County ignores citizens’ concerns

I want to alert Snohomish County citizens about what a poor job County Executive Aaron Reardon and staff are doing to fix the rural cluster subdivision code. It was driven home at the Jan. 22 Planning Commission meeting that the county is not going to deal with any of the substantive issues that citizens spent all last year telling them were vitally important — namely, our wells going dry, increased traffic and pollution, conversion of small farms, no affordable housing created by these rural suburbs (just the opposite, in fact) and the bonus density provision of the code (which allows developers to cram more than twice as many people in an area as the underlying zoning allows).

Not to be lost is the significance of rural character, which one lead Planning and Development Services staff person described as “two broken down pick-up trucks out front.” Those of us who live in the country know this includes acres and acres of pastures, animals, gardens, forests and individual dwellings. I wonder how many county staff (and planning commissioners) actually live in a rural area. What I find most interesting is how this rural cluster subdivision issue did not make it onto the comprehensive plan docket, if indeed the bonus density issue must be resolved through this process, when hundreds of taxpayers have been voicing the fatal flaws for a year now. Also interesting is that the county found space in the plan for their new politically sexy Transfer of Development Rights program, but not rural cluster subdivisions. Hmmmmmm, I guess what the executive wants is more important than the citizens’ quality of life. And here I thought “government” meant “of the people.”

Thanks to Planning Commissioners Angela Day and Gary Reiersgard for asking critical questions of the county planning department on behalf of us rural resident stakeholders.

Bill Hoffman

Arlington