Old grudges are slow to pass; Lewiston Orchards annexation

Floyd and Lucille Wharton still remember getting up on the morning of Dec. 16, 1969, and finding that overnight, they had become Lewiston residents.

Thirty-five years later, they still are angry at the way they were unwillingly annexed by the city of Lewiston.

The Lewiston City Commission, as it was then called, had met the night before, suspended the rules and voted on the annexation ordinance all in one meeting, instead of the three that would normally have been required.

The Lewiston Tribune, according to old news reports, was standing by to publish the ordinance in the following morning's pages, making it official.

"We were really upset," says Lucille Wharton, 83, sitting in the living room of the Burrell Avenue home she came to on her wedding night 67 years ago.

The Orchards had its own fire protection district, water system and library, and the West Orchards had a sewer system. Nez Perce County provided law enforcement and took care of the streets.

"We had a nice little community of our own. We didn't need them; they needed us," Lucille says.

"They changed the charter and raped us that night," says Floyd Wharton, 94.

Things have gone downhill since then, they say.

"I feel awful sorry for the people that live over on Bryden, the way they're pushing them around," Floyd says of the city's recent rezoning of the street from residential to commercial.

That first year after annexation, their property taxes jumped 45 percent. It wasn't much in dollars by today's standards, but the $66 was a stunner for a family supported by a job with the Potlatch Corp. Wood Products Division that paid less than $6 an hour.

A couple of weeks before Christmas this year, their daughter and son-in-law took them for a ride around the Orchards. Floyd was struck by what hasn't changed since 1969.

"I can't fathom what the city is doing with all the tax dollars," he says.

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Politicking was hot and heavy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, making the hanging chads of the 2000 presidential race and the back and forth of this year's Washington governor election look almost trifling.

The turmoil started years before annexation. Several organizations were created, but the most active was the Orchards Community Project. Through much of the battle to remain independent, its leaders were Howard Jeppson and Irving Kalinoski.

The city commission tried at least twice to annex the Orchards, but each time the Orchards Community Project, known as the OCP, got out the vote in the form of petitions. By state law, if half the residents signed petitions against annexation, it failed.

One of the hard-fought battles was whether the owners of cemetery plots qualified as property owners eligible to sign petitions.

The OCP said the city brought up that little ploy; the city said the OCP started it first.

There was even an election to create a new city, to be called Orchard, which would contract with Nez Perce County for most services.

Mostly it would have let the Orchards be just left alone, says Kalinoski, who was behind that maneuver and remains a critic of city government to this day.

Orchards residents rejected creating a new city, however, just as they rejected a vote to deannex themselves from the city two years later.

Annexation was finally achieved only because city voters agreed to abandon the city charter and operate under state code.

State law said all the city commission had to do was adopt an ordinance specifying the boundaries to be taken in, and it was a done deal.

On Oct. 14, 1969, residents of the "old" city voted 1,591 to 331 to give up the charter and some of the benefits that went with it, such as the ability to finance construction of a new airport, says Warren S. Watts, who was city engineer at that time.

Two months and two days later, everything east of 18th Street in the Orchards and south of 21st Avenue became part of the city.

The tax base expanded, and the population doubled, increasing eligibility for federal grants and income from liquor and highway taxes.

Orchards people might have accepted annexation better if they'd been given the chance to vote, Kalinoski says now. "I said I put 10 years in the Army and National Guard defending the right to vote."

They also asked the city to open its financial records, and the city declined, he says.

Kalinoski says in 1949 the Orchards asked to be annexed into the city, but the city declined, saying it didn't want the problems.

That still rankled with some, and others were concerned about losing animal rights in what was still a fairly rural atmosphere.

The resentment and animosity still lingers, he says, because the Orchards got nothing out of the deal except another layer of government.

Finally, the old folks got tired of the battle, he says. "They just wanted to get it over with."

Even his mother voted against deannexation when she got the chance. "She could see the stress on my family.

"Then she cried when she got her property taxes."

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John Skelton, 90, says he didn't realize what a major rift annexation would cause.

He was one of the seven city commissioners who voted for it and the only one not unseated in a recall election that followed. That election put six people supported by the OCP on the commission.

"They canned them, all but me," Skelton says. Maybe it was because he was a greenhorn, he says. "I had no idea it was as big a deal to them as it turned out to be."

His phone began ringing as soon as people found out they had been annexed. No one was really violent, he recalls, "other than (they believed) we made a big mistake in their opinion. They still do."

It took 10 or 15 years for people to stop debating the issue, he says, but it seldom comes up anymore. "It went on quite awhile. There's still some with a thorn in their side."

It was inevitable, he says. There were as many people in the Orchards as downtown, and that's where the growth was happening because that's where there was space.

"I think we have done well in spite of the unhappiness of some."

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Some people were more than unhappy, recalls Richard Abrams, now an inspector with the city building department.

"It was open warfare."

Abrams was a route driver for Erb Hardware. He delivered sundries such as mops and brooms, batteries and light bulbs and .22 shells to the small mom-and-pop stores that dotted both parts of town and hardware like nails and hinges to the mills and lumberyards in the Orchards.

Annexation was a hot topic at most of his stops.

In some of the coffee shops, city supporters sat on one side and anti-annexation folks on the other. "There were families didn't speak to each other," Abrams says.

There was an Orchards group that wanted annexation in order to get city law enforcement, which would mean reduced insurance rates on their homes, he says. "It was a very silent minority."

Downtown folks wanted to spread out the tax base. "They were hoping to get a tax cut, which didn't happen."

Most of the roads in the Orchards were gravel, he recalls, and if the fire siren at the station on Thain Road went off, it was smart to get out of the way.

One fireman got the truck and the others took their cars. There could be 50 cars at a fire, he says.

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The Lewiston Orchards Irrigation District, one of the remnants of pre-annexation growth and development, still attracts comments from those who want to maintain some independence from city government.

"They still bring it up," says LOID Manager Kevin M. Casey. "Usually they bring it up in a dissatisfied manner. The gist of most is they didn't have the ability to vote on it."

City Manager Janice B. Vassar ran into something similar visiting a meeting of one of the two sewer district boards in the Orchards. "I for some reason got the feeling there as a real anti-city sentiment.

"Some of our more senior citizens, probably from downtown and in the Orchards, very clearly remember the acrimony that was part of that time."

As manager, Vassar can understand why a council would feel the pressure of providing streets, recreation programs and other services for a population outside its boundaries.

"Having said that, I think annexation must be considered very carefully."

She doesn't know what was said or promised 35 years ago, and whether the city delivered. "But I think there were expectations raised. ...

"Frankly, I think it's flavored our politics."

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Lee may be contacted at slee@lmtribune.com