As Snohomish County farmers, we wish to express our opposition to the comprehensive plan update proposed by the Snohomish County Council. The plan, which will expand urban areas of this county by more than seven square miles, gobbles up farmland and makes it harder for those who continue to farm in the future.
Between Marysville and Arlington alone, more than 700 acres of actively farmed land, currently producing beef, potatoes, corn, nursery stock and flowers, will fall prey to either increased density or outright incorporation into urban growth areas. The proposed comp plan does nothing to stop the alarming loss of Snohomish County farmlands, which have declined by 1,200 acres per year in the past 20 years!
We co-chair an ad hoc advisory group, appointed this fall by County Executive Aaron Reardon, which will craft an economic development plan for agriculture. A major component of this plan will be the protection of working farmlands for the next 100 years. Protection of farmlands in the proposed comp plan falls under a transfer of development rights program. In its proposed state, the TDR program amounts to tokenism, and will do more to satisfy developers than save farms. It will require extensive revisions to make any difference at all in the dwindling farm landscape.
Future population growth in our county should not and need not be at the expense of farmlands. The county must more creatively encourage growth within already existing urban areas. Oddly enough, much can be done to protect farmlands through revitalizing urban living spaces. This is far more desirable for both urban and rural communities than the continued sprawl proposed by the comp plan.
We urge Reardon to veto the council’s comprehensive plan update, in favor of the Planning Commission’s more moderate proposal. While far from perfect, this approach does less to damage farming in our county.
Cliff Bailey
Snohomish
TRISTAN KLESICK
Stanwood
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