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Fifteen years ago, late in the evening of Nov. 7, 2000, proponents of creating a new city celebrated a clear ballot victory while watching returns on a television at the home of Jim Frank.
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Cover Story: Turning Point
10/28/2015 3:25:01 PM
By Craig Howard
Splash Contributor
When Judi Owens went to the ballot 15 years ago this month to decide on the incorporation of Liberty Lake, she reminisced about the snow drifts that routinely transformed the streets around her home into an icy maze.
When Margaret Barnes talked to her neighbors about the prospect of a new city that autumn, she remembered the community's enthusiastic campaign to establish a library that was met with a disappointing response by the Spokane County Library District.
When Scott Bernhard looked ahead the election in the fall of 2000 that would decide the future of the place he had called home since 1993, he pondered a more effective use of local property and sales tax revenue. For Bernhard and many residents, one aspect of their community had become increasingly clear - the Liberty Lake area was growing and Spokane County simply couldn't keep up.
"It just seemed like the county wasn't delivering a lot of services, even though a lot of money was going out," he said.
On Nov. 7, 2000, a total of 938 voters cast ballots in support of Liberty Lake transitioning from an unincorporated swathe of Spokane County into its own city. The final tally would have 502 voting against the change. The electorate included just over 62 percent of eligible voters.
For the first time since Airway Heights incorporated in 1955, Eastern Washington's largest county had a new city.
"I thought it was going to pass," said Greenstone Homes founder Jim Frank, who helped forge a governance study committee in 1998 that began the discussion of a city in earnest. "I think most people were excited about it. In retrospect, it's been an enormous success. I think the success of Liberty Lake has far exceeded what we expected all those years ago."
Roots of incorporation
Before talk of a city began, residents in the Liberty Lake area were known for grassroots campaigns that built Pavillion Park and an expansive trail network. The effort to fund trails, led by Tom Specht, included the establishment of a self-taxing mechanism known as a Transportation Benefit District approved by residents. Pavillion Park rose from a field through the efforts of neighbors who placed greenspace as a priority.
The message was clear - citizens would work toward a goal and pay for it themselves if necessary.
"We had just gone through the experience of developing Pavillion Park, and the county had not been very responsive," Frank said. "There had been some discussions about a library, but the Spokane County Library District wasn't all that enthused about building a library in Liberty Lake. They ended up building a branch on Wellesley near Harvard Road."
Bernhard, who would go on to become part of Liberty Lake's inaugural City Council, recalls the momentum building for a jurisdiction that would give residents more of a voice.
"There was a great community spirit here," he said. "It was great to be a part of. A lot of the people who had done the work with the trails and the park helped build the initiative for incorporation."
Longtime resident Leslie Zilka was part of the trails committee and also served as president of Friends of Pavillion Park. She recalls how the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District stepped up to become the first quasi-government entity in the community when it was established in 1973 to protect the water quality of Liberty Lake.
"The foundations were all there, starting with the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District," she said. "That was there and the industry followed and the community followed. Then you had the Friends of Pavillion Park and the trails committee. Those were both unifying foundations."
Frank and Greenstone had been building homes in the Liberty Lake area well before talk of incorporation surfaced. Frank's emphasis on a walkable, mixed-use community with trails, parks and nourishing community energy hearkened back to the priorities of Bill Main and his son, Bill Jr., who had seen a similar potential for the Liberty Lake area in the late 1970s.
"Jim really set the tone for this community," Zilka said.
Studying pays off
Wendy Van Orman was part of the governance study group along with Frank, Judi Williams of Telect, Bernhard, LLSWD Commissioner Tom Agnew and others. Early the following year, the committee collected feedback from 1,800 residents regarding the quality of services in the community. In what may have set a record for return rate of a citizen survey, 550 responses were received, with Spokane County earning failing grades in key areas like library services, land-use planning, snow plowing and approach to governance.
"We had our priorities as a community," said Van Orman, who was elected to the first City Council and later served as mayor. "We wanted greenspace, trails, a strong police force, a library and signage that was not excessive. We knew we were a unique entity, that we had an identifiable area and were close-knit as a community."
Telect and Greenstone contributed $12,000 for a study that shared its findings in April of 1999. The quartet of options included keeping the status quo, changing the form of county government, annexing to an adjacent city or incorporation.
It was around that time that the baton was passed to incorporation supporters like Shaun Brown, publisher of the newly established Liberty Lake Splash newspaper, and Lud Kramer, a former Washington Secretary of State who had also served on the Seattle City Council.
