The Snohomish County Council’s recent efforts to draw out the public’s will for how much rural development we get is a critical component to the preservation of our farmland.
Recently expressed opinions depict citizen groups as wanting the council to preserve farmland as mostly a matter of principle. This is more than just principle. We need initiatives to ensure our farmers survive, but they can’t work on farmland converted to housing. For our farmland to survive we need farmers, we need agricultural infrastructure and we need a plan to assure the continued operation of the family-owned business. It is also imperative that we give to the farming community of Snohomish County some degree of certainty about future land use and protections from development. Otherwise, we’ll be importing our food, not growing it at home. Every acre lost one at a time is not ground lost on principle. It’s ground lost on this Earth.
The council’s moratorium on new, rural-based cities, and forums to address the densities allowed in rural cluster developments, are the right direction. On Wednesday there will be a public hearing to see where the public stands on densities in rural cluster developments. From the recent forums, it’s clear they stand all over the place.
Property owners’ views on land use can be divided into a couple of camps. Some of us are small land investors, or homeowners who want to sell at a profit. Some are moms and pops who want to divide up their property to let their kids live near them and others just want a place of their own and a rural lifestyle. One camp wants to see a dollar return on their investment. The other wants the return on their investment to be an increase in their quality of life. Neither is wrong.
It is balance that we should be seeking. We must all accept that there will be both some decrease in property value and in quality of life while we find that balance. Our taxes will go up and our neighbors will increase in number. But the ultimate degradation of our environment or the loss of our farmers and farmland is not something we can or should accept.
It is my view, and the view of many of my neighbors, that what we have is out of balance, and that our rights as property owners are negatively impacted. The environment we value, both for its integrity and the quality of life it offers, is at risk. There is no doubt that sprawl from our cities leaking into the rural areas will ultimately damage our quality of life. It will also lead to the decrease of farmland. It will lead to increased infrastructure costs as we pay for more and wider roads, larger fire departments and schools, and increased police presence.
Goldie Brose knows all too well that more people mean a wider road. Our 91-year-old neighbor is suffering very directly the impacts of growth. She’s being asked by the county to give up 10 feet of her property on Lakewood Road to make way for a wider thoroughfare. Increased traffic, a result of growth, is the cause they claim.
It was on Goldie’s dining room table that the Wenberg family once laid out the maps to the property they donated to help create Wenberg State Park. The state now has trouble finding funding for the park. How much more difficult will it be for the county if it takes over this crown jewel of the seven lakes? And if we sprawl into the area, the demand for parks will increase right along with the draw on our transportation dollars.
The county needs to address this now. It starts with the good-sense requirement that we focus development in our cities and on transportation corridors and limit rural growth. Our water resources are being taxed, our safety and education resources pushed to the limit.
As our population increases and there is more pressure on our land resources, these impacts are inevitable. The answer is not a knee-jerk reaction either to the perceived panacea of private property rights, or to the no-growth, not-in-my-backyard mentality.
The compromise in the middle must be met. Then the line must be drawn. Whether we take it as a matter of principle, good common sense or the finding of that balance, we must limit sprawl and protect our farmlands.
Ellen Hiatt Watson is president of 7-Lakes, a citizen member of the Steering Committee of Snohomish County Tomorrow, and sits on the stakeholders’ committee for Fully Contained Community code changes.
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