In the 1980s, my parents bought a house in Esperance, an unincorporated pocket of Snohomish County within Edmonds. My three brothers and I grew up knowing we lived in a little bubble. That’s why we could light fireworks, and why many of our neighbors had mini chicken farms. Everyone’s childhood neighborhood should swell their heart with a bit of nostalgia and pride – and for me, Esperance was special.
We were proud of living in this little “frontier.” When annexation came up, my parents talked about the city of Edmonds’ higher taxes and stricter building codes as reasons to stay “free.” Sure, there were drawbacks: traffic enforcement was minimal, and police response could be slow — but who needed to call the police? Most locals in the ’90s would probably have said the same, praising Esperance and voting down annexation.
Fast-forward thirty years, and my husband and I have bought my parents’ house. Now we carry the joy of raising our three kids here. But things are changing, and living on the “frontier” isn’t what it used to be.
The quiet, tree-filled lot next to our house – home to owls, herons, and the occasional eagle – was recently sold. Not to a family building a dream home, but to a corporate developer aiming to maximize profits. I’m bracing for the loss of the trees that shaded my childhood summers. Soon, a duplex will likely tower over our yard.
Down the street, a cluster of new three-story homes looms. With faux balconies and fake shutters, they stand just inches apart, staring into neighboring ramblers with wide, unblinking windows. They feel like superyachts in dry storage and are just as out of place. Someone’s always moving out.
Development here is unrestrained. Creeks are buried under fill dirt. Acres of trees are cleared with barely a nod from inspectors. It feels like the County doesn’t notice – or doesn’t care.
And it’s not just the bulldozers changing things.
A few weeks ago, we celebrated my five-year-old’s birthday in the backyard – balloons, cake, kids bouncing on a trampoline. Then we heard a loud crunch. Across the street, perfectly framed by my neighbor’s house, a car flew through the air, flipped 360 degrees, and landed upright. It looked like a scene from a movie.
But this is Esperance, where a car accident happens at least twice a year at the stop sign near our house. This time, someone sped down our street at 60 mph, clipped a kid’s car that had stopped properly, and launched off a ditch. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured. But several of our guests were still arriving on foot and in cars. We stood in shock, kids wide-eyed.
The fire department arrived quickly. The sheriff took over an hour.
All of this – the unchecked development, the traffic, the danger – has shifted my thinking on incorporation. I used to ask:
Will our taxes go up?
Will we lose our chickens?
Will the city make us paint our homes certain colors?
Now I ask:
Would Edmonds help keep our streets safer?
Would police show up faster?
Could incorporation slow reckless development?
Might it help save some of the trees?
I understand the need for more housing – but let’s make it reasonable. Washington State’s growth plan has allowed rapid development with little restraint, and it’s not producing affordable housing, at least not here. Tearing down a single-family home to stuff in eight $800,000 units isn’t affordable. Is this really what we meant to do?
Now, Snohomish County is proposing a sweeping zoning change for Esperance – from single-family to Low Density Multiple Residential (LDMR). This would only accelerate the problem. The public meeting to review this is on May 27 at 5:30 p.m. at the Snohomish County Administration Building, Public Meeting Room #2, or online via Zoom. More details at www.snohomishcountywa.gov/2177/Code-Development-Projects)
This change could be devastating for our neighborhood. Hungry developers are already circling. Without regulation or restraint, they’ll keep gobbling up what’s left of the character, nature, and safety of Esperance.
I know development is coming. I’m not asking to stop it – I’m asking to guide it, to slow its insatiable appetite just enough to preserve what makes this place feel like home. At this point, it seems the best solution is for Esperance to become part of Edmonds.
So I say (quietly, so my parents don’t hear): Please, Edmonds, help us.
Incorporate Esperance.
Sonja Tangen lives in Esperance.
Hi Sonja, sorry to hear about the changes in our neighborhood. I’m not sure Edmonds is what you want. Strom Peterson at the State level is pushing the same kind of ‘unrestrained development’ in Edmonds and across the state, all under the guise of ‘affordable housing’. Apparently, environmental concerns have gone out the window.
I’m all for more housing, but believe the 99 corridor, Everett to Seattle has a ton of potential, and makes the most sense for future residents (close to jobs, transportation, grocery stores, medical). Drive it often, many buildings in disrepair, that could become truly ‘affordable housing’.
As far as the traffic danger, I think the speed bumps or ‘traffic calming’ devices on Olympic drive are a great way to slow people down.
New development in Edmonds along with the inability to budget, you might regret annexation. Or who knows maybe it’s good for both communities, I’d love to hear what others think, would annexation be good for Esperance & Edmonds?
