The Everett Herald missed the mark with their July 27 front page article, “County growth cools.” The article appears to be based upon the writer’s assumptions rather than fact.
First of all, most development consultants draw no direct correlation between commercial and residential permit activity to current economic trends in evaluating current growth patterns in Snohomish County. Short-term economic trends really have no measurable long term effect on growth patterns. Population and economic growth patterns involve projections of factors considered over a ten to 20-year period.
The second false assumption promoted in the article is that recent regulatory changes have adversely affected growth. In Snohomish County there has been one substantial regulatory amendment in the last five years. In 1998 the county adopted what most consider the most restrictive storm drainage ordinance in the state. This ordinance has had its negative affects on growth but those affects are hardly measurable in the context of evaluating growth or even permit activity.
Most development consultants doing business in Snohomish County will point to the inefficiencies in the county processes as the single most significant factor in the slowdown of current permit activity.
A direct correlation can be drawn between the increase in administrative staffing and its affects to the reduction of permit activity. Not many in the industry want to submit development proposals to an administration and a process that promotes an environment lacking any predictability. Most of the development proposals submitted to Snohomish County over the last five years are yet to be approved or probably will never be approved, not because they lack viability, but rather because of process inefficiencies.
The development industry points to the ineficiencies in the regulatory processes rather than an economic slowdown or new regulation as the cause of the current slowdown in permit activity in Snohomish County.
Arlington
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