The Everett Herald editorializes today on the issue of growth overwhelming the 164th Street corridor in south Snohomish County. The discussion, however, neglects to point out to key errors by local governments.
1) The general refusal of cities, particularly in south Snohomish County, to embrace the population density expected of them under the Growth Management Act. Held hostage under the sway of NIIMBYism, the cities have largely shunted the population growth off to unincorporated county land; thus, the construction boom along the 164th Street corridor that has done so much to contribute to the traffic mess.
2) The county has failed miserably to provide infrastructure commensurate with the population growth it has allowed for in unincorporated county land.
The Herald's editorial tries to pin the blame solely on the state. Surely, the Growth Management has its flaws. But since the law isn't going anywhere in this Democratic-run state, it would be nice if local governments actually took its implementation seriously. If 164th Street-style gridlock spreads to other parts of the region, someone is eventually going to feel it at the ballot box.
Posted by Eric Earling at December 23, 2007 06:37 AM | Email ThisLet's say it doesn't exist. What does the alternative look like? Probably greater development at the edges of our towns and cities - did the traffic just get better? Nope. Without GMA it would be even less likely to see infrastructure being built to accommodate growth in any sort of considered relationship.
The basic problem is that we have roads to serve a population that we surpassed years ago, and we're way to slow building at the pace of private development during a boom like now.
Blaming GMA is a great bogeyman for local cities to avoid their responsiblities, and for others that don't have the imagination to understand what the alternative might look like.
Posted by: BA on December 23, 2007 07:28 AM
I don't think that cities are attempting to avoid their responsibilites under GMA, I do think they are tired of moving targets, being targeted for lawsuits by NGO's trying to make policy and the expenses of the process trying to comply with GMA. If you doubt me, all you have to do is look at Maple Valley and ask them how well GMA works in dealing with the County on the "Donut Hole" issue.
Hardly a recipe for success.
Posted by: GS on December 23, 2007 12:34 PMThe city of Edmonds has met its GMA density targets. You must be refering to another city.
Posted by: Dave Orvis on December 23, 2007 01:03 PMHere is a letter to the Editor I sent to the Herald this past friday.
Dear Editor,
I found Jeff Switzer�s article dated 12/15/07 about the County Council denying plat approval for a seven unit condo project in Lynnwood quit interesting. My interest has less to do with why the Council voted 3-2 to deny, as I have not reviewed the record and would be remiss to be critical of the vote without all the facts, but rather I am concerned about the over arching policy issues which seem to directly contradict the goals the majority on the Council proscribe to.
Advocates for property rights have been at odds with the inherent goals of the GMA since its inception. GMA required policy makers over the last 15 years to make very difficult decisions when drawing the growth boundaries, leaving some land owners with down zoned property (reduced value) and others up zoned (increased value). The goals of the community seem to override the desires of the land owner.
The rallying cry from those promoting �smart growth� have consistently made the case over and over that we must limit urban sprawl into the rural areas to limit public infrastructure costs, preserve open space and protect resource land. The result is to increase density in the existing urban areas and to in fill with density with promised urban amenities being required of developers.
The Council�s recent vote declaring 164th AVE at ultimate capacity is a direct result of the density and in fill policies of the last 15 years.
The contradiction that I referred to is what the Council proposes to do with the current compressive plan growth projection of 300,000 new people if they deny permitting the density in fill required under GMA. They will respond with commentary about design standards, neighborhood character and lack of infrastructure as reason to deny.
You can anticipate new policies from the new Council to be seated in January to create new regulations such as design standards, add a tree retention ordinance and to further reduce the infill required by comprehensive plan while adding to the purchase price of new homes for future Snohomish County residents.
It will be quite interesting to watch the two new Council members navigate the apparent contradiction. The voters (all of which live with in the urban growth boundary) who just elected them, by and large did so due to the �smart growth�, anti development message that both men expressed in their campaign messages. However, that state law and the County comprehensive plan requires� that 85% of the new population growth be added to those very urban growth boundaries.
