Spanaway Incorporation Proposal Gets Community Meeting Date

TACOMA, WA - A special community meeting on the proposed incorporation of Spanaway will be held at the Marymount Event Center in Tacoma next week, giving interested constituents an opportunity to hear arguments against and in favor of establishing Spanaway as a city in its own right.

The Pierce County Boundary Review Board's special meeting is set to begin at 6:30 p.m. March 20 at 325 152nd St. E. in Tacoma. Officials will reportedly adjourn the meeting no later than 10 p.m. Interested speakers will each be given 3 minutes to address the room.

The Boundary Review Board meeting is the second of more than a dozen steps necessary to complete the incorporation process.

Resident Barbara "Boojee" Bowman began the process on Feb. 19 when she addressed the Pierce County Council and reintroduced the plan to officially incorporate Spanaway as a city, 17 years after local activists were rejected by 79 percent of voters who did not want to be incorporated in 2002.

With a smaller city boundary and no additional plans to absorb other unincorporated Pierce County communities, the 2019 incorporation proposal faces a different set of hurdles than its predecessor.

At this time, however, the only hurdle that really matters is winning over those same voters who didn't want to be incorporated the first time around. And the meeting next Wednesday will give petition proponents an opportunity to hear from supporters and detractors, perhaps giving some indication as to just how popular the new proposal will ultimately be.

According to county officials, the purpose of the March 20 meeting will be to exchange information, specifically between the petition proponents and those who will be most directly affected by any changes to their residence status.

The county said the substance of the meeting will mostly consist of the following:

• The proponent(s) who filed notice of the incorporation shall have the opportunity to inform the community concerning the proposed incorporation petition;
• Residents, property owners, and affected governmental units shall have the opportunity to inform the proponent(s) of their support for or opposition to the proposed incorporation;
• Residents and property owners shall have the opportunity to inform the proponent(s) of their desire to be included in the incorporation or excluded from the incorporation; and
• Residents, property owners, and affected governmental units shall have the opportunity to offer to the proponent(s) comments and recommendations concerning content of the incorporation petition, including incorporation area boundaries, the proposed new city form of government, and the name of the proposed new city.

In the days following the meeting, the county auditor will assign the petition an identification number and petitioners will set out to obtain the requisite number of signatures — 10 percent of registered voters within the boundaries of the proposed new city, or roughly 2,400.

Anyone with questions about the meeting can call Boundary Review Board staff at 253-798-7156, or email danica.williams@piercecountywa.gov.

For more information on the Boundary Review Board itself or the incorporation proposal, including a map of the proposed city of Spanaway, visit piercecountywa.gov.

Related:

• Spanaway Residents Seek Incorporation, File Notice

(Sign up for our free daily newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Lakewood-JBLM Patch)