New city could be the second- or third-largest in Pierce County under WA bill
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- SB 6181 allows the Pierce County Council to submit incorporation petitions directly.
- Unincorporated areas face hurdles to city-like services amid county budget constraints.
- If enacted, voters would still decide; South Hill could form a city of some 70K residents.
Unincorporated parts of Pierce County — think: South Hill, Parkland and Spanaway — would have another method to become their own cities under a bill in the Washington state Legislature.
Advocates say the proposal would make it easier for these areas to incorporate.
State Sen. Steve Conway, a Tacoma Democrat, is the prime sponsor of Senate Bill 6181; Fircrest Democratic state Sen. T’wina Nobles signed on as a co-sponsor.
Under current law, petitions to incorporate must receive signatures from at least 10% of the proposed city’s registered voters. A county legislative body or boundary review board then reviews, and an election on the matter is held, according to the Municipal Research and Services Center.
The new proposal would also let the county council of a “county located west of the Cascade mountains with a population of more than 900,000 but less than 2,000,000” submit an incorporation petition without the need to first gather signatures if the area has a population of more than 25,000 and is located within the urban growth boundary. Then the incorporation question would go before the area’s voters to decide.
Conway said the Pierce County Council asked him to run the bill that would allow them to bring the issue directly to voters.
The bill language is tailored to be Pierce County-specific because it’s really “a Pierce County problem” due to the large amount of unincorporated land there, he said, adding that not all areas in the state would likely agree to the measure. He noted that in King County, suburban cities like Auburn don’t rely on that county’s council to provide services in the same way.
“I think in Pierce County we need to address it,” Conway said. “I really do.”
Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello said many unincorporated parts of the county have begun to act and feel like cities over the past two decades. Those areas, though, haven’t been able to access city-like services or receive city-like attention toward parks or police and public-safety response. Residents have also relayed that they want a higher level of transportation and public-works services, he added.
Mello said that if the bill is signed into law, the likeliest “real-world application” of the measure would be seen in South Hill just south of Puyallup. Should South Hill incorporate, it would be a city of roughly 70,000 people, he said, becoming the second- or third-largest city in Pierce County.
As it stands today, though, some 7,000 valid signatures would need to be collected for this option, which Mello qualified as a hurdle for signature-gathering volunteers.
“I see this as the ability of community members to control their own destiny and figure out how they want to be governed,” he said.
Talk of incorporation elsewhere — such as in the Frederickson, Parkland and Spanaway areas — is always brewing in the background, Mello said. Based on his interactions with constituents, though, he said South Hill seems like the closest near-term opportunity.
If the bill gets signed into law, the issue wouldn’t come before voters as soon as this November, Mello said. Instead, he said it would likely take at least two to three years as the idea would require significant preparation and conversations with affected unincorporated-area communities. It would also take time to ensure that the proposed city would be financially solvent and able to cover its own expenses, he said.
Conway highlighted some challenges that increasingly populated unincorporated areas face in terms of providing services, yet he said the county doesn’t necessarily have the budget to address them.
Driving through Parkland is akin to driving through a city, but it’s a challenge to build city-like infrastructure, such as a community center or parks, he said, given other revenue demands across the county. He’s also had an ongoing conversation with people in Spanaway who have, at various times, launched past incorporation efforts.
“I’ve heard from constituents on it; they all recognize that it’s a challenge,” Conway said. “But a lot of them just worry about the taxes that cities bring to them … so, you know, it’s not an easy issue.”
SB 6181 is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Local Government Committee on Thursday at 1:30 p.m.
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