evaluation of washington county’s annexation processes · 2012-03-14 · evaluation of washington...

Washington County, OR

Evaluation of Washington County’s Annexation Processes

Findings and Opportunities November 13, 2009

Evaluation of Washington County Annexation Processes Framework LLC Findings & Opportunities 11/13/2009

Evaluation of Washington County’s Annexation Processes Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1

A. OVERVIEW.......................................................................................................................... 1 B. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION ................................................................................................ 1 C. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................. 2 D. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ 2

II. FINDINGS............................................................................................................................. 3

A. BOUNDARY CHANGE AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT ................................................................ 3 B. WASHINGTON COUNTY’S ROLE IN MAJOR PROCESSES.......................................................... 5 C. OVERALL ASSESSMENT OF PROCESS RISK TO QUALITY AND RELIABILITY OF COUNTY DATA.... 6 INFORMATION FLOW AND DISTRIBUTION ............................................................................ 6 STATUS OF COUNTY PROCESSES ..................................................................................... 7

III. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES .................................................................11

Evaluation of Washington County Annexation Processes Page 1 of 11 Findings & Opportunities 11/13/2009 Framework LLC

I. Introduction A. Overview

� In 1999 the State of Oregon eliminated the Portland Metropolitan Area Local Boundary Commission. This action ended independent, central approval of boundary changes and assigned responsibility for boundaries to cities, counties, and special districts.

� The County Administrator and County Auditor initiated this evaluation because of concerns that the County’s current annexation processes are fragmented, not well documented, and that processes may be leading to errors in property and voter assignment to jurisdictions within Washington County.

� Framework LLC completed the evaluation at the request of Alan Percell, Washington County Auditor.

� The objectives of the evaluation were to:

- Confirm and document the annexation/boundary change process and the roles and responsibilities of Washington County and other agencies involved. Understand the gap (if any) left by the elimination of the Portland Metropolitan Area Local Boundary Commission.

- Determine the extent to which County processes might contribute to errors in the assignment of property tax or voter registration to jurisdictions.

- Identify opportunities for improving annexation processes and oversight to reduce the risk of errors and improve the quality and reliability of boundary change data.

B. Scope of the Evaluation

� For the purposes of this review “annexation processes” include all County processes and activities related to a minor boundary change, as defined by ORS 199.415. A minor boundary change is “an annexation, withdrawal, or transfer of territory to and from a city or district.”1

� Our review focused on boundary change processes where the County has a direct role or responsibility or where actions of another jurisdiction impact the County in some way. These include, for example, processes used to:

- Generate or receive requests for a boundary change,

- Analyze and approve boundary change requests,

- Obtain appropriate state review and approval,

- Monitor the status of requests,

- Record changes to official County records, including maps, tax rolls, and elections data.

� Our evaluation was limited to an overall assessment of the County’s exposure to risk, based on interviews and examination of processes and data. We did not attempt to perform a comprehensive audit of boundary change filings or County data sources.

1 We did not examine processes related to major boundary changes, since these are relatively rare. ORS 199.415 defines a major boundary change as a “formation, merger, consolidation, or dissolution of a city or district.”


C. Methodology

� To understand business practices and processes related to boundary changes, the consultants:

- Interviewed representatives from the County Departments of Land Use & Transportation (Long-Range Planning, Current Planning, Building Services, Survey, Operations & Maintenance, Traffic Engineering) and Assessment & Taxation (Cartography, Recording, Elections, Administrative Division).

- Interviewed representatives from the Oregon Secretary of State, Oregon Department of Revenue, Metropolitan Service District (Metro), and the former Portland Metropolitan Area Local Boundary Commission.

� The consultants confirmed authority for processes using the Oregon Revised Statutes, Metro Code, Chapter 3.09, Washington County Development Code, and the Washington County Comprehensive Framework Plan.

� The consultants also reviewed a limited random sample of boundary changes recorded since Fiscal Year 1999/2000 and Type II and Type III applications for development in the urban unincorporated area since 2005.2 This non-statistical sample was used to help us identify processes that might contribute to errors in County data bases.

D. Acknowledgements

� The consultants would like to thank the management and staff of the County’s Departments of Land Use and Transportation (LUT) and Assessment & Taxation (A&T) for their cooperation in this review.

� Special thanks go to Paul Kauffman, Cartographer, for his assistance with filing review and analysis.

