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Should Renton and Fairwood get hitched?
The King County Boundary Review board recently posted it’s decision regarding the potential Fairwood Annexation. Here is the conclusion of their report:
click here to see the whole decision
Next, this issue will go the the voters of Fairwood for a decision regarding whether they wish to annex to the city of Renton. This question will be on the November ballot. The City of Renton has so far remained neutral on this issue, although we’ve heard opinions from all sides including residents from Renton and Fairwood who want this to go forward, and residents from both of these areas that do not.
If you have an opinion you would like to share with other readers on this topic, feel free to share in the comment section below.
Having just gone through the annexation to Renton just over 3 years ago, I can understand the reason to join Renton. Living within the City is a large improvement over living in Unincorporated King County.
This would be a growth factor for the City of Renton, plus Renton already receives business and volunteer support from the Fairwood area citizens. This annexation if it goes through would be a win/win situation for both the Fairwood area and the City of Renton.
I can’t wait for the all that juicy tax revenue from Fairwood that we could then spend it on the city part of Renton. We would also be a bigger city, and bigger is better.
Fairwood needs to become their own City
Most voting home owners in our community do not want Fairwood to become part of Renton. Renton can not take care of what it currently has. We are tired of paying more and more taxes. Especially to the Renton School District who now takes more than 35 percent of my yearly property taxes. We are currently taxed to the max. To add more crap to the pile our Dumb Mayor is now talking about also annexing the East Hill. That would truly be a burden on the Property Tax Payers of Renton and if the Mayor or Randy Corman say differently, then you need to take whatever action is necessary to vote them out of office.
Re: Fairwood needs to become their own City
The hardest decision that Randy, the Mayor or any elected leader has to think about is what carries the majority vote. The silent or the vocal. The majority vote can change with each and every subject.
Re: Fairwood needs to become their own City
Let’s see…so far I seem to have comments from one Renton resident against the annexation, one Renton resident for the annexation, one (probably Fairwood) resident against the annexation, and one who I-can’t-tell-where-they’re-from (but I like them) because they understand how hard my job is.
Let’s here from more of you!
Re: Fairwood needs to become their own City
I didn’t elect Randy to follow the majority, I elected him to do whats best in the long-term. But that’s just me.
Re: Fairwood needs to become their own City
The RSD and City of Renton are NOT the same entity. The vast majority of taxes going to RSD are VOTER-APPROVED via levys not foisted upon property owners by the city or RSD.
And East Hill…? Which city are you even talking about…? KENT!?
No offsence to the good people of Fairwood (I married one) but I’d really rather keep Renton small, compact, and well run. Beson was a mistake (again, no offence to our new citizens) as it changed the nature of our city from a dense core to a sprawling octopus-like thing that has so many different needs that one way of doing things can’t make anybody happy. IE: Benson voted overwhelmingly for KCLS while everybody else wanted to be remain independant.
When Fairwood comes on board, Renton wil be stretched even further and Fairwood won’t nesessarily get what they really want – better police enfocement is about all I’ve heard that they really want and they won’t automagically get that with a merger.
I’m willing to lisen to reason howver, but this is my gut reaction to the idea.
Nice that Fairwood wants better police enforcement. Existing Renton citizens want that within Renton already! Not a slam on our police officers. The ones we have do a great job. We just don’t have enough out in the neighborhoods and cracking down on drug trafficking. The drug trafficking is attracting other criminal acts.
After the Benson annexation, it seems to me that we have less police presence in North Renton.
To be really fair, we have much better service than Kent and Auburn – South King county is getting hit really hard with Section 8 housing and other slum-lord scum.
But they have new badges and coffee cups at the tax payers expense. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?
Randy, could you help me on this I am not exactly sure of the boundaries. Wasn’t Renton started somewhere within the area of South Renton and maybe Renton hill and ALL other land has been annexed to Renton? Meaning the vast majority of the residents of Renton would live outside of Renton if not for annexation and the choice to grow in size. The past is the past, back in the late 60’s when Renton had between 25,000 and 26,000, Renton was larger then the City of Kent. Since Kent decided it was best to grow it went past Renton in size. To say that Renton is a small city is to stay in the past. The majority of growth for Renton has come from annexations in the past and people moving to Renton because it was a great city and an excellent place to live. As far as Benson Hill annexation it did more to grow Renton then to spread out services. Because Renton had been adding small annexations over the years, but because they were not large enough to increase employees and support, the services were already being spread thin, to think otherwise is unrealistic. But with the large annexation by the Benson Hill area Renton was able to grow its services to ALL Renton residents. Saying that Benson Hill area was the deciding factor on the vote of the library system is interesting. I have not gotten the list from King County that would show the exact count (both PRO and Con)from each and every voting preceinct but since there was support for both sides (Pro and Con)from all over Renton, it is hard to say what area the majority of the voters lived with in. I have no plan to get that list, the only thing I am intersted in was the majority of Renton residents.
OK, maybe I am biased, since I live in the Benson Hill area of Renton.
FYI: It is easier for Renton Police to provide a bettor service when they can control problems coming from border areas that are not well policed.
Yes Dave, you are right that most of us in Renton live in areas that were annexed at one time or another. I believe the original city of 1901 encompassed downtown, parts of North Renton (where one of the above commenters lives, so it might say on his title that he is allowed to complain about growth), South Renton (Burnett Ave area), and Renton Hill. My guess is that about 10,000 people live in this area today considering the apartments in downtown and the Landing. The rest of us live in areas that have annexed. My home was built in 1959, in King County. It was annexed to Renton in the 1970s. Large parts of the Highlands were annexed in the years around World War 2.
