HeraldNet: Sax leads the way as County OKs more rural development
HeraldNet: County OKs more rural development:
It's not clear from this article how this fits in with the urban growth plan. Even granting that they needed to do this to meet some deadlines to get State aid, it doesn't make sense to do it willy-nilly per the individual requests.
From my perspective, what we need to do is adopt a long term plan and then follow it. Once the plan is in place and operational, the council should never be involved except as part of the appeals process when there are questions about whether the plan has been followed.
It would be interesting to investigate whether the money from developers that is supporting Sax's campaign had any effect on his votes in this matter. Who are the developers who were requesting these zoning changes, and did they donate to one of the PACs that has paid for all those mailings? Or have another relationship? The corporate veil seems rather thin in the case of developers around here.
More to follow . . .
[Update #1: I misread this. It's worse than I thought. It appears that what they actually accomplished by this slash and burn amending of the plan is to jeopardize meeting the stat's deadlines since they will have to go back and redo all the staff work on the original plan.]
"County OKs more rural development
By Jeff Switzer
Herald Writer
Urban development should be allowed on more than a thousand acres of rural property, the Snohomish County Council decided on Wednesday.
By adding the properties and changing proposed maps, the county runs the risk of missing a key deadline in adopting the state-mandated plans for population and job increases.
Consequently, the county could face state sanctions and miss out on the county's share of some state tax revenue.
More than 40 individual votes were taken in just one hour to approve special requests to boost development on up to 1,500 acres of properties.
Even Gold Bar should get a few hundred more acres for housing, the council decided in a 3-2 vote, supported by Councilmen Jeff Sax, Gary Nelson and Kirke Sievers."
It's not clear from this article how this fits in with the urban growth plan. Even granting that they needed to do this to meet some deadlines to get State aid, it doesn't make sense to do it willy-nilly per the individual requests.
From my perspective, what we need to do is adopt a long term plan and then follow it. Once the plan is in place and operational, the council should never be involved except as part of the appeals process when there are questions about whether the plan has been followed.
It would be interesting to investigate whether the money from developers that is supporting Sax's campaign had any effect on his votes in this matter. Who are the developers who were requesting these zoning changes, and did they donate to one of the PACs that has paid for all those mailings? Or have another relationship? The corporate veil seems rather thin in the case of developers around here.
More to follow . . .
[Update #1: I misread this. It's worse than I thought. It appears that what they actually accomplished by this slash and burn amending of the plan is to jeopardize meeting the stat's deadlines since they will have to go back and redo all the staff work on the original plan.]
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