By Warren Cornwall
Herald Writer
John Koster and Mike Ashley spent years living within a few miles of each other, both running dairy farms near Silvana.
But when it comes to county politics, the two District 1 Snohomish County Council candidates are far apart.
Koster, 50, a former Republican state lawmaker, criticizes the county for failing to plan for transportation needs, and for what he considers excessive land-use regulations and property tax increases.
“The government that governs least governs best. I believe that firmly,” Koster said.
Ashley, a 47-year-old Democrat appointed to the council in January, says he also is concerned about transportation problems. But he said the county needs to ensure that developers pay their share of the cost of growth, and he has backed tighter land-use regulations aimed at restricting some kinds of development.
“I think one of the clearest issues in this campaign is how will we plan for the growth and pay for the hidden costs of growth,” he said.
Also in the race is Frank Ball, a Libertarian candidate who criticizes current government as costly and burdensome.
The district covers much of the northern half of Snohomish County, with the winner earning a four-year term and a salary of about $76,000 a year.
In his three terms in the legislature, Koster built a resume as an outspoken conservative.
In the late ’90s, he chaired the Washington Conservative Caucus, a group of lawmakers that pushed to end affirmative action in the state, ban same-sex marriages and make illegal a late-term abortion method. He also has been a consistent critic of tax increases and the Growth Management Act, the 1990 state law that established detailed guidelines for local land-use planning.
The opposition to tax increases and to stricter land-use regulation has carried over into his campaign for county council.
Koster said he opposes parts of a recent overhaul of county development rules that restrict planned residential developments, a type of high-density development popular with builders. Among other things, it restricted those developments to parcels bigger than five acres.
“The changes that they made have made them (the type of development) unusable for a lot of builders,” he said.
Koster also blamed regulations and development fees for pushing up the price of housing in the region and for contributing to property tax increases in recent years.
After years as a dairy farmer, Koster sold his farm and now works as a consultant advising clients on local and state regulations. Koster declined to say who his clients are.
With a much shorter political career, Ashley has yet to establish a lengthy voting record. But he has already earned accolades from growth-control advocates and barbs from the building industry.
Shortly after his arrival on the council, he posted pieces of paper near his door with a list of questions concerning growth. “Who pays for growth and is it fair?” the first one asks.
Ashley said he supports making the development community bear part of that cost with increased mitigation road fees. He challenged Koster’s claim that such regulations are to blame for higher home prices and taxes.
While they may be a factor, “demand is part of what is driving it, and frankly, the greed of the developers,” he said of home prices.
He also proved a crucial vote in the 3-2 approval of tighter development restrictions that Koster says he opposes.
Ashley, who still runs a dairy, was appointed to the council after Rick Larsen defeated Koster in 2000 race for the 2nd District congressional seat. Since then, Koster sought to become head of the state Republican Party but lost out to former King County councilman Chris Vance.
The two major party candidates also face competition from Frank Ball, a Libertarian party candidate. Ball did not respond to requests for information about his stand on the issues.
In a candidate statement published during the primary, Ball criticized politicians for demonizing people who want to create new counties, for earning more than the median income and for interfering with farmers’ right to use their land.
Snohomish County’s 4th District has been at the center of the debate over growth in the county.
The dense suburban cities in the south-central part of the county spill into farm and forestland, all of it encompassed by the district. With the growth has come traffic, and fights between neighborhood groups and developers.
Ask the two Snohomish County Council seat candidates what the top issues are, and both almost reflexively say, "Growth and transportation."
But Democrat Dave Gossett and Republican Dave Schmidt differ on how to tackle those issues.
Schmidt, a four-term state lawmaker in the 44th Legislative District, said the answers lie partly in reversing recent land-use regulations, avoiding an increase in development fees and speeding the permit process for road construction projects.
The 48-year-old former church pastor, who lives north of Bothell, said he opposes new measures that restrict the use of planned residential developments, or PRDs.
Before the changes, builders favored this brand of development because it allowed more homes on an acre of land. Growth-control advocates opposed it for the same reason.
Schmidt said the new limits exacerbate sprawl by decreasing the number of homes that can go on land near cities.
That sprawl could also be made worse by an increase in fees charged to new development to pay for roadwork, he said. The fee increase, which will likely be considered by the council in the coming months, would translate into higher home prices, pushing more people to seek cheaper housing farther away from job centers, he said.
"All that does is add more to the traffic congestion problem," he said.
Gossett, 50, a three-term Mountlake Terrace city councilman and three-term mayor, disagrees.
He said the development reforms were designed to end abuses by developers, who were building dense housing with few neighborhood benefits. The new regulations were pushed by current 4th district councilwoman Barbara Cothern, who is not seeking re-election.
Tackling transportation problems will require money, he said. And he pointed to raising mitigation fees as more palatable than increasing taxes. Though some of the increase may find its way into housing prices, those price tags are also shaped by market forces, he said.
"What you don’t collect in mitigation fees you have to collect in taxes, or you don’t do the work," he said.
With the state Legislature at an impasse over transportation funding, Gossett said he would also support having the county lobby to keep all of its transportation dollars for road projects here. Some taxes collected throughout the state are pooled, and urbanized Puget Sound counties wind up getting fewer taxes back than they put in.
"We can’t just wait for the state," he said.
But Schmidt said hoarding those dollars runs counter to the idea of a statewide transportation system. State roads, he said, extend beyond county lines, and even city residents use roads in rural parts of the state.
"Those are not issues that you simply target to one county. As soon as you do that, you create turf wars," he said.
Schmidt, a staff sergeant in the National Guard, was called up to active duty at Camp Murray, the state National Guard headquarters south of Tacoma, shortly last month’s terrorist attacks. He has said he will continue campaigning.
Gossett worked as a legislative analyst for the county council for a decade before taking a leave to campaign this year.
The council seat has a four-year term and a salary of slightly more than $76,000.
You can call Herald Writer Warren Cornwall at 425-339-3463 or send e-mail to cornwall@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
