This past Wednesday the McCormick Woods Annexation Committee held one of its many luncheons.

The major topic of discussion surrounded the current pace of our proposed annexation into the city of Port Orchard. As you can imagine there were a number of questions concerning the seeming slow pace of those negotiations between the county and city, and there were some opinions offered as to why progress seems to be slow in coming.

There seems to be a growing consensus that the county might be employing the old “hide-the-ball” trick, and that is unfortunate.

Unless of course, perception is reality.

We see the SKIA annexation sailing along at warp speed and wonder why our program is languishing.

We have been told that the county priority is SKIA, possible Silverdale incorporation and then McCormick Woods.

We have an enormous task ahead of us in acquiring annexation approval from residents representing 75 percent of property evaluation, and we need to move forward while there is some level of interest in the community.

We are asking (the Kitsa) commissioners to provide county staff with the tools and direction they need to pick up the pace in the negotiations of the annexation matrix issues and to bring those negotiations to a successful conclusion as expeditiously as possible.

Our committee began investigating the viability of annexation as early as November 2007. We vowed to learn as much as we could and to keep our fellow residents apprised of our findings and have disseminated 21 information newsletters to our mailing list.

In the process, we have come to identify representation as a fundamental issue we all understand.

As residents of the county, we represent about 1 percent of the population and about the same percentage of the registered voters.

These numbers could be viewed as statistically insignificant and may play a role in our current situation.

On the other hand, should annexation occur we would represent 20 to 25 percent of the population of the city of Port Orchard and 25 to 30 percent of the registered voters in that jurisdiction.

Under this circumstance, we have an opportunity to achieve two of our goals, which are to maintain the quality of our neighborhood and to play a role in the creation of the kind of city Port Orchard can and should become.

Given the current mood of our committee, I think Option 2, annexation, would be our default position.

RICHARD DAVIS

McCormick Woods

Annexation Committee