I’m afraid that services have grown more sparse recently, and unfortunately the timing can give the impression that Benson Hill caused it. But the real cut-backs have come from the tough economy, which has pared services to the bone. Like virtually every other municipality in the country, we’ve had to leave positions unfilled in recent years, and reduce staffing to lower levels that citizens are used to.
Benson Hill brought funding from the state which minimized the impacts to our budget from the Benson Hill annexation. We had some early emphasis patrolling in Benson Hill which may have temporarily concentrated policing there shortly after the annexation, but this was to put criminals on notice that there was a heightened police presence and they should move on out of town (and to get control of some dangerous speeding corridors.) This emphasis work with gangs/drugs actually helps keep all of Renton safer.
Ben’s point about the library is a fair one from where he sits, in that he is almost certainly right that without the annexation of Benson Hill the library vote would have gone the other way. Since Ben wanted to maintain Renton’s independent library, it would be hard to disagree with his point that the larger city reduces his level of control of such decisions. The only factor off-setting this reduction of control for existing residents is that the city overall gains regional pull as we get larger. This will probably help us get what we want from the county and the state occasionally in the future, but it is not by itself a reason to annex.
One of the best recent write-ups I have seen on the potential Fairwood Annexation is the reporting done by the Fairwood Community News following the Boundary Review Board meeting. That article can be found here .
For those who might think Renton’s budget problems are somehow worse or different than Fairwood’s or King County’s, the same edition carried a story about the difficulties Fairwood is having keeping the shopping center full. They have reached a 30 % vacancy rate. Click here for the story . The Landing was still being built when the recession hit, and we’ve had to work hard to fill retail space at the Landing through this entire recession. But we’ve reached the 70 percent full mark, and have several other good prospects in the pipeline.
All in all, I know Renton will have a bright future whether or not we annex Fairwood. Most Rentonites would not notice very much change if we annex Fairwood, especially those who live furthest from the Fairwood area. For instance, I don’t think most residents would even notice in Renton Highlands. Fairwood will probably enjoy a bright future either way (annexation or not) as well. But Fairwood will ultimately need to look somewhere other than King County for urban services…either by annexing or building their own capability.
RentonBen (from north Renton, which should be called North Central Renton) is just as much of an invader of old Renton as Odavesnothere (from Benson Hill). Have a look at the Annexation History map http://rentonnet.org/internetapps/maps/pdf/City%20Maps/Annexation%20History.pdf
According to the map, Ben’s neighborhood was not annexed until 1909. Does this mean that he has to keep quiet about annexation issues from now on? The Landing area didn’t annex until 1959.
It seems very odd that the original 1901 corporate boundaries, denoted by the section numbered 0 on the map, anticipated the exact location of the Cedar River Flood Channel that would not be built until 1912, but it is clear that Ben’s neighborhood grew adjacent to downtown Renton, then annexed, which is just what Benson Hill did and what Fairwood, West Hill and East Highlands should do.
It’s not like adjusting the city boundaries will cause the homes, schools, roads and utility systems of the nearly 48,000 residents who live in these areas to suddenly spring into existence. They are already here and are practically, if not legally already part of Renton. Adjusting the somewhat artificial boundary of the city to include these adjacent areas will not fundamentally or even superficially change the nature of the community we already share; it will just allow Renton to deliver municipal services, which it does MUCH more efficiently and effectively than King County.
It will also allow Renton to intelligently plan and expand the road network. The current, unnatural boundaries have caused transportation decisions to be driven by political expedience, not the needs of the whole community. More roads onto both the Highlands plateau and Soos Creek plateau are urgently needed, but as long as these areas remain separated from Renton by artificial political boundaries, these needs will never be met.
Ben is very wisely worried about the massive inefficiencies inherent in a large, unionized government bureaucracy, but he seems to have forgotten the inherent economies of scale, natural efficiencies gained when small organizations expand to a more optimum balance between management overhead and worker productivity. Renton is actually running a bit too lean right now and would be more efficient if the city expanded to include all of the already existing 132,000 citizens in the natural community boundaries. I will start to worry when the city begins to approach the 150,000 citizen mark, but that will not be until about 2025, assuming we can ever recover from the economic insanity currently radiating from Democrat dominated Olympia and D.C.
Union Hat
I cringe everything this topic comes up. Somehow it brings out the very worst from a small group of people who somehow gets the notion that Renton wants to take over such a “prize”. Gez.. part of me wants Fairwood to incorporate then fails in a ball of flame then I realize there are a lot of rational, good folks there too as well.
Is it possible to have the vote as Renton/Incorporate and be done with this once for all? I’m tired of hearing from mac mansion snobs.
for the record, I’m a fairly new Renton resident, coming from Bellevue. I find the police service is super, the town hall very easy to navigate and get service. There are issues, however, from the housing project and the border area (Rainer) but the city is doing a good job of conrolling those problem.
-H
-H
Is it true that most of the Renton council members don’t want Fairwood to annex?
You’d Have to Ask Marcie Palmer
From what I’ve been told, she seems to believe she’s the voice of the council lately.
Re: You’d Have to Ask Marcie Palmer
She’s the only one not a victim of “group-think.”