2 Examples of Type II actions include subdivisions, partitions, and commercial and industrial buildings. Examples of Type III actions include special use permits for golf courses, schools, public buildings and rock quarries.


II. Findings A. Boundary Change Authority and Oversight

� Effective January 1, 1999 the State of Oregon abolished the Portland Metropolitan Area Local Boundary Commission (or Boundary Commission).

- Created by the legislature in 1969, this state commission had authority to review and approve major and minor boundary changes for cities and eight types of special districts in Washington, Clackamas, Multnomah and Columbia Counties.

- The Boundary Commission provided an independent review of boundary change actions. Commission members were appointed rather than elected: first by the Governor and then in 1988 by the Metropolitan Service District, or Metro.

� Since the elimination of the Boundary Commission there has been no single authority for boundary change review and approval within Metro’s boundaries.

- Cities are responsible for approving annexations and de-annexations to their territory as well as initiating related withdrawals from special districts.

- The Washington County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) reviews and approves boundary changes to special districts per ORS Chapter 198. In some cases, the BCC serves as a district’s board and is responsible for the integrity of the district.3

- Educational Service Districts are responsible for changes to school district boundaries. The Oregon State Board of Education is responsible for changes to Educational Service District Boundaries.

- The Oregon Department of Revenue must approve all boundary change maps and legal descriptions that are filed.

- The Oregon Secretary of State records each approved filing, establishing an effective date for the boundary change.

� Regional government Metro plays an important but limited role in the boundary change process:

- Metro establishes procedural requirements for boundary changes within its district boundaries and within the territory that was designated as urban reserves prior to June 30, 1997.

- Metro receives filings, forwards filings to the Secretary of State, notifies parties when all steps in the filing process are complete, provides a central on-line repository for filings, and maps boundaries within its jurisdiction.

- Metro does not have legislative authority to review and approve boundary changes.4 - Metro does not have jurisdiction over and does not track boundary change filings for:

� Cities outside of Metro boundaries � School districts or Educational Service Districts

3 These include the Urban Road Maintenance District, the Enhanced Sheriff’s Patrol District, Clean Water Services, and Washington County Service District for Lighting #1. 4 ORS 268.354 specifies that “The role of a metropolitan service district in the boundary determination process shall be ministerial only.”


� There is no single County source for information about city or district residency or boundaries:

- Cities are responsible for establishing and legally describing their own boundaries. The County Surveyor’s office maps city boundaries based on annexation filings.

- The County’s GIS application presents the taxable status of parcels and can be used to generate district boundaries and maps. A&T maintains the GIS tax code layer in ARCInfo according to its tax calendar.

- LUT maintains its own maps of many district boundaries since its business processes require a current view of a parcel’s inclusion in a district.

- The Elections Division maintains data according to voter residence, or situs, rather than tax parcel address.

� Special district boundaries and residency are subject to varying levels of management and oversight. For example:

- The Urban Road Maintenance District (URMD) is supervised by the BCC. LUT is responsible for the assignment of road segments to the District, but tax parcels subject to URMD levies are maintained in County tax records. LUT oversees district boundaries to ensure that URMD road segments are maintained using URMD resources. LUT identifies potential corrections to URMD road jurisdiction and is working to make these corrections.

- The Enhanced Sheriff’s Patrol District (ESPD) is supervised by the BCC, and services are provided by the County Sheriff. The Sheriff does not manage the District’s boundaries or residency. Delivery of law enforcement services is not dependent upon correct identification of district membership. Tax parcels subject to ESPD levies are maintained in County tax records. 5

- Clean Water Services (CWS) is supervised by the BCC and managed by professional staff. Services are delivered only to district residents. County tax records identify parcels receiving CWS services.

- Tualatin Hills Parks and Recreation District (THPRD) is managed by an independent board and staff. Residency status is maintained in County tax records. Service is linked to membership, and THPRD residents are identified by identification cards. The THPRD has a process to solicit and submit voluntary annexations to the District. In 2008 the THPRD board and staff identified and added 79 tax accounts that could have previously been annexed to the district but were not.

5 The County Administrator and staff scrutinize boundary changes to be considered by the BCC. Since most boundary changes impacting the URMD also impact the ESPD, staff are able to identify cases in which the ESPD should also be included in the change.


