State agency calls out Clark County on growth plan
Seems not everyone in the planning universe sees the new Clark County growth plan as a good thing:
Big picture, it's hard to see how blowing out the urban growth boundaries is a smart thing to do given the transportation deficits we have. The I-5 corridor especially is a tough situation and will only get tougher.
The issue of jobs is important. It's been a traditional article of faith in Clark County that adding jobs on this side of the Columbia River not only helps citizens but helps reduce transportation needs, and this is frequently used to justify the expenditure of public funds not just by municipalities but by ports as well.
We might need to revisit that assumption somewhat. First, people can live any place they can get to and afford, which used to be an argument righties made against the Growth Management Act (GMA.) But it also works the other way. If a new employer in Clark County needs a skilled worker who happens to live in Portland, they are going to hire that person. I don't know why Phillips is so convinced that there could never be more office towers in Vancouver, even if he is exaggerating the situation. If the CREDC is supposed to help develop jobs, what gives them the right to dictate what type they are? Or is the CREDC too wedded to an old way of doing things to be objective?
This is a regional economy with strong ties to international trade. The arguments about how vital it is to blow out the urban growth boundaries strike me as being the result of, for lack of a better term, an insular and myopic political system in Clark County rather than any sound economic position. A job working to build an office building is probably just as valuable to a worker as a job building tract housing, and if the mantra is jobs, jobs, jobs, then the secondary mantra better be transportation, transportation, transportation. Blowing out the UGB's is the last thing to do in terms of transportation.
The CREDC/BIAW/Clark County position flies in the face of the reality on the ground. The future will bring more density, more detailed planning and hopefully decent transit. The Wild West days of growth in Clark County are gone, if for no other reason than the rangeland has been settled. What's left is, to continue the analogy, the scrub land, often in the form of wetland or steep terrain.
CREDC was set up to promote growth, pure and simple, and it has been wildly successful. The BIAW is set up to ruthlessly promote as little regulation as possible, no matter the validity, and to attack what is perceives as its enemies, and the BIAW, too, has been successful. They sorta goofed up by becoming nothing more than a partisan attack arm of the GOP, but business people are generally resilient and I'm sure over time they will adapt to the realities of Democratic majorities.
The CREDC helped create a growth-dependent economy, or more accurately, an economy based on building residential housing and strip malls that support the automobile culture. That may have seemed like a good idea in 1989 in the midst of a recession, but it doesn't seem so smart in the 21st Century with the Middle East roiled by conflict.
The fact that the city of Vancouver and the state of Washington seem to recognize the folly of the county's actions is significant, but it is not the whole ballgame. With two seats up on the county commission next year, there's no doubt development interests will be pouring their usual hundreds of thousands of dollars into the races. Add to the pro-development mix the Cowlitz Tribe and its casino proposal, and you've got the makings of some real election fun, if you can stand the sleaze.
While some might say public officials are somehow "on the take," a more sophisticated way to view the situation is that there is no political force that has the resources and professional staff to make the case as strongly for a more steady and practical rate of growth. It's not fundamentally a matter of corruption so much as it is a problem of political competition, or a lack thereof. The growth wars don't really follow a partisan map anyhow, which means the Democratic Party as an institution does not play much of an advocacy role for ordinary folks, as it might on national issues.
That being said, we should note that there are many dedicated volunteers who track growth issues and serve on committees and study groups, trying to talk some sense into public policy, and they deserve our thanks. But, in politics, as in many things, money talks.
Change is scary, and the development-dependent business community of Clark County is composed of humans, after all. The days of throwing up McMansions on cheap land are limited no matter how you look at it. It's doubtful that method of building could be sustained for another 20 years no matter how much land is put inside the UGB's; the transportation system just can't handle it. But one last land grab isn't going to achieve much of anything productive for the larger community.
The county has wasted enough money on this pointless, absurd attempt to discard the 2004 plan, and for what? So they can get sued?
County commissioners should cut their losses and accept that the 2004 plan, even if they feel it has some flaws, is relatively solid and will serve us well.
There's no need to approve a costly expansion of Clark County's urban areas, the state's economic development agency said in a wide-ranging letter sent last week to Clark County's commissioners.Naturally, the response from pro-developer quarters was less than enthusiastic:
Vancouver's urban area has more than enough room to pack in homes and jobs for the 80,000 or so newcomers expected by 2024, according to assumptions made by the city's planners and embraced by the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.
That may be true in other places, said Bart Phillips, director of the Columbia River Economic Development Council. But not here.But it's not just the state or thousands of local residents who have a problem with Clark County discarding the completed 2004 growth plan:
"It's probably a valid determination for somebody viewing it from 95 miles away," Phillips said.
Vancouver, Phillips said, won't generate as many jobs as the county wants it to unless it pushes out the urban boundaries.
