Mukilteo City Hall
Politics
With no city government representing the unincorporated areas, community concerns are less able to be heard by different politicians and government entities. There are no local mayors, councils, or committees which oversee specific unincorporated areas. Snohomish County has to govern the entire county and evaluate the needs of that entire area, while a city can govern a smaller area and evaluate needs more closely. This also mans much less representation in area government committees and boards, which often involve city representation.
For example, the issue of commercial flights at Paine Field is a controversial one in the area, given that the southern flight path travels over Lake Serene. Residents inside Mukilteo, Lynnwood, and Edmonds can be properly represented in this issue, and Mukilteo even has a budget line item for the Paine Field issue. Meanwhile, residents in the unincorporated areas can’t be properly represented by a government, and can only rely on groups such as Save our Communities.
Taxes
Under the default conditions, total taxes under the city would be lower than under unincorporated Snohomish County, and since the tax revenue stays local the money is reinvested in the neighborhood and city, instead of in other parts of the county. This has also been the case in other annexations.
One idea to improve the unincorporated areas to standards found in Mukilteo at a faster rate, a short-term tax increase can be evaluated and applied to these areas, and this increase should still result in overall lower taxes compared to under unincorporated Snohomish County.
That said, in the unlikely case that taxes under the city are higher than under unincorporated Snohomish County, the higher taxes come with better services, a government more aware of local issues, and numerous other benefits described previously.
Community
Mukilteo and its unincorporated areas already share many community and social aspects, and these would be strengthened by annexation. One example of this are the schools. Middle school students in the unincorporated areas attend Harbour Pointe and Olympic View Middle.
The area west of Mukilteo Speedway is in Kamiak High’s coverage area, while the areas east of Mukilteo Speedway are in Mariner High’s coverage area, though many students there attend Kamiak High.
School boundaries are independent of city boundaries, so if Mukilteo considers wanting the Kamiak High coverage area expanded to the annexation areas east of Mukilteo Speedway, a separate movement involving the Mukilteo School District would be necessary for that. There are very few children in these areas, so this would have roughly no affect on class sizes.