"We saw our role as providing information and staying neutral," Frank said. "That's when Shaun Brown, Lud Kramer and others took up the leadership. By the time it came around to a vote, they had a lot of the answers they needed to move forward with incorporation."
Back and forth over boundaries
In July 1999, Liberty Lake 2000 filed a notice to incorporate with the board of Spokane County Commissioners. The boundaries would be the same utilized by the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District, including the developed area around the lake, south of Sprague Avenue.
For the first time, incorporation advocates encountered waves of opposition.
"There were many who really felt incorporation would just open the door to high-rise development on the shores of Liberty Lake," Brown recalls. "These citizens participated in the discussions and eventually the line was drawn at Sprague due to their strong feelings."
Zilka remembers her friends around the lake concerned about the new city "becoming another Issaquah."
"They were worried about the formation of a city because if it was designated as urban, they feared we'd have hillside homes around the lake all the way up," Zilka said. "By restricting the border to north of Sprague, we were able to get it passed."
Frank, who built his home on a lot near the lake a decade before the incorporation vote, said high-density housing was not going to be an automatic byproduct of the new city.
"I think there was a perception of the people around the lake that the land use regulations would change around the lake," he said. "I don't think that would have happened, but that was the perception. Now, looking back, I think the people around the lake, for the most part, respect the city and what it has done."
Time for a change
When Zilka and her husband, Nick, moved to the Liberty Lake community in 1993, the terrain was defined by rural traits.
"I could look out on the Meadowwood area and it was a meadow and a golf course," Leslie said. "There was no grocery store when we moved here. There was the Zip Trip and that was it. It was pretty quiet."
As homes and commercial development cropped up over the years, residents like Margaret "Peg" Keeve saw the need for increased emphasis on services like police protection.
"We needed a jurisdiction with a growing community," Keeve said. "The idea of a city made sense to people."
With the revised city limits part of the proposal, the campaign received another boost in July 2000 when the Spokane County Boundary Review Board gave its stamp of approval to allow the incorporation vote on the November ballot.
Now it was time to get voters to jump on the new city bandwagon.
"We had yard signs out, we were talking to our neighbors," said Barnes, a past president of FOPP. "We all talked about it amongst ourselves and decided it was the way to go."
Steve and Charmaine Peterson first heard about the effort to incorporate when Zilka knocked on their door with a yard sign.
"I thought it was a good idea when I heard about it," said Peterson who would eventually become Liberty Lake's first mayor. "What they were talking about is bringing tax dollars closer to home. I don't think there was a lot of opposition to it. The main trepidation was from Spokane County due to the loss of tax revenue."
Estimates had the county losing around $1.7 million in tax dollars if incorporation passed, although half of that total would likely be recouped with the new city contracting for municipal services. In the years following incorporation, however, Liberty Lake would further distance itself from the county, establishing its own police department and library while contracting with the private sector for snow removal.
Peterson, who has served as mayor for all but four years of the city's existence, said Kramer - who passed away in 2004 - would be proud of the strides Liberty Lake has made.
"I think Lud would be extremely delighted with how things turned out," Peterson said. "He loved the investment in the parks, he appreciated the investment in the trails, he wanted the city to be financially fit - and we've accomplished all of that. He was always a proponent of our own police force and our library."
The first City Council would be elected in April of 2001 with the inaugural City Hall established that year in the Liberty Square Building that also serves as headquarters of Greenstone. The official incorporation date of Liberty Lake is recognized as Aug. 31, 2001.
Frank said the city "has been responsive to the needs of the community" over the years.
"The city has a commitment to parks and open space, trails and upgrades like the recent ones on Appleway and the traffic roundabout on Harvard Road," he said. "All of those things have resulted because the city has been able to focus on the needs of Liberty Lake. If we were still in Spokane County, these things would have never happened. For example, Rocky Hill Park would never have happened and we wouldn't have our own library."
Zilka, who continues to be involved with civic initiatives like the Community Facilities Task Force, said the vote to form a city has been a windfall for Liberty Lake.
"I'm just very proud of the sense of community, the cleanliness, the safety - it's just a fabulous place to live," she said. "Incorporation gave us a true identity."
• • •
Valley incorporated on heels of LL vote
While the notion of Liberty Lake incorporation was approved resoundingly on its first ballot, similar attempts by pro-city supporters to the west had not worked out as smoothly.
Beginning in 1990, a quartet of Spokane Valley incorporation votes failed to garner enough support to turn the unincorporated area to the east of Spokane into its own city. By 2001, another group, calling itself "Valley Yes," had emerged with a renewed sense of optimism - buoyed partly by the success of Liberty Lake a year earlier.
