We live in one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. People are drawn to our community for the same reasons we choose to live here – good jobs, a strong economy and a beautiful place to live. However, these newcomers are going to need homes and ways to get around just like we do. Our county is growing exponentially and this growth could be a real problem – unless we plan for it.
One of the most important jobs your county government does is to plan for and manage growth so that everyone can better enjoy what this county has to offer. County planners and elected officials have done this for the last 20 years by preparing what’s called a “comprehensive plan.” This comp plan is really a land use map for managing growth by designating specific areas where all the new housing developments, roads, parks, manufacturing companies, retail stores, apartment buildings, townhouses and everything else should be located.
However, they don’t do all this planning in a vacuum. They actively seek and receive advice and input from city officials, public safety and environmental agencies, environmental groups, other professional planners, developers and, last but certainly not least, from people like you and me.
Over the years, county staff has written rules and regulations to specify how development may occur within areas identified for growth by the comp plan. They are contained in the county’s Uniform Development Code (UDC). Because they were written decades ago, many of these rules and regulations may not be appropriate or make sense in today’s world. So county staff is currently reviewing and updating them to make them more understandable and usable. This process will take a few years. County staff is holding a series of UDC update forums to get input from the public about how these proposed revisions can be written to help the county manage growth even better in the future. One or two sections of the UDC will be discussed at each forum meeting. The forum schedule and topics are posted on the County’s Web site prior to each meeting (www.snoco.org, search for UDC Update).
In a parallel effort, the Snohomish County Planning Commission, an independent advisory group of volunteers appointed by the County Council to represent the perspective of local citizens as a counterbalance to the technical perspective of professional planners and engineers, will set aside several hours after some of its regularly scheduled meetings to provide even more opportunities for people to participate in this process.
These open community discussions will not be as structured as the county UDC update forums. At our meetings, participants will be encouraged to have an open and honest conversation with each other and with Planning Commission members about what they’d like the county to look like in the decades to come. We won’t be focusing on things in the past that can’t be changed. We’ll be looking for positive suggestions about how these rules and regulations can be revised to help to make our county a better place to live in the future. County planning staff will be on hand to listen to the discussion and to provide technical support when asked.
We’ll be holding the first of these open community discussions from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday on the county campus after our regularly scheduled Planning Commission meeting. The topics for this discussion will be design standards and rural cluster subdivisions. Future meetings may focus on such topics as affordable housing or urban centers but participants at this meeting can suggest other topics for future agendas. It all depends on where the participants want to take the discussions.
The Planning Commission seeks your input. Now is the time for you to influence what our county will look like before the old rules are revised or new rules are written – not afterwards when they’re already on the books and being used by county decision makers to guide what new development will look like.
Come to our Tuesday meeting and talk with your neighbors and your planning commissioners. Your ideas will help shape the future of our community.
Bill Diepenbrock is chairman of the Snohomish County Planning Commission.
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