(Above) West Hill has many beautiful homes with residents that take great pride in their neighborhoods and their rural-county way of life.

The area also could use attention in code enforcement, policing, and economic development, but not everyone agrees on what form this should take or how it can be paid for.

The Renton City Council is once again deliberating on whether to go to the ballot with potential annexation of the West Hill Neighborhood (which is made up of Bryn Mawr, Lakeridge, Skyway, Earlington, Campbell Hill, Panorama, Skycrest, and Hill Top.) I last discussed this issue in my blog in 2008 HERE , with detail and pictures.

The West Hill was in our original Potential Annexation Area (PAA) as defined in our first growth management plan in 1993 under Mayor Clymer. But when Mayor Tanner took office in 1996, he urged removal of West Hill from our PAA after an analysis showed that it would cost Renton taxpayers up to 40 million dollars to annex the area (a number which has remained remarkably unchanged in the last 15 years). Then, in a heated and passionate council meeting in 2005, Mayor Keolker succeeded in getting a divided council to put West Hill back into our PAA, largely on the premise that putting it back into our PAA was the only way we could evaluate funding options. The reasoning that prevailed went like this: if we put West Hill back in our PAA we could request county and state funding assistance for additional study and ultimately for servicing the area. If the county and state agreed to provide us the money we needed, we could then consider annexing. If we ultimately could not get any money (or West Hill chose not to annex), we could take the area back out of our PAA.

Now, after many years of study and fund raising efforts, the state has come though with about half of the money we would need to service West Hill during the first ten years without impacting current residents of Renton– the state can provide us about 2.5 million per year for ten years. Unfortunately, the County has not been able to promise any significant assistance, so we would find ourselves running a deficit of about 1.5 million per year for the first ten years trying to service West Hill, and significantly more than that after ten years if we did not get some sort of major economic revitalization out of their retail corridors by that time.

This has left Mayor Law recommending against annexing the area, and the council divided on what action to take next. The state funding offer comes with a time line in which council has until next week to set an election date for West Hill– if no date is set by next week, the twenty-five million dollars in state funding (2.5 million per year) will not be available.

Some council members are ready to say West Hill Annexation is dead, while others are pushing strongly to promote it, while others might put it on life support. We’ve been told that setting an election date does not mean we are obligated to go through with annexation…it just means we will hear from West Hill whether they want to annex. So some council members were interested in understanding whether we could tentatively set an election in 2012, and then decide by the end of 2011 whether we would would go through with the election or call it off. This would give the county and others more time to find additional money. I was interested in this option yesterday, but I am increasingly less interested because of the confusing messages it sends and the low probability of more money turning up.

Council has been hearing from West Hill and existing Renton residents that are split on this issue. Some in Renton have suggested that the existing citizens of Renton should be allowed to vote on this annexation as well. I’ve heard one other council member express this sentiment as well. We’ve not talked about this, and I don’t know whether it would be supported by a majority of council, but it would not be out of the question for the council to ask for an advisory vote from existing citizens. We would want to be sure we picked an election where everybody was already receiving ballots in order to keep the costs down.

We intend to resolve this issue on Monday August 9th, first at Committee of the Whole which starts at 5:30, followed by final debate and action at the council meeting at 7:00 PM. I’m not certain at this point exactly what I will do. I will possibly vote no to further discussion of West Hill annexation, in which case I will also recommend that we once again remove West Hill from our potential annexation area (so that West Hill would be free to petition Seattle or Tukwila for governance); or I will vote to put annexation on the ballot in mid-2012 with the call-off the election at the end of 2011 if there is no additional money available. I might also float the idea of an advisory vote of existing Renton residents.

As always, I would love to hear from the citizens of Renton and West Hill on this topic. Send your letters and emails to Renton City Hall, and feel free to engage in debate here on my blog.