Quite a puzzle wouldn�t you say?
Jeff Sax
Jeff is a Realtor with Windermere Real Estate in Lake Stevens, President of Cascade Resources Group, a land use consulting firm and a former Snohomish County Council member.
My first question would be targets set my whom? The state? The county? Or the city?
Either way, it is more than safe to say the tone of the debate in Edmonds on such issues has been influenced by profoundly anti-growth and development voices. The very same crowd that embraced the GMA now throws itself in front of the path of the very development the law necessitates. You know that full well after the rhetoric of the last several campaign seasons.
Posted by: Eric Earling on December 23, 2007 06:18 PMMany incorporated areas are limited by their water rights. North Bend is good example of building moratoriums in a designated urban growth area being driven by the lack of legal water. The problem is not however unique to North Bend.
In Snohomish County the county's planners have been much less restrictive with respect to allowing rural developments to be served by water right exempted wells. This is one of the principal reasons so much of that county's growth has been in unincorporated areas.
The same pattern of poorly planned ex-urban growth can be seen in rural areas surrounding Spokane, Tri-Cities. and Vancouver.
Growth Planning in WA is another example of the law of unintended consequences working its inevitable magic, where restrictions in one place are compensated by looser regulations in another.
Two potential work-arounds come to mind. With one, the state steps in and squeezes the exempt well loopholes shut. In the other, growth is again funneled to the urban growth boundaries by loosening up the rules for water rights that serve growth there. With the first, all (or most) growth is stopped. With the second growth continues, but is planned and concentrated.
Guess which one the state is now contemplating?
Posted by: deadwood on December 23, 2007 06:39 PM
Look at wwhat the Governor is going to be doing in Eastern Washington, all she had to do was pay off a tribe $5.9 million a year and poof instant cooperation. Ron Sims paid off Snohomish County for Brightwater...it's a a money game, never about what is right or wrong from an environmental or growth standpoint. Cross their palms with silver and the most outspoken opponent will walk away. Nice system, the only ones who win are the lawyers.
The farmers in Eastern WA who the Lake Roosevelt deal benefits have a 75 year old guarantee of water that Gregoire could not ignore - And she still needed to bribe the tribes!? I wonder how much the feds are paying?
Posted by: deadwood on December 23, 2007 09:37 PMInstead, low crime, peace & quiet, and a home worth living in take precedence.
Posted by: John Galt on December 24, 2007 12:43 AMFrom what I read this is simply a pay off to prevent the tribes from objecting to the proposal and appealing the DOE's and Governor's decision during a SEPA/EIS process. It still needs to be approved by the Legislature. You are already hearing rumblings from the environmental groups like CELP, so you can bet they will have their hands out too. As far as I can tell this is an intergovernmental deal between the State and Tribes, no Federal involvement.
Posted by: Huh? on December 24, 2007 06:39 AMAnd I doubt very much that the Governor is going to directly fund CELP in such an overt way as she is the Spokane and Colville Tribes. CELP doesn't have a 150 year old treaty and (limited) sovereignty. There's much more danger (prospect?) of this deal being repeated with other tribes.
The Roosevelt deal though goes back to the 1930's and concerns water rights the state granted in lieu of future deliveries under the Columbia Irrigation Project (or at least that is what I understood it to be), so their has to be some federal involvement.
Posted by: deadwood on December 24, 2007 09:54 AMThe Feds in the form of the of the Corp of Engineers may be asked to bless this deal but I doubt if they will be laying out any money to make it happen like the State.
Posted by: Huh? on December 24, 2007 10:48 AMYou're probably right on the precedent being set here with money paid in perpetuity to the tribes.
In the longer term I am hopeful though that this will help break the alliance between the anti-growth greens and the tribes. I know though that is just wishful thinking.
Posted by: deadwood on December 24, 2007 11:44 AMThe county sets the goals for the city.