B. Washington County’s Role in Major Processes

Boundary Change Process County’s Role/Responsible Entity

Annexation to/Withdrawal From a City

� Update tax codes (numbers, coverage boundaries), tax rolls, and assessor maps. (A&T/Cartography)

� Update voter address, create and change address ranges and precincts as necessary. (A&T/Elections)

� Identify impacted roads, update road maintenance applications and maps. (LUT/Operations, Surveyor, Engineering)

� Transfer jurisdiction over impacted roads. (BCC)

Annexation to/Withdrawal From a Special District

� Initiate changes to special district boundaries for which it acts as Board (BCC)

� Review and approve/deny change. (BCC)

� Confirm completeness of annexation applications as support to BCC. (LUT/Long Range Planning)

� Identify annexations required to meet County Development Code requirements for new development. (LUT/Current Planning)


� Update voter address, create and change address ranges and precincts as necessary.6 (A&T/Elections)

� Identify impacted roads, update road maintenance applications and maps. (LUT/Operations, Surveyor, Engineering)

� Transfer jurisdiction over impacted roads. (BCC)

Annexation to/Withdrawal From a School District



Annexation to Metro � Update tax codes (numbers, coverage boundaries), tax rolls, and assessor maps. (A&T/Cartography)


6 The Elections Division does not currently update elections data for Street Lighting District #1 or the URMD.


C. Overall Assessment of Process Risk to Quality and Reliability of County Data

Information Flow and Distribution

� Redundancy in notices from cities, the Department of Revenue, Secretary of State, and Metro helps to ensure that the County is aware of boundary changes.

- Most boundary change filings (97.5%) are required to be filed with Metro and/or recorded by the Secretary of State. Both entities notify the County of boundary changes.

- Non-Metro filings are rare. During the period 2000-2008 there were only four filings from two cities - North Plains and Banks – and seven filings for school district boundary changes.

- Cities are required by law to notify the County when they initiate boundary changes.

- The Department of Revenue notifies the County when it approves a proposed boundary change application.

� Although the County should be receiving most filing notices, weaknesses in internal processes to distribute notices and related information may compromise data quality and reliability.

- The process for distributing boundary change information and notices is not well defined in some cases. Areas of potential risk include:

� Distribution of major notices from central mail to Cartography, Elections. � Distribution of major notices to LUT Survey, Traffic Engineering and Operations &

Maintenance. - Mail distribution is complicated by the fact that notices from cities and state agencies

are not uniformly addressed to a single entity within the County.

� County staff do not have access to a central repository of pending or recently completed boundary changes in Washington County.

- Metro’s web repository and e-mail notices are used by County entities to keep abreast of boundary changes; however, Metro does not manage all changes (see above).

- Assessment & Taxation’s Cartography unit collects all boundary changes known to the unit in its “codeord.xls” spreadsheet. This file is available on request, but is not currently in a shared directory.

� School district boundary changes pose a special risk to the integrity of County tax and elections records:

- School districts are not required to file boundary changes with the Secretary of State or Metro. County personnel rely on Educational Service Districts (ESDs) to notify them of changes.

- A&T staff have had difficulty establishing points of contact with school districts and ESDs. Staff believe they are receiving most notifications of boundary changes, but the County Assessor did not receive at least one filing regarding the Sherwood School District according to our limited review.

- Elections staff report that they rely on newspaper publications for notifications of some school district boundary changes. When asked to review our boundary change


sample, staff could not find a record of two school district boundary changes that appeared to be valid and could impact Election’s records of voter residence.

- The number of unique school district boundary change filed during the period 2000-2008 was small (4 filings) but the number of accounts impacted was significant (521).

� Disparities between boundary filings and information presented on the County’s publicly-accessible web-based GIS application (InterMap) may be confusing to the general public and to County users of this application.

- We found several examples where InterMap displayed information about a parcel’s inclusion in special districts that did not agree with boundary change filings. (County staff confirmed that tax codes and district assignments were otherwise correct in key county applications.)

- Timing of tax roll updates may explain some of the InterMap disparities:

� Boundary changes are effective as of the date they are authorized by the appropriate jurisdictional board and recorded by the Secretary of State.

� InterMap displays parcel data that corresponds to the tax calendar, not the effective date of boundary changes.

