To the citizens of Maple Valley, I want to update you of some new 2010 legislation coming out of Olympia. This legislation creates the opportunity for individual property owners to petition city councils for the creation of new taxing districts. The tax dollars raised from these districts will be used to pay for the infrastructure needs coming primarily from new construction. This seems to have been done rather quickly and quietly in Olympia and was supported by developers like YarrowBay.
As a member of the Maple Valley City Council, I was surprised to learn that our city had participated in this legislative process. There had never been a public discussion on the matter, let alone a vote to lobby the legislation and I very much wanted to know who, on council, had known about this action and who had given direction to our staff to pursue the issue. This is a huge policy issue that should have been vetted by council before any legal steps were taken.
The creation of any new taxing district is very serious, with long term impacts to not only the taxpayers, but possibly to all taxing districts as well. Will there be impacts to junior taxing districts such as the fire district and the library district? What will the overhead and management costs be for the new administrations overseeing our tax dollars? Why will the members of these management committees be appointed and not elected? And, most importantly, why was there never a public discussion on this matter before the Maple Valley City Council?
In raising some of these questions at the March 22, 2010 council meeting, I was told by our city staff, that the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) had dropped the ball and wasn’t pursuing this important piece of legislation and staff had to act quickly to negotiate changes to the legislation. At this point, Councilwoman Erin Weaver stated, on the record, that they “met with legislators at the AWC Conference and so we know that the four of us were down there and discussed the bill with the legislators and when we came back after that event we discussed all that with the entire council….” When I reviewed the approved minutes of the first meeting after the AWC conference (Feb. 1, 2010) I found no mention of these discussions. I did however find the following item in the Feb. 8 minutes: “Mayor (Noel) Gerken referenced activity last week regarding community facility district legislation and thanked the city manager and city attorney for their efforts regarding that legislation that could impact Summit Place. He said that he received a phone call from Rep. Pat Sullivan, who is the author on one of these pieces, and he was concerned that we were concerned, and he will be taking a hard look at the legislation and options.”
It is important to remember that we have a council/manager form of government in Maple Valley whereby council provides direction to the city manager who then implements that direction. When all sitting council members are not given the opportunity to be involved in the decision making process in an open public meeting then everyone loses.
The fact that staff action was taken without council ever publicly discussing this as an agenda item without clear policy direction from council appears to be a very serious violation of the open public meetings act. I must therefore question the “transparency” and “public participation” that has been promised by this new council. The creation of these new community facilities taxing districts will be a very big deal and citizens had a right to know, and indeed have a need to know. The citizens of Maple Valley have a right to expect our City Council to bring issues before the public and take action in accordance with the law. That didn’t happen in this case and I am saddened.
Linda A. Johnson
Maple Valley City Council member
