| Birch
Bay group takes serious look at incorporation
By
Jack Kintner
Birch Bay will take a serious look at incorporation in
the next six months thanks to a grant from Whatcom County
that the Birch Bay Steering Committee has used to hire incorporation
consultants Berk and Associates of Seattle.
According to economist
Brett Sheckler, the staff person that Berk and Associates
has assigned to the Birch Bay study, the goal is not to
advocate for or against incorporation but to provide what
he called a “foundation of factual
information that people can work from.” There can
be a lot of disagreement and discussion that’s helpful
if you can first agree on the basic facts, Sheckler said.
Though
the dates for the meetings had not been set by press time,
Sheckler said that he expects things to begin in a matter
of weeks.
About half the potentially incorporated areas that Berk
and Associates have worked with ended up rejecting incorporation,
he said. Others, such as the city of Sammamish east of
Seattle, rejected it once but then voted for it after a
more focused examination of the question under the leadership
of Sheckler’s
group.
The study will be conducted by the incorporation
subcommittee of the Birch Bay Steering Committee, the group
responsible for developing the Birch Bay subarea plan that
Whatcom County approved in September of 2004. Since then
the steering committee, through several subcommittees,
has been working on implementing various aspects of the
plan, including the question of incorporation.
The incorporation
subcommittee normally meets the first Monday of the month
at 7 p.m. Sheckler said that while the meeting schedule
the subcommittee will use to work with Berk and Associates
has yet to be set, he expects there to be monthly meetings
during the six-month time period specified in the grant.
Some of this will be decided at the initial meeting where
the group will “finalize some details and the
handling of some logistics,” he said.
Subcommittee
member Blair Murray said that the group cannot extend
the time spent with the consultant without changing the
grant, so there is a sense among subcommittee members
of wanting to get through the process in a timely fashion. “But
the goal is to hear from everyone, so there will be mechanisms
in place to do that, such as open meetings where anyone
may speak and perhaps a public comment period at other
times.”
Sheckler agreed, saying that one reason
the study was set to begin in the summer was to be able
to include non-voting landowners in the discussions, “people
like the Canadians or people from out of the county who
are registered to vote somewhere else.” A survey
in 2000 determined that about 33 percent of the property
owners were Canadian.
Sheckler also suggested down-loading a copy of the municipal
incorporation guide put out by the public non-profit
Municipal Research and Services Center in Seattle and
which is available on-line.
There is a link to the site and more information at the
Birch Bay information website at www.birchbayinfo.org.
The Municipal
Incorporation Guide is available at www.birchbayinfo.org/images/Municipal_Inc_Guide06.pdf. | 
