County’s UGA plan not keeping rural areas rural

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, November 26, 2019

My neighbors and I have been subject to urban growth surrounding our rural neighborhood. For some reason the Snohomish County Council has chosen not to include us into the Urban Growth Area but instead, have voted to keep us rural while allowing development including over 300 new homes and the new Northshore School District’s North Creek High School to proceed all around us.

They now want to turn our dead end road into an urban/rural arterial to accommodate traffic and take part of our properties to do it. Our dead-end is the only buffer that remains to keep us separate from the urban sprawl. We understand that the county needs to improve the flow of traffic but they aren’t going about it in a way that is logical or in the best interest of taxpayers and the plans goes against their own policies around keeping rural areas rural.

They’ve admitted their mistake but won’t fix it. This has been going on since 2005 when we were going to be added into the UGA then, at the last minute, were not included. It happened again in 2015. We got on the docket in 2017 then were voted down in 2018. Now they want to proceed with the road and we will most certainly end up in court so they may take eminent domain for their needs.

We’d love a chance to get this issue in front of the public. There’s an open house at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 5 at the Willis Tucker Community Park in Snohomish, 6705 Puget Park Drive. We plan to have a group there to confront the council.

Marta Baldwin

Bothell