� Boundary change filings that are received by A&T on or before March 31 of each year are evaluated for tax impact and included in July 1 tax rolls for billing in November. Filings received after March 31 are not processed by A&T until the following tax year.7

� A&T updates tax parcel information and validates the GIS’s tax code layer three times during each tax year, not as valid filings are received.

- In two filings we examined, annexations to cities were correctly identified on InterMap but removals from special districts were not. These errors do not appear to be related to the timing of data updates.

Status of County Processes

� Two of Washington County’s primary annexation-related processes are fairly well-defined. These are:

- Annexations to special districts. LUT Long Range Planning is responsible for processing applications to annex properties to special districts and for submitting applications to the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) for review and approval. LUT receives and processes the following types of applications, for example:

� Additions to the Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District (THPRD) and Clean Water Services,

� Applications from cities that are required to become part of a special district to obtain certain urban services8,

� Developer-requested annexations to special districts to meet conditions of development,

7 ORS 308.225 instructs the County Assessor to disregard any boundary changes that are not filed in approved form by March 31 of each year. The County Assessor considers a filing to be complete once he receives approval from the Department of Revenue, a final filing packet from Metro or other sources, and a Secretary of State filing date. 8 Water, sewer, surface water, fire, and public safety, for example.


� Applications from customers wishing to obtain water or sewer service in a non-served area through use of an extraterritorial service line extension to a district.

- Annual adjustments to tax codes and tax rolls based on boundary changes. These are processed by A&T’s Cartography division, and include:

� Receipt and documentation of completed annexation packets,

� Tax code creation and assignment,

� Certification of the County tax roll and submission of digital records to the Oregon Department of Revenue,

� Update of assessor map boundaries, GIS tax code layer, and tax codes in County data bases.

� There is no formal County process in place to ensure that service district withdrawals are correctly identified and executed as part of city annexations.

- By law a city may, but is not required to, identify withdrawals of special districts at the time of annexation.

- The Department of Revenue and Metro do not review applications to ensure that special districts are correctly identified.9

- The County does not officially review district withdrawals, but may provide courtesy notices to cities if missing withdrawals are identified.

- There is a risk that cities will fail to identify removals from special districts as part of an annexation to the city and that double-taxation may occur as a result. We were not able to fully quantify this risk based on our limited evaluation. However, we found that errors can and have occurred:

� The City of Tualatin withdrew 107 tax lots from the URMD and ESPD in 2004 that it had elected not to withdraw from the districts at the time these lots were annexed to the city in1999. This appears to have been a one-time event.

� A query performed in December 2008 identified seven tax accounts that were included in both a city and in the URMD and ESPD.

� There is some risk that jurisdiction over road segments will not be appropriately transferred as a result of annexations.

- Public dedicated roads10 automatically become the responsibility of a city when it annexes adjacent or surrounding properties. The County must reclassify these as non-URMD roads if they were formerly inside the URMD.

- County roads11 do not automatically transfer as a result of annexation. They must be formally transferred with agreement from both the County and impacted city.

9 The Department of Revenue is not required to review annexation packets for missing service district withdrawals. The Department may contact an applicant if it believes a district has been overlooked. 10 A public road is a road dedicated for use by the public. These roads are for the most part not accepted for maintenance by the County but are the responsibility of the adjoining property owners. (Washington County Code 15.08.009) 11 A County road is a public road incorporated into the county road system by formal action of the Board of County Commissioners. These roads are assigned numbers and the county assumes maintenance responsibility. (Washington County Code 15.08.009)


- The number of currently impacted road segments is relatively low, but most are County roads:

� As of the end of 2008, 22 road segments (4.23 miles) were fully included in cities and yet remained in the URMD. Of these, 21 road segments (1.114 miles) were County roads.

� As of the end of 2008, 74 road segments (6.728 miles) were presumed to be eligible for non-URMD classification and had yet to be evaluated by LUT. Of these, 68 segments (6.232 miles) were County roads.

Road Segments within Cities That Remained in the URMD (2008)

Road JurisdictionRoad

SegmentsLaneMiles

Road Segments

LaneMiles

Road Segments

LaneMiles

County 21 1.114 68 6.232 89 7.346

Public dedicated 1 3.116 6 0.496 7 3.612

Total 22 4.230 74 6.728 96 10.958

Verified Possible Total

Source: LUT

� There is some risk that jurisdiction over road segments will not be appropriately transferred as a result of changes to the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB).

