Two government boards fell short of making any firm decisions Thursday about the Chuckanut Mountains Park District — a proposed taxing district for conservation and recreation efforts stretching from Bow Hill Road to Bellingham.

The Skagit County boundary review board ran out of time Thursday. The Whatcom board hedged its bets.

After hearing four hours of public testimony, the Skagit board voted to adjourn and reconvene today at 1:30 p.m. Board members wanted to get advice from their lawyer and learn the outcome of Thursday night’s meeting of the Whatcom board before making a decision.

The Skagit board could decide to reject the park district outright or to give proponents of the proposal more time to complete an environmental review.

Both boards conferred behind closed doors with attorneys before the meetings ended. Whatcom County attorney Royce Buckingham is helping the Whatcom board decide whether it must, on legal grounds, deny the park district proposal outright, as argued by park district opponents.

While Buckingham is getting answers, the board will move forward with plans to hire a consultant for the environmental review of the park district proposal.

“We need to keep this thing on track as best we can,” Whatcom board Chairman Bill Bliss said.

The park district proposal has been all but derailed since last summer when Skagit County commissioners and other government agencies asked the two boundary review boards to weigh in on the proposal’s validity.

Meetings of the two boards scheduled for late summer were postponed because the environmental review hadn’t been done.

The Whatcom board has since been charged with conducting that review. Because it has no experience with state environmental reviews, it voted Thursday to request proposals from outside consultants to do the work. The board hopes to hire a consultant by May and have the review completed by Sept. 1.

The proposal was advanced by a group called the Chuckanut Mountains Park District Advisory Council, which obtained enough signatures on petitions last year to qualify for an election by citizens living within the proposed district boundaries.

Park district supporters said the Sept. 1 deadline for the environmental review could cause them to miss an August filing deadline for the November general election ballot. It could be February 2009 before the proposal goes to the voters.

But the proposal may not make it that far.

Bob Rauch, attorney and vice president of the North Sound Conservancy, a group opposing the park district, told Whatcom and Skagit board members that time has run out on the proposal. Rauch said that because the environmental review wasn’t done, the Chuckanut proponents missed a deadline for submitting a complete application, and the law does not provide a way for them to ask for an extension.

Supporters had 180 days after the voter petitions were certified in April 2007 to complete the application, Rauch said.

After the meeting, Rauch said he was satisfied that the Whatcom attorney was going to give his group’s concerns a close look.

Rauch was one voice among dozens of park district opponents who spoke in Mount Vernon and Bellingham for several hours Thursday. Opponents outnumbered supporters 10-to-1 in the crowded meeting rooms.

Some opponents were angered and even fearful of a plan that would tax property owners within 65 square miles in both counties.

“Frankly, this proposal is tearing this community apart, which is very unfortunate,” Rauch said.

The park district group has said on its Web site that money collected from property taxes would go toward acquisition of properties, conservation easements and logging rights. The group also would like to maintain and expand the trail system in the Chuckanuts and provide better amenities for recreationists.

The proposed tax is 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. State statute allows park districts to levy as much as 75 cents per $1,000.

The job of the review boards is to determine whether the park district boundaries were drawn appropriately. Some opponents questioned whether they were, even saying that the borders of the park district leave a gap on the south end at Bow Hill Road. Others claimed the lines were intentionally drawn around voters in south Bellingham who would support the proposal.

Park district advocates responded that the large pool of taxpayers in Bellingham would actually provide a disproportionate benefit to rural Skagit County.

* Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .