Hearing examiner makes right call

The arrogance of Snohomish County Planning and Development Services (PDS) in the Warm Beach case is disturbing, but not surprising. (Aug. 19 article, "Church group may appeal denial of apartment project near Warm Beach.")

For this unelected bureaucracy to threaten a lawsuit against elected County Council officials over a Hearing Examiner's decision denying an upscale development in an ecologically sensitive rural area is just icing on the cake, after years of abusive county planning practices. PDS takes its work serving developers pretty seriously, but as the article suggests, a PDS "appeal" is not lawful and shows a department completely out of control.

After years of unbalanced and unchecked land use review, capped by indolent code enforcement, the legacy of county planners includes clogged roadways, dried up well water, lack of affordable housing, unnecessary destruction of wetlands, streams and shorelines, landslides, ruined salmon runs, neighborhoods of floating septic tanks and drainage disasters on properties adjacent to PDS projects -- all due to an overworked trend by department administrators, headed by Aaron Reardon, to undercut Snohomish County citizen and taxpayer interests for the benefit of the Master Builders lobby.

It is not true that PDS "only does what the law says." PDS actively promotes deviations from code and constantly pursues precedent-setting loopholes that thwart the County Council's original intentions on ordinances that become inconvenient to developers.

Kudos to Hearing Examiner Barbara Dykes for doing her job, not only to protect the county from illegal land use approvals under code, but to set PDS straight when it goes too far over to the dark side.

Alan Geiger
Snohomish