By Marianne Lincoln
Let me be clear. If Spanaway and Parkland do not decide to incorporate as communities, Pierce County is on its way to decide to make you part of a big city called Frederickson.
Are you Parkland? Or, are you a suburb of Frederickson? You are going to need to make that decision very soon. This is a two month legislative session. You need to tell your County Executive and Council how you feel because they may well decide incorporation for you.
Are you Spanaway? Or, are you a suburb of Frederickson? Do you know you are the oldest community in the Puget Sound area? Yes, 1846, before Steilacoom happened. But they became a city and you did not. Do you want to lose that history? This is a two month legislative session. You need to tell your County Executive and Council how you feel because they may well decide who is going to incorporate if Sb6181 passes. Remember when they told you they were taking your watershed for a tiny house village? Yeah, they decided that for you, I know you were not really impressed with it.
I have all the paperwork. I could drop a Spanaway incorporation in a day.
So, we need to start sharing some feedback here. Starting with, Counties are not budgeted for supplying city level services. That is the reason you don’t have sidewalks, streetlights, crosswalks, parks,, etc. State law allows cities to do those things, not counties. This huge, unincorporated area is stressing the county budget.
And from all my research, your taxes really will not change much. The big-ticket items like the Federal, state, and public schools are where most of your tax dollars go and still will.
Those of us who have the ability to make smaller, more local community incorporations are out here waiting for your feedback. Do you want to be a huge impersonal place? Or are you willing to do a little work now to stop the County from making you something you do not want to be?
Please, please comment. This is way beyond caring about taxes. Your taxes are not giving you the services you deserve. You are being dumped on. Decide.
Pierce Prairie Post 
What happened to the city of ‘Pierce’ with it’s boundaries below 512 south to 208th from the Base east to Meriden? If the unincorporated areas of Pierce County are going to be incorporated, let’s go big.
I’d understood that efforts to get Parkland/Spanaway to incorporate failed at a local level. I think incorporation is essential to P/S to remove our slum status. HOWEVER, if the one big Frederickson is fastest way to incorporate, the municipality would need to be divided into districts with district representation to cover each area’s needs/priorities.
I am opposed to the expansion of our government. Becoming a new city means creating more government jobs and government buildings…no thanks!
I asked chatgbt what was required of Lakewood when they incorporated. Here’s the long and incredibly expensive answer.
When the area now known as Lakewood, Washington formally incorporated as a city on February 28, 1996, it transitioned from being an unincorporated part of Pierce County into a self-governing municipality with new responsibilities and obligations to provide and fund local services and infrastructure that had previously been handled by the county or did not exist at all.
Here’s what incorporation meant in terms of what the new city had to fund, build, or manage: 🏙️ Core Services and Local Government Infrastructure
City administration and government functions
👮 Public Safety Services
🏡 Planning, Zoning, and Land Use
🌳 Parks and Recreation
🛣️ Infrastructure and Public Works
📋 Local Ordinances, Codes, and Licenses
💰 Funding Through Local Revenues
In summary, incorporation required Lakewood to take on responsibility for local governance, public safety, parks and recreation, land-use planning, infrastructure investment, and municipal regulations — essentially building out the framework and services expected in an independent city that previously were provided by the county or did not exist in the same form.