"When Liberty Lake passed their vote, it was something we could point to," said Cary Driskell, who served as director of the Valley incorporation committee and now is Spokane Valley's city attorney. "It was an example of how local government was a better option. I think it certainly had a positive ripple effect."
As the Valley prepared for the May 2002 vote, several Liberty Lake officials, including Mayor Steve Peterson, stepped up to support the campaign.
"My goal was always to have a strong city partner on our shoulder," Peterson said. "I went out and gave talks to several groups. I think Spokane County knew that if Liberty Lake was successful, the Valley would follow. We had quite a few people who talked on behalf of the Valley about the benefits of incorporation."
When the final ballots were counted, the initiative to form a Valley city passed with 51.3 percent.
After Spokane Valley officially incorporated in 2003, Liberty Lake was there with another gesture - this time a $50,000 loan to help with the costs of starting a city.
"That came from when we started," Peterson said. "We had no money. We had people who worked without a paycheck for the first 60 days. We got a lot of help from the city of Spokane when we first started our city, so we knew how much that collaboration helped."
Mike DeVleming, Spokane Valley's inaugural mayor, recalls the loan making a difference with "cash on hand." He also recalls representatives of the Liberty Lake City Council offering helpful advice on the road ahead.
"I remember folks from Liberty Lake always telling us, ‘This is where the work begins' at different points along the way," DeVleming said. "I also remember that we had that loan paid back within a year."
- Craig Howard
• • •
Chair of the campaign
When Shaun Brown and her husband, Nathan, launched a community newspaper in September 1999 with the goal of shedding light on issues important to Liberty Lake, one topic quickly began to grab the headlines.
Along with stories about the construction of local trails and a heated race for Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District commissioner, the new publication covered the findings of a group considering the idea of Liberty Lake incorporation. For Brown, the chores of co-publisher, editor and lead writer would soon be combined with the task of leading the charge for cityhood.
After a citizen-based governance study committee gathered data on the feasibility of incorporation, Brown was appointed chair of Liberty Lake 2000, a group tasked with spreading the word about the benefits of a city. She was joined by fellow resident Lud Kramer, who brought a wealth of experience as a former Washington Secretary of State and representative of the Seattle City Council.
"When it came time to file the paperwork for incorporation, I remember that no one on the committee wanted to be the one to sign it," Brown recalled. "If I remember correctly, Lud took the initiative and got it done. He was a great advocate and advisor as we worked. He had so much experience in government that was so valuable."
After collecting the required number of signatures to put the question of incorporation on the ballot and earning the approval of the Spokane County Boundary Review Board, Brown, Kramer and their Liberty Lake 2000 colleagues rallied residents to vote in support of the initiative. The campaign included yard signs, doorbelling, a website and plenty of enthusiasm.
"I'm not sure if incorporation happens without Shaun's leadership," said Jim Frank, founder and CEO of Greenstone Homes who was also integral to the movement. "Shaun was really a key to getting residents on board."
Like many others, Brown saw the gaps in service and responsiveness with Liberty Lake under the auspices of Spokane County.
"I have always valued local government where local citizens can choose their neighbors to represent them, and can come to the City Council meetings and provide input to help shape the decisions in their own community," Brown said. "Forming a city seemed like a great way to keep the decisions at the local level."
With its burgeoning readership, The Splash served as a valuable sounding board for residents considering the prospect of a new city.
"I remember publishing at least one very long article about the pros and cons as being discussed by the committee - I'm sure there were more," Brown said. "People also shared their thoughts about incorporation in letters to the editor."
When ballots were cast on Nov. 7, 2000, Brown saw the efforts of incorporation supporters reach fruition. Liberty Lake would be a city.
"I remember being at Jim Frank's home to watch the results, and we knew pretty quickly it had been a success," she said. "It was very apparent that we had been successful in providing sufficient information to the citizens of Liberty Lake for them to express their opinion in their vote. The city has achieved many of the goals we envisioned - we have a great police force. The roads get plowed. We have a library."
- Craig Howard
• • •
By the numbers
A numerical look at Liberty Lake, then and now.
2000
Population: 3,265
Land area: 4.62 square miles
Annual retail sales: $42 million
Taxable assessed property value: $278,078,510
Compensation for mayor: $150 per month
Compensation for City Council members: $400 per month
2015
Population: 8,975
Land area: 6 square miles
Annual retail sales: $305,533,482
Taxable assessed property value: $1,196,298,024
Compensation for mayor: $1,250 per month
Compensation for City Council members: $400 per month
- Craig Howard
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