I wouldn't label the folks in Edmonds "anti-development", heck, just to go to our ferry dock and look south. The re-zoning that was needed to make that huge development happen was done with the support of the community (and what you see is only half of it). I thinks it's fair to say we are very sensitive about downtown, and we don't want development dumped on us without protections for existing neighborhoods; however, when I talk to folks, they are very resonable and they all understand that something has to give. Many are for expanding the UGA, as long as it's done wisely in a matter that is sensitive to the environment.
Posted by: Dave Orvis on December 25, 2007 07:51 AMHere are the basic elements of the GMA.
1. Transfer all property rights from private hands to Government, gradually, over several decades by gradual phase-in.
2. De-populate rural areas by:
a. refusing to allow any further development of the land for any purpose.
b. taking the right to use rural land for existing uses away gradually by accellerating regulations. Buildings not allowed to be repaired or rebuilt, roads not allowed to be maintianed.
c. all agricultural uses restricted to push out family farms and ranches by the same regulatory process.
d. no compensation for taking, gradually over time 100% of the value of the property.
e. Actual "wetlands" expanded by banning maintenance of streams subject to erosion so that all banks of all rivers and streams in the state become gradually expanding swamps protected in expanding zones of sancrosanctity.
f. Theoretical "wetlands" expanded via defining them by the plants that grow on them and gradually including every plant in the state on the list that mandates a "wetland."
G. banning all human activity not specifically permitted by government from "wetlands." (everywhere)
3. Forcing all land use (commercial, residential, etc.) into greater and greater density, gradually eliminating single-family dwellings and "private yards" in favor of collective living paradigms. community housing, community playgrounds. The complete elimination of suburbia. The high-rise future, where every individual is, litterally dependent on the group.
4. The theft, without compensation of the development rights of landowners whose property escalates in value as it is re-zoned for higher and higher density by eminent domain. Communities forced, by skyrocketing property taxes, to sell to developers but at no significant profit, and unable to afford any single family dwelling to move to, since none are being built (no land with development rights) and the taxes on the existing ones are out of reach of all but employees of Federal Agencies.
5. An exploding homeless population accomodated by state housing, again, all big apartment buildings, integrated with the general population and rife with drug use, prostitution, and gang violence.
6. Phasing out individual forms of transportation ("getting people out of their cars"). Mass transit of every type, subsidised at every level by heavy taxes and the popular demonization of individual liberty in transportation.
The end result is the same kind of re-location that took place after most violent Communist revolutions, where those citizens who survived became dependent on the state, literally and psychologically, for work, food, housing and every necessity. It is the dream of the tyrant, the socialist, the utopian, where every facet of human life is under their control.
The Growth Management Act is all this and was clearly that from its inception. It has been sold with lies and maintained by the constant violation of law. It is a project, both of Democrats and the GOP Left.
As long as the GMA is allowed to exist, tolerated in any way, we will be fighting a long, losing battle against brain-dead bureaucrats with less and less opportunity to return to the land of the free.
Go to your caucus on February 9.
Ecology has been trying for years to limit exempt wells in new developments by the threat of legal action. They won a water rights case a few years ago when a builder in eastern WA submitted approx. 15 notices to construct exempt wells on existing lots. Ecology has since tried to extrapolate that to developers creating new lots. The problem with this logic is that there is no requirement for developers to drill the wells.
Water right laws clearly apply to the individual owner at the time a well is constructed, not to a developer at the time that property lines are created on a map. Ecology knows this and it is the reason they have chosen to not take on a property owner within an rural cluster with a 1 acre lot. Instead they are negotiating with the counties to limit the size of subdivisions that propose to utilize, at some time in the future, individual exempt wells.
If a developer were to obtain water rights for say a 50 lot subdivision there is no mechanism at Ecology to chop it into 50 pieces for the new lot owners, so will they ever have the "right" to drill a well?
Posted by: InTheKnow on December 30, 2007 08:33 AM