Valley alters Appleway tack
Spokane Valley is taking a different tack after months of negotiating for Spokane County to turn over a strip of land that would continue Appleway Boulevard east from University, claiming now that the city has owned the land all along.
In a letter to county commissioners from Mayor Diana Wilhite dated Wednesday, the city “asserts that it has legal ownership of the property commonly referred to as the Old Milwaukee Right-of-Way.”
The letter concludes that the city will take “appropriate action” if the county does not acknowledge the city’s ownership of the approximately four-mile stretch of land by Dec. 6.
“It puts them on notice that we’re serious about getting it done,” Wilhite said.
According to assessment records, the land belongs to Spokane County. That could prove to be a big problem for Spokane Valley as it looks to extend Appleway to Evergreen Road and crafts an extensive redevelopment plan that includes land surrounding both Sprague and the empty right of way.
“It makes a lot of difference in our planning,” she said.
Neither Wilhite nor the city attorney would comment on whether the letter sets the stage for a lawsuit against Spokane County if the commissioners disagree.
Other City Council members said they had agreed that only the mayor would comment on the issue.
They voted to draft the letter following a late-night executive session Tuesday. Public bodies are allowed to conceal their deliberations from the public only for specific reasons outlined in the law. Land acquisition and potential litigation were among the open-meeting exceptions cited at the meeting.
The letter also states that the city will grant an easement for county sewer lines, but noticeably absent is any mention of an easement for public transit like light rail – the biggest sticking point in city/county negotiations.
“We quit trying to talk to the commissioners about it because we hit a roadblock,” Wilhite said.
The width of the former railroad bed varies from 60 feet to 100 feet. One of the disagreements surrounded which agency would pay for additional right of way needed to make parts of the road wide enough to accommodate both a new road and space that could be used by transit someday.
Commissioner Mark Richard and members of the council worked closely to craft an agreement in which the city would grant a transit easement on the existing stretch of Appleway and sections of the empty land that are wide enough to accommodate it. Extra land for transit in the skinny sections would have to be purchased by the Spokane Transit Authority or another agency.
Commissioner Todd Mielke supported a different plan to pay for cost of the extra right of way for transit.
In June, Mielke said that the county would blow its opportunity as a regional government to connect communities if it didn’t ensure some kind of unbroken easement for transit through the Valley.
Richard’s plan initially had the support of Commissioner Phil Harris, but he said the last proposal he saw included a provision he disagreed with that would make the county liable for cleaning up any contaminants from the railroad.
“I wanted them to take it the same way we accepted it” from the railroad, Harris said, without any environmental strings attached.
There were also talks of a possible land exchange for property near the fairgrounds. But after support failed to materialize for Richard’s proposal in August, talks fizzled. Wilhite said they agreed to hold off further discussions until after the election.
The city’s letter didn’t arrive at the commissioners’ office until Thursday, and both Harris and Mielke said they weren’t in a position yet to comment on the Spokane Valley’s claim to the land.
“I’m a little bit caught off-guard by this approach,” said Richard.
A lot of city projects depend on the land, Richard said, and he had originally hoped to have the issue resolved a year ago, adding that his hope is to reach some sort of compromise with the city by the first of the year.
“I’ve got to get another vote to get this off our desk,” Richard said.