"If we're going to start doing nothing but building 40-story office towers, then yeah," he said. "But that's not the market. That's simply not going to happen."
At a public hearing last week, Vancouver Councilman Dan Tonkovich said the city has two major objections to the county's growth plan: expanding urban growth areas; and creating a lower-density area called "Three Creeks" including Hazel Dell, Felida and Salmon Creek.Land use planning is a very detailed and often technical process. Last week hearings on the new growth plan ran well into the wee hours of the night (well, morning actually.) Citizens, including developers, have a right to be heard.
Tonkovich said the city wants "eye-to-eye contact" with county officials about both issues. But in a letter to the county, he warned that Vancouver will "explore all other options" should the county ignore the city's concerns.
Those options are likely to include appealing the county's growth plan to the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board. Last week, the city council met with its top planning officials in a closed-door session to discuss litigation.
Big picture, it's hard to see how blowing out the urban growth boundaries is a smart thing to do given the transportation deficits we have. The I-5 corridor especially is a tough situation and will only get tougher.
The issue of jobs is important. It's been a traditional article of faith in Clark County that adding jobs on this side of the Columbia River not only helps citizens but helps reduce transportation needs, and this is frequently used to justify the expenditure of public funds not just by municipalities but by ports as well.
We might need to revisit that assumption somewhat. First, people can live any place they can get to and afford, which used to be an argument righties made against the Growth Management Act (GMA.) But it also works the other way. If a new employer in Clark County needs a skilled worker who happens to live in Portland, they are going to hire that person. I don't know why Phillips is so convinced that there could never be more office towers in Vancouver, even if he is exaggerating the situation. If the CREDC is supposed to help develop jobs, what gives them the right to dictate what type they are? Or is the CREDC too wedded to an old way of doing things to be objective?
This is a regional economy with strong ties to international trade. The arguments about how vital it is to blow out the urban growth boundaries strike me as being the result of, for lack of a better term, an insular and myopic political system in Clark County rather than any sound economic position. A job working to build an office building is probably just as valuable to a worker as a job building tract housing, and if the mantra is jobs, jobs, jobs, then the secondary mantra better be transportation, transportation, transportation. Blowing out the UGB's is the last thing to do in terms of transportation.
The CREDC/BIAW/Clark County position flies in the face of the reality on the ground. The future will bring more density, more detailed planning and hopefully decent transit. The Wild West days of growth in Clark County are gone, if for no other reason than the rangeland has been settled. What's left is, to continue the analogy, the scrub land, often in the form of wetland or steep terrain.
CREDC was set up to promote growth, pure and simple, and it has been wildly successful. The BIAW is set up to ruthlessly promote as little regulation as possible, no matter the validity, and to attack what is perceives as its enemies, and the BIAW, too, has been successful. They sorta goofed up by becoming nothing more than a partisan attack arm of the GOP, but business people are generally resilient and I'm sure over time they will adapt to the realities of Democratic majorities.
The CREDC helped create a growth-dependent economy, or more accurately, an economy based on building residential housing and strip malls that support the automobile culture. That may have seemed like a good idea in 1989 in the midst of a recession, but it doesn't seem so smart in the 21st Century with the Middle East roiled by conflict.
The fact that the city of Vancouver and the state of Washington seem to recognize the folly of the county's actions is significant, but it is not the whole ballgame. With two seats up on the county commission next year, there's no doubt development interests will be pouring their usual hundreds of thousands of dollars into the races. Add to the pro-development mix the Cowlitz Tribe and its casino proposal, and you've got the makings of some real election fun, if you can stand the sleaze.
While some might say public officials are somehow "on the take," a more sophisticated way to view the situation is that there is no political force that has the resources and professional staff to make the case as strongly for a more steady and practical rate of growth. It's not fundamentally a matter of corruption so much as it is a problem of political competition, or a lack thereof. The growth wars don't really follow a partisan map anyhow, which means the Democratic Party as an institution does not play much of an advocacy role for ordinary folks, as it might on national issues.
That being said, we should note that there are many dedicated volunteers who track growth issues and serve on committees and study groups, trying to talk some sense into public policy, and they deserve our thanks. But, in politics, as in many things, money talks.
Change is scary, and the development-dependent business community of Clark County is composed of humans, after all. The days of throwing up McMansions on cheap land are limited no matter how you look at it. It's doubtful that method of building could be sustained for another 20 years no matter how much land is put inside the UGB's; the transportation system just can't handle it. But one last land grab isn't going to achieve much of anything productive for the larger community.
The county has wasted enough money on this pointless, absurd attempt to discard the 2004 plan, and for what? So they can get sued?
County commissioners should cut their losses and accept that the 2004 plan, even if they feel it has some flaws, is relatively solid and will serve us well.
