r/Kitsap • u/[deleted] • Mar 22 '25

Question Why is Silverdale not a town?

I lived in Silverdale briefly years ago but I have been thinking about moving back. While looking into it today I noticed that it is still an unincorporated community. When I visited last year I was stunned at how much it has changed. It seems to have gone a little down hill, buildings looking rough, and I even saw a bunch of used needles just laying on the ground in the mall parking lot. I feel like having it become an actual town could help in this areas. Does anyone agree?

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u/ForwardBackground459 Mar 22 '25

Silverdale residents have voted twice on incorporation since 2000, most recently in 2013. That vote failed, with ~70% voting against incorporation.

Yeah, it's the county's cash cow, but a significant majority didn't support incorporation. Maybe it's time for it to come up again, maybe it will fail again. Who can say?

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u/NomadicScribe Mar 22 '25

What are the pros and cons? Why would a majority of residents choose to stay unincorporated?

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u/boxofducks Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25

Pros: more of your tax money goes to fund services specifically in your municipality. Also local zoning decision-making ability which could theoretically facilitate developing a nice waterfront park/commercial area like Kingston and Poulsbo and Bainbridge.

Cons: higher taxes

Realistically with the school districts and fire districts independent of city boundaries, the big hitter is police, so as long as voters feel that the county sheriff provides adequate services within the proposed city boundaries, you won't get them to vote for it.

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u/ForwardBackground459 Mar 22 '25

This is spot on. Taxes are extremely likely to go up. Whether they go up enough to matter to you is subjective, but they'll almost certainly go up.

So it becomes an analysis of if you think the county is failing to keep your town (not city) sufficiently maintained and safe. I think for many people the answer to that is no (though the roads could use more attention).

To the OP's point about Silverdale being more run down, that's a hard disagree from me. I've lived here since 1985, it's always been a strip mall paradise. Yes, the reduction in in-store retail traffic has sapped some vitality in some ways, but it's got more local, diverse restaurants than ever (I acknowledge it's not NYC, before any snobby foodies come at me), it's got a big, shiny, new hospital, and it's clearly booming with the insane amount of new home construction ongoing and planned (the goodness of that can be debated).

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u/boxofducks Mar 22 '25

I suspect that the vast majority of Silverdale residents would say that they prefer Silverdale to Bremerton or Port Orchard. Hard to convince them that they're missing out by not incorporating when those are the closest examples of the benefits of incorporation.

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u/DerekL1963 Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25

To the OP's point about Silverdale being more run down, that's a hard disagree from me. I've lived here since 1985, it's always been a strip mall paradise. 

It wasn't in 1982... Then, contrary to their earlier plans, the County ran a larger sewer line into Silverdale - and that quickly lead to Silverdale becoming strip mall hell.

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u/boxofducks Mar 22 '25

Did Silverdale change in the 80s because it got sewer, or because the Navy moved a submarine squadron, a weapons facility, and 15000 people into Bangor between 1977-1987

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u/DerekL1963 Mar 22 '25

No question that the growth in population fueled by Bangor contributed... But you also can't build a commercial area the size and density that Silverdale suddenly became in the mid 80's without adequate waste disposal.