City Should Annex Moran Prairie

Still wondering why Spokane County needs a unified government, as freeholders propose? Consider the governmental turf war over Moran Prairie, on Spokane’s southern city limits.

Years ago the prairie really was out in “the country.” Today it’s a developer’s playground, a bedroom community that feeds off the city’s jobs and clogs the city’s insufficient arterials with commuters. But it gives the city no property taxes to relieve the congestion it creates. Its taxes go to county government and rural service districts, instead.

The prairie’s residents say they moved there to escape the city. But in doing so, they brought the city with them - just as closer-in neighbors did in decades past. Extensions of city water made the growth possible. Now, urban problems such as traffic and storm runoff make annexation wise.

Spokane County government was pleased to approve the growth and collect the property taxes. Would the growth cause headaches in the city? What did the county care?

Such turf wars hurt the whole community. This is one community. Why waste energy fighting, when residents instead could work together to shield older neighborhoods from speeding traffic and to provide outlying neighborhoods with adequate arterials? That’s what a unified government could do.

For now, to protect its straining infrastructure the city must explore its right to annex the prairie and its tax base.

Annexation would strip 39 percent of current tax revenues from Fire District 8, which serves the prairie as well as rural areas to the south. It also would end the district’s responsibility to serve this densely developed area.

The city of Spokane, generously, has offered to cushion the fiscal blow. It would pay the fire district an amount equal to its current property tax receipts from the prairie, for 10 years. That’s more than enough time for the district to downsize.

The city would have to pay for its own new obligations to the prairie, from property taxes on future growth and from sales tax receipts. The city’s still calculating whether this would cover the new obligations. If not, the annexation plan will need revision.

Some die-hards, blind to the sprouting surveyor’s flags, still imagine the prairie to be rural, separate from the city. They want it to stay that way. The best they could hope for is only a temporary growth moratorium while the city improves its arterials.

Growth is out of control. Neighbors are fighting a losing battle with neighbors. And the meadowlarks are heading for the hills.

We can do better.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board