- LUT staff indicated that roads are added to URMD as properties are developed, not as UGB expansions occur.

- In February 2009, LUT confirmed that 39 Urban Local road segments (11.563 miles) are in UGB expansion areas but outside of a city. These roads could potentially be classified as URMD roads as related properties are developed.

- The Washington County Urbanization Forum is considering a resolution that all future additions to the Urban Growth Boundary must be governed and urbanized by an interested City.12

� We were unable to confirm that planners had appropriately evaluated requirements for a proposed development’s inclusion in special districts.

- The Community Development Code (CDC) requires that property must be annexed to the URMD, ESPD and if appropriate THPRD prior to development.

- There was no evidence in the limited number of filings we examined that planners actually confirmed special district annexation requirements at the time of development review.

� LUT staff has informed us that this consideration does occur, but is not documented in the files.

12 On July 7th, 2009 the Washington County Board of County Commissioners transmitted the resolution to all member jurisdictions. Any resolved changes would need to be adopted by Metro.


� Developers are required to submit letters from service districts confirming that the districts will provide urban services to the property. Requests for letters are identified on pre-development submittal guidelines that are provided to applicants.

- Developers are required to provide a copy of the Board action annexing properties into special districts before final approval of the development application. We were unable to verify that this was occurring using our limited sample.

- LUT staff in charge of the URMD identified two developments that could have been brought into the URMD at the time of development and were not.13

- Very few stand-alone additions of tax parcels to the URMD or ESPD were recorded from 2000-2008. These do not appear to be consistent with development activity during the same period.

� According to A&T records, there were only eight stand-alone additions to the URMD or ESPD (39 unique tax accounts) that were not related to a city annexation during 2000-2008.

� During the same period, 36 subdivisions (2,218 lots) received final development approval.14

� LUT staff noted that many undeveloped parcels were included in the URMD and ESPD when the districts were created and were not required to be annexed at the time of development.

� LUT staff also noted that new development outside of URMD boundaries would not be added to the URMD until residences and streets are constructed. We did not determine if subdivisions were actually developed as approved.

� Our review did not attempt to confirm these explanations or reconcile the differences between approved developments and annexations to the URMD and ESPD.

13 The Castle Oaks/King City and Arbor Oaks subdivisions were never brought into the URMD. There is some disagreement among LUT staff about the eligibility of Castle Oaks to be included in the URMD because its streets are all private. 14 Source: Washington County Geographic Information System. Number includes all urban LDPT III development actions proposing subdivisions that were coded “final” during the time period.


III. Process Improvement Opportunities

� Improve distribution of boundary change notices and information.

- Contact the Department of Revenue and Secretary of State to clarify and confirm County addressees for boundary change notifications.

- Establish an internal distribution list for key boundary change notifications and information. Ensure that the following entities receive copies of major notices from Cities, Metro, Department of Revenue, and Secretary of State:

� Assessment &Taxation (Cartography, Elections).

� Land Use and Transportation (Survey, Traffic Engineering and Operations & Maintenance, Long-Range Planning.)

- Encourage County staff to use Metro’s free e-mail notification service.

- Make A&T’s boundary change tracking spreadsheet (“codeord.xls”) available to internal county users through use of a shared directory, intranet site, or other electronic method.

- Continue to build relationships with Educational Service Districts in Washington County. Educate districts about boundary change notice and information requirements.

� Ensure that users of the County’s InterMap web-based GIS application understand sources and limitations of data, especially special district and tax code designations.

� Establish procedures to help ensure that service district withdrawals are correctly identified and executed as part of city annexations.

- Review city annexations as they are announced to determine special district withdrawal status.

- Provide courtesy calls or notices to cities as missing withdrawals are found.

� Strengthen the process for identifying County roads that should be formally transferred to (and accepted by) cities as a result of annexation.

� If efforts to require cities to annex properties as they are added to the UGB are not successful, develop a process to ensure that eligible tax lots and road segments are added to the URMD as they are brought into the UGB.

� Develop a simple checklist or form to allow planners to confirm that they had evaluated requirements for a proposed development’s inclusion in special districts. This could be combined with existing service letter checklists, and would be retained in development application files.

evaluation of washington county’s annexation processes · 2012-03-14 · evaluation of washington...

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