SEATTLE— City leaders from Mill Creek, Bothell and Lynnwood say Snohomish County’s planning and land use policies show reckless abandon for current and future residents of the south quadrant.
At issue are eight amendments, adopted in 2006, to the county’s comprehensive plan, which redefine the Southwest Urban Growth Area boundaries and rezone several parcels of land for developments, including a proposed housing facility for seniors, just outside city limits.
County leaders say it doesn’t matter what they do. People from the cities will complain no matter what.
Now it’s up to Washington state’s Growth Management Hearing Board to determine by the end of September who is right and who is wrong.
At a meeting with the board on July 19, attorneys for the cities and the county argued back and forth as to whether or not the recently adopted amendments are in violation of the Growth Management Act and the State Environmental Policy Act.
“The county is placing high-intensity land uses on the fringes of city limits, ignoring traffic problems and the availability of vital services,” Mill Creek city attorney Scott Missall said. “They want to put health and social service facilities in an area that doesn’t have the capacity – infrastructure or services – to handle the needs of the people who will live there. This is bad planning.”
In October of 2006, the County Council approved a request from Fairview Ministries, a non-profit group that provides housing for seniors and people with disabilities, to expand the Southwest UGA and rezone a stretch of land between Bothell and Mill Creek for Health and Social Service Level 2 Housing.
Fairview Ministries is proposing construction of a 25-acre senior housing center near 35th Avenue Southeast. Preliminary plans for the project include construction of 175 independent living units and 55 assisted living units.
City leaders are less concerned, however, about senior housing than they are about the other types of facilities, such as drug treatment centers and halfway houses, that fall within the same zoning category.
“These types of facilities depend on urban services,” said Bothell’s attorney, Peter Eglick. “One could not think of a worse place to put these than at the farthest reaches of these communities.”
Courtney Flora, an attorney for Fairview Ministries, said the heart of the issue has nothing to do with traffic problems or lack of services, “rather, the cities don’t want these scary, unpopular facilities being built in their communities.”
Flora pointed to a need countywide for level 2 Housing.
While city leaders complain about the location of the proposed facility, Flora said any land inside city limits is too expensive for agencies like Fairview Ministries to offer affordable housing to seniors and other populations with limited incomes.
“The county is trying to address a need here as required in the Growth Management Act,” Flora said. “We’re talking about hospices, mental health facilities and other institutional housing that is lacking in Snohomish County. The economic realities are that property outside the urban centers is the only place people can afford.”
Missall said there were compelling arguments on all sides of the issue. Whether or not the cities’ arguments were compelling enough to get the board to rule in their favor is anyone’s best guess.
“I think we have a pretty good chance,” he said. “I don’t expect we’ll know much sooner, though, than the deadline for the hearing board’s ruling in September.”
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