Shoreline's 15-year-old code hits a snag

By May 21, every power line and every telephone cable in Shoreline will be underground.

Well, maybe only in our dreams. But according to the law, that is what is supposed to happen.

In 1996 the Shoreline City Council passed a law that required all overhead cables and wires to be put underground within 15 years. Now, the current city council is scrambling to repeal that part of the code.

City officials blame a lack of funding and poor enforcement for the missed deadline—an ambitious plan set during a different phase of Shoreline’s young history that just never made it off the ground.

“There was never a work plan,” Deputy Mayor Will Hall said. “There was never funding and no steps have been taking toward making that a reality.”

It seemed like a good idea 15 years ago. Shoreline had just been incorporated, all the utility contracts would be finalized within five years, and the economy was good.

But problems plagued the law from the start. The original language of the code called for a 10-year deadline, but the planning commission convinced the council to push it back five more years.

And the original code put the brunt of the responsibility on utility companies. Seattle City Light owns the power poles in Shoreline, and according to the law, City Light would have paid for all of the undergrounding. But there was little in the code to enforce the rule, and the cost would have eventually been passed to rate payers, so City Light made little progress.

The one part of the code that was enforced was a line that mandated undergrounding when the city embarked on new capital projects, which is why overhead power lines disappeared from Aurora Avenue and North City.

Complicating matters, the state passed a law that made cities responsible for part of the cost of undergrounding telecommunication wires, calculated by a portion of what it would have cost to move the lines to a different location, leading to an amendment to the city’s code in 2003. And since telephone and cable companies in Shoreline lease space on poles, the cost of undergrounding would have to be split between the city, City Light and telecommunications companies.

But the amendment did not address the 2011 deadline.

Now the city council will have to decide how important and how feasible it is to put all of Shoreline’s overhead wires underground.

“It’s a nice-to-do but not a need-to-do,” Councilmember Terry Scott said at a January 3 study session. “If people were asked whether they wanted sidewalks or undergrounding, I think they would say sidewalks.”

Another option is to charge a 1 percent fee on utility bills to set aside for future undergrounding projects with City Light.

Additionally, the council will discuss the way it charges connection fees to customers under new systems, a complaint heard from several businesses during the Aurora corridor project.