Organizers plan to submit petition request within the next two months.

The ball to incorporate Freeland will be bounced to the board of Island County commissioners within the next two months.

Freeland’s incorporation committee is pushing ahead with plans to petition commissioners in December or January of the group’s intent to form a new city on the South End.

When a “notification of intent” is filed with the county, a series of events will follow that will eventually give people in Freeland the chance to vote on becoming a city.

“The structure for forming a city is very clearly defined in Washington State RCWs,” said Mike Dolan, a member of the incorporation committee and chairman of Vision 2025. Vision 2025 is the longstanding group of Freeland residents and business owners that was formed to look at growth and planning issues.

Right now, the main sticking point on the incorporation petition is determining the new city’s boundaries. The committee is currently waiting on Census data from the state before setting Freeland’s future city limits.

“We are in the process of fine tuning the boundaries, but they are not final yet,” Dolan said.

“However, once the commissioners have the petition, they will have to schedule public meetings to discuss the incorporation proposal and the proposed boundaries,” Dolan said.

The process has not been as simple as drawing lines on a map. A multitude of factors must be considered, including a look at what land should stay in rural zoning and what would be better used for urban development.

“The Census data is the last piece of the puzzle to determine the city limits,” explained Chet Ross, a member of the boundary committee. “It will include population and land values.”

Still, the group of volunteers who are researching the nuts and bolts of incorporation for Freeland acknowledge there are more questions than answers at this point.

Even so, they hope to put the incorporation issue to voters during the November 2007 election.

To get the question to a public vote, 10 percent of the registered voters within the proposed city limits must sign a petition asking that incorporation be placed on the ballot.

Currently, the now-proposed boundaries include the Holmes Harbor community on the north; Bush Point Road to Mutiny Bay and Menlo Beach to the west; south to Double Bluff and Newman Roads and out East Harbor Road to Godell Road to Mutiny Sands.

What the now-proposed boundaries don’t include is Useless Bay Colony, though many colony residents support becoming part of the city of Freeland.

The original incorporation proposal included the entire Freeland Water District, the Holmes Harbor Water and Sewer District, the Main Street Sewer District along with the Mutiny Bay RAID (rural area of intense development), Useless Bay Colony and the Goss Lake RAID.

Since then, the committee has shrunk the proposed boundaries considerably and have excluded the Goss Lake and Useless Bay neighborhoods.

“These boundaries included substantial rural properties between the residential developments. There is too much rural land between Freeland and Useless Bay that would be at risk for urban density zoning,” Dolan said.

The group has not entirely closed the door, however, on Useless Bay, the subdivision surrounding a golf course that was started in 1963 and now has approximately 350 homes.

“We are trying to determine if it makes sense to include Useless Bay Colony. We just don’t know yet,” Ross said.

The group has met with the state’s boundary director.

“She suggested drawing to the South Whidbey School District or the fire district. We told her that included the entire South End of the island. So that wouldn’t work,” Ross said.

Speaking of protecting the rural land between Freeland and Useless Bay, Ross said the county could consider designating a greenbelt.

Ross and other committee members were recently met with homeowners in Useless Bay to talk about the incorporation of Freeland.

“The folks at Useless Bay were overwhelmingly in favor of becoming part of Freeland. There were 72 people there; three were against it, three undecided,” he said.

Bill Thieme, a Useless Bay resident, believes it would be good for the colony to be included in the new city’s boundaries. Local control on land-use decisions is a big factor.

“We would become a larger fish in a smaller pond, and therefore would likely be in a position to better influence what happens in our neighborhood,” Thieme said.

“We know we have little leverage with the county. We presumably would have more say in structure of municipal services, growth planning and laws,” he said.

Having some say over hunting is also tempting to some Useless Bay residents. Hunting near the residential neighborhood has been controversial in recent years.

“A secondary benefit, which is significant from my point of view, is that shooting would be prohibited on Deer Lagoon,” Thieme said.

Thieme said he doesn’t have much faith in the county allowing Freeland to incorporate.

“I wonder how far the project will go,” he said. “I would think that the county would likely do all it can to block this move because it would have an adverse effect on the county’s tax base.”

Gayle Saran can be reached at 221-5300 or gsaran@southwhidbeyrecord.com.