Take care,
Nick
^ ‘your’ neighborhood – first sentence, not ‘our’
Well be prepared to pay as they say thru the nose if you annex to Edmonds. I am in the Esperance area that annexed i think in late 90’s. I to have been here since 1972. We are not without over building either and new zoning in July will change additional areas like ours. So you won’t gain there. Edmonds is financially in a bind , so be prepared to get hit in every way they can. They have always charged us more for storm water billing than they charge the city utility users for it because we are Olympic View water and they hit that with a surcharge too i guess because it’s less than theirs and they can. I have been fighting the storm water unfair billing since 2003. Thinking it was a computer error. In 2016 the Financial Director, Dave Turley, told me they “ like it fine the way it is”. Once a City Council member told me you’ll probably have to sue to fix it. Funny, since the State Auditor says it is the Council’s Duty to set the rules and the City has to find a way to follow them. So nothing is done and when I got a number a few years ago was 3,013 of us. Edmonds utilities are extremely hi compared to Olympic View. Think hard!
Sonja, one more thing I paid $350.13 to Edmonds just for just storm water for 2024.
Look at your county real estate tax statement i’m guessing you pay maybe 100.00 or just over for one year. For storm water. That’s a hint at the difference and only one little thing. The “city”residential util users paid $335.88 for 2024 only $14.25 dif but X 3,013 of us in Esperance but City that’s $42,935.25 extra we paid to Edmonds. Never mind the additional for the water surcharge. So, we pay extra for being in Edmonds. And it goes UP every year just like clockwork. For a start, that’s what annexation does for Esperance residents. The only gain I have seen in all these years is they have a great police dept. In my opinion it’s the only efficient Dept in the City.
Edmonds city government is a total mess. You will be better off sticking with the County. That’s why we are moving to an HOA protected unincorporated community. That is our only defense against all this “affordable housing” insanity.
The annexation of Esperance by City of Edmonds is a topic that is explored periodically. Last time, the City told the county how much money they would have to pay Edmonds as part of the annexation agreement, and the County said ‘no way’. Until April 22, 2025 the residents of Esperance would have gotten a big property tax reduction if they were annexed. But that all changed when Edmonds voted to be annexed into the regional fire authority.
The City Council in the past has deferred to a straw poll of the Esperance residents on whether they wanted to be annexed. But that may change in the future under the Rosen administration. If Edmonds can find a way to have it be ‘net financially positive’ to annex Esperance, I believe they will. (I live in Edmonds, 2 houses away from Esperance. My street was annexed by the City when the Safeway Corp wanted to have a new store on Hwy 99 but wanted the City’s police and Fire services so annexation happened, and Safeway came to this end of town, and is still here.) in recent years, the neighbors’ sentiment about annexation was anchored in the regulation of how many chickens you could keep in Esperance as compared to Edmonds. The stakes are higher now.
Esperance folks, your taxes would be lower, but you may have too many chickens!
There may be many reasons to not want to be part of Edmonds, but you get to use an Edmonds address and zip code. But your tax bill would be lower if you were a part of Edmonds for 2025 and it will still be lower in 2026.
Let’s look at some factual data about Esperance taxes. It’s not clear where people are getting their information and all this is yet another reason the Edmonds city council should follow the Blue Ribbon Panel recommendation to create an ongoing group to augment data and ideas that would help us all better understand the full facts. The goal of this group is to add more real data and do it with full transparency.
Picking a home that has an assessed value of $921,400, here is what jumped out in the data. Lot size is .89 acre and most Edmonds lots are typically less than half of that.
Taxes for 2025 are $7566.82. But if this property were in Edmonds in 2025 the taxes would have been $6489.10, or $1077.72 less. The taxes for 2026 would be $7441.80 or $125.02 less than 2025 taxes.
While there may be other reasons to stay with the county, taxes are not one of them.
As a longtime Esperance resident (25+ years), I used to be rabidly anti-annexation but have definitely changed lanes and am now on the pro-annexation side. I could really care less about fireworks and chickens and, as Darrol Haug points out above, the property taxes would be lower. This checks out with my math as well. Not to mention, we are directly affected by everything that happens in Edmonds so it would be nice to finally be able to cast a vote in their elections.
The biggest reason, though, is the one expressed by Sonja. Development here is completely unchecked and unrestrained. I’m all for increased housing density, as long as it’s done in a well-planned and efficient manner that doesn’t favor profit over people. That is not what has been happening here. It’s just as Sonja reports – greedy developers who buy up large lots and then squeeze in as many poorly constructed townhomes as they can possibly fit with zero regard for how it affects the neighbors. This is not development being done in the name of increasing the housing situation for those with lower incomes (as is evident by the price tags of these places), this is corporate greed, plain and simple.
It’s time to annex.
