The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Council can build or bury its rules on rural development

Thursday, August 17, 2000

By Mike Lewis
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

DUVALL -- Ward Roney Jr. sees it creeping down the ridge, like an invading army in 3,000-square-foot, wood-and-stucco ranks. A generation ago, when his family ran cattle in this narrow, fertile valley, no one thought of putting homes on the steep grades that bracket Tuck Creek.

Back then, no one thought much about the Internet, IPOs and a King County economy not tightly tied to cutting trees, fishing or building airplanes. Change has brought half a million people to the county over the past 10 years.

But the growth that came with Western Washington's new high-tech economy isn't remarkable just for its breadth, but also for its location. Stack the money high enough, contractors joke, and you can build a level foundation anywhere you like.

And some people liked the ridge above Roney's home.

Roney says he doesn't begrudge someone wanting a big house, except when the water and silt that sluices down an increasingly paved Ring Hill floods his herb farm in a quantity unseen even in the years Weyerhaeuser left little more than a 5 o'clock shadow on the hillsides.

"The county tells me they want to preserve farmland," the 69-year-old says with a squint that telegraphs the barb to follow. "They didn't tell me it was underwater preservation."

Throughout the county, where cities push into suburbs and those, in turn, slide into farmland, the effort to control and restrict growth is at a critical juncture. In places like the ridge above Roney's Farm, County Executive Ron Sims wants to allow just one new house per 20 acres, a downzone from the current standard of four per 20 acres.

The County Council, mostly along party lines, has so far balked at his proposal, just as it has on dozens of other proposals to modify the county's 1994 Growth Management Plan.

The 1990 Growth Management Act allowed the regulations to be revisited five years after their adoption. So the council, sitting as the county's growth management committee, will in September build or bury policies that change the way rural lands are developed and smooth or block the process for building more apartments in cities.

Overhauling one of the county's most important guiding documents has frayed nerves and sparked tempers in the normally staid council chambers. It has not only earned the close and expected scrutiny of developers but also of church leaders and environmentalists, among others, who claim a stake in where the county puts its people.

Ask Councilman Chris Vance about downsizing. To the Auburn Republican it is a clear violation of property rights.

"It comes from ultra-leftist environmental nuts from Seattle with a romantic view of rural areas, but they don't even live in rural areas," Vance said.

Lost amid the fights over who can build where and when is the fact that the 6-year-old law appears to be working the way it was designed.

The county's annual growth report, due out next month, will show that rural residential growth has slowed, pushing more building into urban areas -- a primary goal of the plan.

In 1994, 8,430 new residential units were built. Of those, 88 percent were in urban areas. By 1998, the split became 94 percent urban.

The county appears on its way to having 95 percent of growth in urban areas this year, just a hair away from the goal of corralling 96 percent of growth in designated urban areas. But growth still is coming faster than Sims would like. In 1994, county officials planned for 8,000 new homes in rural King County through 2012. It already is at that mark.

But despite the problems Roney and other farmers have seen from encroaching development, farmland appears to be holding fast at 50,000 acres, the same as in 1998. However, forest acreage dipped slightly, from 887,000 acres in 1998 to 869,000 in 1999. In response, Sims wants to dramatically curtail development in forest zones by limiting construction to one house per 80 acres, rather than one per 20.

Bob Gillespie, a lobbyist who represents the Plum Creek Timber Co. and 500 rural land owners who want to stop Sims' plan, said there is no pressing need to change the standard.

"There simply is no threat of development," he said, noting that Weyerhaeuser, a major forest landowner in the county, has sold only one such lot as a potential homesite.

The point of the plan isn't just to slow growth, but to control where it happens. Under the plan, the county generally is divided into three large tracts defined as Urban, Rural and Resource (meaning farm and timber lands).

Growth is supposed to be channelled into areas within an urban growth boundary, essentially one third of the county west of Redmond, plus Eastside islands such as Duvall, Snoqualmie and North Bend.

