Cities Apart While Opportunity Proposal Proceeds, Evergreen Campaign Runs Into Trouble

In the latest attempt at Spokane Valley incorporation - literally a tale of two cities - one proposal clearly has an advantage.

With just more than two months until a possible election, the proposed city of Opportunity is picking up steam while its running mate, Evergreen, is faltering.

Supporters of both cities hope to have their measures on the May 21 ballot.

Opportunity last week breezed through a public hearing before the state Boundary Review Board.

No one spoke in opposition to forming the city of 19,000, bounded by Argonne and Evergreen roads, Interstate 90 and 16th Avenue.

The board passed the proposal along to voters with hardly the bat of an eye.

One board member said the Opportunity proposal met all the board’s objectives, lofty praise from a group that usually tears into incorporation proposals like a bear into a beehive.

Meanwhile, the Evergreen proposal is getting complicated.

One group of residents has asked to be included in the proposed city, which would be home to about 14,400 people living between Evergreen and Barker roads, the Spokane River and 24th Avenue.

In addition, Evergreen proponents, who drew their own boundaries, have asked the board to add two parks now outside those borders to the proposed city.

Opposition also is surfacing. A man spoke against the proposal at a hearing last week, and a Greenacres woman wrote a scathing letter asking that her neighborhood be withdrawn.

How can two proposals born on the same day, proposed by the same group of people and separated only by a street be headed in opposite directions?

The reason isn’t that hard to figure out, said Joe McKinnon, who has led three unsuccessful attempts to form a Valley-wide city since 1990.

Opportunity has a lot going for it, McKinnon said.

Its history as a former township, its urban nature, its tax base and its name recognition make it a good candidate for success, he said.

“It looks like a city and it smells like a city and it sounds like a city and it tastes like a city,” he said. “It’s a natural.”

Indeed, Opportunity is totally urbanized and its six square miles contain a good chunk of the Sprague Avenue commercial corridor, including the University City shopping center.

County officials estimate that nearly $4 million per year in sales tax is generated within the proposed city’s limits. That money would go directly into the city’s coffers.

There’s also a post office, library, fire station and Sheriff’s Community Oriented Policing Effort station within the boundaries. The old township hall building is still standing and usable.

“Hell, it’s got everything,” McKinnon said.

A sign at the Pines Road interchange on Interstate 90 identifies the off-ramp as the Opportunity exit.

“There isn’t anyone in the Valley who wouldn’t know where Opportunity is,” McKinnon said.

Evergreen, on the other hand, lacks much of what Opportunity has.

Although most of the zoning inside Evergreen calls for urban development, many neighborhoods inside the proposal are made up of large lots - some more than an acre in size.

Supporters cite that as one of the reasons they want to form the city.

“Our only hope of preserving our larger lots is having our own city so we can have our own say,” Agnes Helling told the board recently.

Resident Mary Pollard agreed.

County regulations now prohibit the keeping of large animals in her neighborhood in the northeastern part of the proposed city, Pollard said.

Keeping livestock was part of the reason she and her husband moved there to begin with, she said.

Forming a city may be the only way to preserve that lifestyle now, Pollard said. “Diversity of lifestyle is a good thing,” she said.

But the Boundary Review Board historically has frowned on including semi-rural or rural areas within the boundaries of proposed cities.

They’re not likely to look favorably at that as a reason for Evergreen to incorporate.

In addition, Evergreen has no real identity as its own community. Rather, it is made up parts of several others, including Veradale, Greenacres and Vera.

One goal of the Boundary Review Board is to maintain natural neighborhoods, and one member has expressed concern that Evergreen would do the opposite.

Greenacres resident Janeen Thompson has similar views.

“As before, this latest incorporation attempt divides my community of Greenacres,” Thompson wrote in a letter to the board. “We are our own little community on the east side of the Valley. It is not fair to rip apart a community for the arrogant beliefs of a few.”

The review board will be considering Thompson’s request to have her neighborhood cut out of Evergreen at another hearing on the proposal scheduled for Monday.

Maybe the most telling sign of where the two proposals are heading lies in the results of past incorporation elections.

Voters in Opportunity have historically been the biggest supporters of incorporation.

During the 1994 push to form a Valley-wide city, more than half the voters in Opportunity precincts said yes to the proposal.

That number dropped to 46 approval during last year’s incorporation vote, but that was still well above the Valley average of 41 percent.

Evergreen voters have historically said no, including last year when support in precincts there didn’t top 40 percent.

Evergreen supporters have two months to get things heading in the right direction.

But for now, it’s looking like the best of times for Opportunity. For Evergreen, the worst.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BOUNDARY BUSINESS The Boundary Review Board will meet Monday to consider requests to alter the proposed boundaries of the city of Evergreen. The meeting, scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m., will take place in the downstairs meeting room of the county Public Works Building, 1026 W. Broadway.