Mayor Denis Law is going to present to the City Council a resolution calling for the annexation of all of Fairwood.
If the resolution is approved, an annexation proposal would appear on the ballot next August for Fairwood residents to decide their future.
Law’s administration will present an agenda item and an issue paper to the City Council Monday, with discussions to start on Dec. 7.
The city is under some pressure to begin the process of annexing Fairwood by year’s end in order to receive a sales-tax credit from the state. The money – up to $2.2 million – is important to helping pay for transition costs of annexing Fairwood.
Fairwood came up during the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night in a question from council member Terri Briere. Council members indicated they were getting questions from citizens about the city’s plans for Fairwood.
Marty Wine, the city’s assistant chief administrative officer, explained the administration’s plan in response to Briere’s question.
Fairwood annexation is on the table again with the failure of the measure to incorporate the area of roughly 26,000 people in the Nov. 3 general election.
The City Council has already accepted petitions for two annexation proposals, one for Fairwood’s main commercial core, known as the Red Mill annexation, and one for the entire Fairwood area, the Choose Renton annexation.
Wine told the council that rather than move forward with just one of the proposals, the City Council has the authority to place annexation on the ballot through a resolution.
Trying to address two annexation proposals at the same time could be confusing, Wine said, and time-consuming.
The Red Mill annexation came up during the discussion. Jay Covington, the city’s chief administrative officer, pointed out that the Red Mill annexation would have irregular borders, which generally is opposed by the Washington state Boundary Review Board for King County.
Covington also said King County likely would oppose annexing just the commercial area of Fairwood.
Instead, Covington said, “why don’t we go ahead and roll them into one vote.”
The City Council will have a chance to debate the issues on Dec. 7 and beyond, if necessary.
Annexing Skyway/West Hill also came up at the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting Monday.
The Boundary Review Board will hold hearings in January on the Skyway/West Hill annexation proposal. The City of Renton has asked that the board delay the hearings in order to do more analysis of the costs of annexing Skyway. The initial deficit the city would face in Skyway/West Hill is about $1 million, but that gap would widen, Wine said.
