PORT ANGELES — Anxiety rose to a pitch rarely felt in the Clallam County Courthouse before county commissioners Tuesday approved a tax-sharing agreement with the city of Port Angeles.
Commissioners Mike Chapman, R-Port Angeles, and Mike Doherty, D-Port Angeles, rejected a request by Commissioner Steve Tharinger, D-Dungeness, to renegotiate the pact.
They approved, 2-1, the plan that not only will share sales taxes from businesses east of town but also will start the launch sequence for a city sewer line into the area.
Their action sent the agreement to the Port Angeles City Council to ratify Tuesday night.
The sector, called the Eastern Urban Growth Area, stretches from the city limit at DelGuzzi Drive to North Masters Road.
Within it are several sales-tax-rich businesses such as Koenig Chevrolet Subaru and Wal-Mart — both the present store and the Supercenter planned across U.S. Highway 101.
The area will become even more economically vigorous when sewers replace septic systems that limit development or prevent it.
Year-long negotiations
County and city officials had negotiated for more than a year on the tax-sharing pact, one of what they called several “building blocks” that include:
* Port Angeles’ promise not to annex east of the city until 2015 and then only by contiguous areas. Thus, it must annex the Gales Addition residential area before it can annex the new Supercenter.
* The county’s appropriating $5 million to fund the sewer line, which the city will build and own.
City and county staff had expected easy passage of the pact until Tharinger surprised them Monday with his objections, saying it gives too much revenue to the city.
It calls for the county to pay the city half the sales tax revenue from new or expanded businesses in the sector until the city annexes it.
Likewise, it calls for the city to pay to the county half of such taxes from such businesses after annexation.
However, it makes no guarantee that Port Angeles will annex any of the area.