In the Rural zone, development is generally limited to four homes per acre. And Resource areas such as vast timber stands in the county's mountainous east are supposed to have few, if any homes.

At its core, the growth plan seeks to concentrate new development where it can most effectively be handled by existing services. It is also based on a belief that limiting low-density sprawl will reduce dependence on automobiles, ease traffic congestion and do less harm to the environment.

Building permit numbers show the plan has funnelled growth to urban zones. Seattle, Bellevue and Kent, for example, have seen a sharp rise in new residential units authorized. Between 1996 and 1999, the three cities doubled the number of authorized new housing units per year. Growth in unincorporated areas, which accounted for 40 percent of new units countywide in 1995, now accounts for 24 percent of new units.

Even so, the mood is hardly sanguine in county offices. Earlier this month, the County Council, sitting as the growth management committee, ended a meeting ahead of schedule because members felt their bickering over proposed amendments to the plan was impeding progress on the issue.

Among the stalled issues was Sims' proposal to stop allowing large churches, schools and other "big footprint items" in rural zones, believing they presage sprawl by encouraging heavy traffic and increasing the need for new public services.

Some council members take a dim view of the notion.

"Does anyone here really believe that our problem is too many churches in King County?" jibed Vance, bringing chuckles during a recent council committee meeting.

School and church officals have thus far stymied Sims' proposal. And the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle is attempting to go one better, lobbying to get private schools allowed in rural zones where public schools are permitted.

Sims also is being criticized for attempting to ease development in urban centers by eliminating a key step in the approval process. Councilman Rob McKenna, R-Bellevue, has taken Sims to task for a proposal that not only would allow new highrise apartments in densely urban areas near Seattle -- something McKenna doesn't oppose -- but also in the suburbs.

Few seem thrilled with the proposed changes. Then again, few loved the old plan. Some developers say the county has refused to allow construction of enough homes to sustain a strong economy. Environmentalists counter that the county's building permit office is an adjunct to the Chamber of Commerce. And small property owners, facing restrictions that could cut land values, side with Vance and others who say property rights are being trampled.

In coming months, one issue may overshadow all others. The county must, for the first time, consider the impact of listing salmon as an endangered species. The new growth plan includes a foundation for local salmon-protection regulations, but federal rules are not expected to be done until December.

Broad enough to allow specific rules to be added later -- but leading enough to become a target -- the plan's salmon-preservation language will guide such issues as building setbacks from streams, road locations and control of storm water runoff.

The impact on development is likely to be severe. It is highly unlikely that state Route 520 can ever be widened because of the need to protect Lake Washington's endangered salmon run.

A major challenge in addressing the needs of the salmon is the multiple jurisdictions involved. Like a Chinese puzzle box, where the movement of each panel requires shifting another, growth plans for any one region don't shift easily without some give in those covering land around it.

Tim Ceis, Sims' chief of staff and salmon aficionado, said Redmond city officials have expressed concern that the county might set strict salmon protection measures that federal officials would also expect King County cities to follow. Those officials did not respond to requests for comment.

While Ceis said he doesn't think the county plan influences separate city efforts, he did allow that, "The county is being more aggressive than any other jurisdiction here."

Aggressive or not, decisions made next month by the County Council could forecast how the county will look 20 years down the road. Then again, the county's mid-'70s growth plan predicted "little development" on the Eastside.

Roney has seen firsthand how wrong that was. Even so, he doesn't consider himself an "it-used-to-be-better-in-my-day" throwback. When times changed, so did his farm. What once was a dairy operation, then a cattle ranch, is now an organic herb farm. The irony isn't lost on him; Roney knows his new customers come from those homes on the hills above him and from newcomers just like them.

"They help us. They hurt us," he said with a soft chuckle.

He hopes new growth restrictions will reduce the hurt, but he's not so sure.

"It's a sad state of affairs when you can't farm."