Annexation more complicated than it seems, Royal council told

ROYAL CITY — The Royal City City Council learned some things about the process of annexation at its Aug. 1 meeting.

The discussion was occasioned by an application by Gerald Brown, owner of Golden West Farms, LLC, for the city to annex two parcels of Golden West land, one 70 acres and the other 7.7 acres south of the city limits. The council set aside part of the meeting as a public hearing on the petition.

“Is there any indication of what’s going to be going into that property?” asked Robert Weber, the only citizen to attend the hearing.

“At this point, no,” said City Planner Alex Kovach, adding that when the petition had been discussed at the council’s June 18 meeting, it had been suggested that the property would be zoned C-2, or general commercial.

Annexing commercial property has ripple effects under Washington’s Growth Management Act, City Attorney Katherine Kenison explained to the council. The GMA regulates how much space a city can allocate for a particular use, she said.

“It's important to remember that you only have so much land capacity for your different uses,” she said. “So if this is proposed to all be commercial, then if this property was annexed and it sat undeveloped because the owner didn't want to develop it – and you can't force them to develop it if it's an unconditional annexation – then that property could sit vacant and take up your land capacity for commercial, and you would not be able to add other commercial property in another area.”

Infrastructure is another consideration, Kenison said, as annexation would mean shifting the burden of supplying services from Grant County to the city.

“What happens when you annex property into the city is, your legal duty changes from not being required to provide services to being required to provide services. There's no going back – you don't get to de-annex … So once you've annexed, you're pretty much stuck with the land. And so then you have an affirmative duty to serve: water, sewer, fire, police, parks and rec, all of the city services that you provide. So you want to be mindful of how much capacity you currently have, and how much of an impact that additional land will have on your capacity to serve.”

As a legislative body, the city council is entitled to impose conditions on an annexation, Kenison said.

“Something like a development agreement or a pre-annexation agreement is a good tool, because then you can go to the person who wants to annex and say, ‘Look, we're willing to annex, but these are the impacts that are going to occur, here's what we would propose to address those impacts,’” she said.

“On these development agreements, instead of saying the whole thing would have to be developed in 20 years, (could the landowner show) a good faith effort, if you will, have a minimum development of 3% per five-year period, until it's eventually developed?” asked Public Works Director John Lasen.

“Anything goes on a development agreement,” Kenison answered. “It’s a contract between the developer and the city and there's virtually no restrictions on what you can and cannot agree to.”

The council voted to keep the public hearing open for future discussion.

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.