best chance of doing that,” said Jay Janecek, an attorney who lives in the area.

Dale McLeod, a retired state trooper and 20-year resident of Otis Orchards, agreed.

“It’s strange to have to incorporate to protect your rural lifestyle, but that’s the reality of it,” McLeod said.

That remains to be seen.

Some members of the group leading the effort to form a city, Citizens for Valley Incorporation, questioned including Otis Orchards in the proposed boundaries when plans were being laid for a third incorporation effort.

Support from Otis Orchards voters was poor during unsuccessful incorporation attempts in 1990 and 1994, and the rural nature of the community isn’t conducive to being part of a city, some members of the group reasoned.

“It just doesn’t lend itself to being incorporated,” Howard Herman, attorney for Citizens for Valley Incorporation, said in September 1994.

But McLeod and Janecek lobbied the group hard to be included in the boundaries.

Both men have worked to collect signatures and otherwise campaign for incorporation during past efforts.

For whatever reason, Citizens for Valley Incorporation relented and included Otis Orchards within the boundary.

“A lot of them out there believe in municipal government and want to be part of a city,” said Joe McKinnon, co-chairman of Citizens for Valley Incorporation. “Who are we to exclude them?”

Some residents think McLeod’s friendship with incorporation leaders was the main reason the area was included in the boundaries.

“There may be some truth to that,” McLeod said.

Reed wishes incorporation leaders would have gone with their initial thoughts and cut the area out.

The 54-year-old pipe-fitter, a 24-year resident of Otis Orchards, said he thinks joining a city will make his property taxes go up and ruin his rural lifestyle, despite arguments to the contrary by McLeod and others.

“They stick out a lollipop, but we wind up sucking sour grapes,” said Reed, who said he’s talked to many residents who feel the same way.

He said he and many of his neighbors from the Malvern Road area plan to attend a Feb. 13 hearing on incorporation before the Boundary Review Board to voice their dissatisfaction. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at North Pines Junior High School, N701 Pines.

The Boundary Review Board, which regulates the incorporation process, has the power to reduce the proposed boundaries by 10 percent.

“We want out,” Reed said.

So does Jim Clift, 64, a lifelong resident of Otis Orchards.

Clift, who lives on 2-1/2 acres on Euclid Avenue, said forming a city that includes the sparsely populated community is crazy.

While the Otis Orchards area comprises nearly one-quarter of the land mass of the proposed city, it contains less than 10 percent of the city’s estimated population of 65,000.

“Talk about rural, that’s what we are out here,” said Clift, who wants Otis Orchards to remain that way but doubts it will under a city government.

He said he also doubts his service would be better.

“You think we’re ever going to get any roads plowed out here when we don’t have the population?” Clift said. “There will be other priorities. There will have to be.”

McLeod and Janecek argue that the area’s only chance of remaining rural and getting better services is through a city.

County government is unresponsive to the area’s desires now because residents don’t have much political clout, they say.

High density developments along Wellesley Avenue have been approved by county commissioners despite opposition from Otis Orchards residents, Janecek said.

“Our complaining, it’s like hitting a pillow. It just makes no impact,” he said.

The two said the area will have more pull with a city councilman who represents them.

“We want local control. We want to control our own destiny,” McLeod said.

Also, the Valley and Otis Orchards have no representative on the Growth Management Steering Committee, which will decide which areas of the county remain rural and which will be slated for growth.

A Valley city would have a representative on that committee.

He added that he feels a city government would have the authority to pass a zoning code that would protect his neighborhood from being developed to urban densities.

“I like the fact that I can look out the window and see my neighbor’s horse,” McLeod said. “I don’t want to see the urbanization of Otis Orchards because we have no local control. If you want your rural situation to remain, it can be done through incorporation.”

Planning officials say that’s not likely to happen.

Some planners, including Fred Satterstrom of the city of Kent, Wash., said state law earmarks land inside cities for intense development.

“If you’re going to incorporate a city, there’s an overriding assumption that those lands are going to be developed,” Satterstrom said. “You don’t incorporate an area to preserve low density areas, open spaces or farm lands. County government is better able to do that.”

An official with the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development told incorporation supporters the same thing last summer.

Amy Tousley said at an incorporation meeting that “city means city” and that the state would frown upon a city that contains significant areas of rural land. That could affect that municipality’s ability to get state grants, she said.

There are guidelines in the state’s Growth Management Act that allow for some agricultural land to be inside city limits, said Satterstrom, whose city of 45,000 just north of Seattle contains some agricultural land.

But it’s expensive, he said.

City officials would have to set up a program to buy development rights from people who hold large chunks of land - which means that the city would be paying people not to develop.

With the amount of flat, undeveloped ground with good supplies of water in the Otis Orchards area, a Valley city would be looking at paying out considerable money to keep subdivisions from sprouting there.

Part of incorporation supporters’ arguments for forming a city is that taxes would be lower.

And in the end, there would be no guarantee that a city council would agree to keeping Otis Orchards off limits to developers.

McLeod said the area would have more influence than it does now.

“We’d just have to make sure that the wrong people don’t get elected,” McLeod said. “Really, there’s no guarantee, unless the people are involved in the election process.”

But it’s going to be tough for the Otis Orchards electorate to sway an election. About 2,000 registered voters live in the Otis Orchards area, according to the county elections department. Another 30,000 live in the rest of the proposed city’s boundaries.

Susan Winchell, a planner with the Boundary Review Board, summed it up this way: “I feel sorry for those people who think they’re going to remain rural.”

All of which leaves incorporation proponents with the tough task of selling their complicated proposition to a divided community at a time when every vote counts.

Incorporation, which needs 50 percent plus one vote to pass, failed by only just percent at the polls last April.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us. Yes, we do,” McLeod said.

MEMO: See sidebar that ran with this story under the headline: City’s action may galvanize incorporation support