Five years ago, the legislature approved an additional method for annexation of unincorporated territory, a method that does not involve a vote of the people. Under RCW 35A.14.296, the annexing city can create and approve an interlocal agreement. It’s a somewhat lengthy multi-step process and culminates in a public hearing where citizens can express their support or opposition to annexation.
If the city ultimately decides to go ahead with annexation, they do it by majority vote of the city council. Note this annexation method only applies to neighborhoods like Esperance that are an official part of a city’s growth expansion area.
It’s clear no other city can or will annex Esperance, and it’s unlikely to remain an unincorporated pocket for ever. The question now is simply~ is this the right time for Esperance to join the City of Edmonds, or should it be put off to a future time?
At this point, it might be smarter for Edmonds to just declare bankruptcy, de-incorporate and join Espereance. Edmonds would have the same Fire protection as now and a much less expensive police department to manage. This is in jest, just in case anyone thinks I’m serious about it. That said, I don’t see how it matters on their density issue with the state takeover of local zoning or how being part of Edmonds would somehow protect Easperance from the negative consequences of over development in their area. Mayor Rosen and most of the current Council have been gung-ho in favor of the increased density everywhere as far as I can tell. His staff is even advocating building higher than required by the new state law. Is that what Esperance wants? Basically, you will be jumping on board the Titanic to save $125.00/yr. based on D.H.’s calculations. Good Luck!
The city can’t afford to annex in another neighborhood where there’s more infrastructure liabilities than there is taxable revenue to cover those liabilities. So while it would look great if it were included as a part of our land use map, the reality is we would be strapping the city with even more liabilities than it can currently pay for. Ask the annexation question again when the city is in a better financial standing and has land use patterns and policies in place to offset those liabilities.
Jeremy- do you have any data to explain your comment? I live 2 doors away from one of the Esperance boundaries. The City has not spent a dime on building infrastructure for me and my neighbors in the last 20 yrs. (the county on the other hand has done a paving overlay on a street that i drive down everyday) The City has wasted tens of thousands of dollars on a sidewalk design in my neighborhood that has no construction funding.
Theresa, valid points. You’re right, some neighborhoods, like yours, haven’t seen much City investment, and that highlights a bigger, historical issue. The basis around my comment can be found in the County and City’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports and Capital Improvement/facilities Plans. The GAAP framework they each plan to reflect roads and pipes as “assets,” but they don’t adequately reflect the long-term obligations and costs of maintaining or replacing them. In reality, these in my opinion are liabilities the County / City has to fund, costs that grow over time but often aren’t captured clearly in the net financial picture. That’s the heart of my concern: the gap between the infrastructure we have and the often limited resources / revenue we generate and spend to maintain them. Even a single street overlay can outstrip available funding, and when you scale that to the city’s 80+ miles of roads and utilities, the shortfall becomes clear. The state is in a similar boat, with unfunded preservation and maintenance obligations that exceed revenues that eventually have to be paid. So yes, the data exists, but it often underrepresents or in my opinion is mislabeled. That’s why I think we need to be cautious about taking on new obligations, like annexations with similar land use patterns that cannot adequately fund them, when we’re already struggling to meet existing ones.
Right there folks. Jeremy Mitchell is confirming the truth of what I just said. Edmonds’ infrastructure is so badly neglected and unfunded that the city can’t afford to take on more neglected infrastructure right now. You would be jumping on board the Titanic and the Titanic doesn’t appear to even want you. Don’t be mad at Jeremy. Be mad at the loony tune Democratic Party activists (about four of which you will probably have on your City Council if you get annexed) that came up with state control of local zoning. They are the ones that made the already Edmonds government mess a virtual train wreck – along with help from Rosen and his various predecessors.
Hi Sonja – fellow Esperance neighbor here (Steve)! I actually met you the day of the accident and your husband a day later while he was helping our neighbor survey the damage. There’s definitely a larger discussion to be had about annexation, unchecked development, and speed bumps on 228th. I would have to do some reading about annexation before offering an opinion, but I will say that we moved to Esperance/Edmonds for the large parcels, the large trees (“Welcome to Edmonds, where the trees are the view”), and more privacy than what the big City offered. Development needs to make sense and be in balance with the ecosystem that it’s occurring in (blanket systems rarely work); currently, that seems to be less and less the case. I understand the need for development; yet people choose to live in the suburbs for certain reasons, that should also be respected – not all development is nor should be, created equal. Lastly, speed bumps around/before/after those stop signs might help check that area a bit more. It’s probably time for us Esperancers (is that a thing?!) to have a larger discussion about these issues – thanks for starting it! And for the record if Esperance/Edmonds needs to push back on those changes at the state level, the time is likely now.
R,
-SMS-
Not to change the subject, but has anyone ever seen a bicyclist on 9th since they re did the lane(s)? Ever? How much money did that cost us—and why?! 9th use to be so nice to drive on, now it’s crap.