The Burien City Council continues to maintain that there are no clear answers regarding its misguided attempt to annex all of North Highline and needs more information.

The recent Berk and Associates Study, fund by the Burien City Council, said that the "no annexation option" is the least costly option for Burien. Prior to the release of the study, both Burien's Mayor and City Manager said that the annexation of North Highline would be based only on financial considerations.

The Growth Management Board predictably has dismissed Burien's suit to keep Seattle from annexing North Highline. Both King County and Tukwila intervened on behalf of Seattle. The Burien City has yet to provide one compelling example as to how Burien would benefit by such an annexation. Yet the Burien City Council continues to ignore the facts and stumble down the potential financially ruinous "full annexation path."

The Burien City Council needs to stop spending any more of our scarce tax dollars on anything having to do with the annexation of North Highline, enter into good faith negotiations with Seattle regarding Seattle's annexation of North Highline and drop Burien's PAA. No amount of stuffing overly ambitious revenue assumptions into the cost model produced by the Berk and Associates study can justify the unjustifiable.

Not only is dropping the PAA the right decision for the residents of Burien but also the right decision for the residents of North Highline. Many of the North Highline residents have special human needs that only Seattle has the money, infrastructure and expertise to provide.

The Burien City Council's continued pretense that more study on annexation is needed appears to be driven more by concerns from the local service organizations, many of whom don't live or pay taxes in Burien, than the interests of the Burien residents themselves. If The Burien City Council does not immediately drop it's PAA, Burien residents should show their displeasure in the upcoming election by replacing those pro-PAA Candidates with thoughtful candidates that are for fiscal responsibility and are against any form of annexation.

Our current sampling indicates that over 80 percent of Burien' s residents are against annexation. The Burien Council needs to get back to dealing with the many serious issues facing Burien, such as Burien's upcoming financial shortfall and the need for improved police protection.

The most important duty of government is the protection of it's residents, and with the well-documented increase in gang activity in Seattle and Seattle's suburbs, the Council needs, among other things, to get on with meeting it's elected duty by seeing that Burien has it's own police department.

John Oliger

Vice President

Burien Residents

Against Annexation