State law changed to help local consolidation effort - in 1995

Many of the details on exactly how consolidation of municipalities can happen in Washington were changed to accomodate a Grand Coulee Dam area push in the mid-1990s to do just that.

An article in The Star on May 3, 1995, details some of the issues of consolidation as affected by Senate Bill 5275, which was signed into law at that time by then-Governor Mike Lowry.

The details answer some questions being asked today, as the conversation on consolidation heats up.

“One major objection to consolidation of the four local towns stemmed from the state requirement that all legislative representatives of the new city would be elected to ‘at large,’ positions,” the 1995 article states. “Elmer City residents worried that part of the city would have no representation because candidates from the other three larger towns would command all the votes. The new law changes that. City council representatives could be elected from ‘wards,’ parts of the new city that could basically consist of the old towns.”

The article and the law also address another objection to consolidation — that of one city’s residents taking on the debts of another city.

“Voters could vote on whether they wanted their home town to assume any of the current indebtedness of another town,” the article says. “It would take a three-fifths majority and at least 40 percent of the votes cast in the town in the last general election to assume that debt and make payments through property taxes.”

The 1995 law allows the naming of the town to be placed on a ballot, rather than decided by a new city council, with a simple majority winning, and “ties are broken by drawing lots.”

Prior to the 1995 law, no town with a population under 1,500 could exceed two square miles, something Coulee Dam already exceeded. The law was changed to say “a town located in three or more counties is excluded from a limitation in square mileage,” Coulee Dam being the only town in the state that fits that description. The boundaries of Grant, Okanogan and Douglas counties all reach into Coulee Dam.

Mary Margaret Haugen, state senator at the time, sponsored the bill, and had been briefed on the subject by then-mayor of Coulee Dam, Rod Harman.

The provisions of the bill passed in 1995 are now included in the state law on consolidating cities. You can read all of it in the Revised Code of Washington, chapter 35.10.

The conversation on consolidation continues, over 23 years and counting.