In January of this year I accepted an appointment by Commissioner Granlund to serve on Kitsap County's Planning Commission. My comments this month will be those of a rookie planning commissioner. Also, the opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and are in no way attributable to the Planning Commission or any other member thereof.
Public interest in GMA continues. We seem to be getting as much ink locally as O. J. once did. I believe that is a good thing. GMA will do a lot more for us (or to us) than O. J. possibly could.
In a Sun editorial dated June 1, 1996, Mike Phillip's editorial headline tells us that "County unity must be key element in growth plan". In the body of his commentary, Mike states that "All previous plans were presented by a divided community - a community that was split by go-for-broke activist on both sides of the land use issue. Even now, some environmental activists have been hurling cheap shots at the county's request for a delay, and some Growth Management Act-haters have been preaching repeal rather than compromise."
"There is no pure right or wrong on either side. In fact, both sides are making important points. And neither side can win without the other - without finding common ground."
From my point of view, Mike is right on target. There are a lot of very bright people in this county - some on all sides of this issue. If we can find common ground, and it does exist, we can use GMA as a tool. If we don't (or won't), it will rip us apart.
The real work in this matter is yet to come. As I stated in a previous column, GMA is really about "concurrency". Simply put, concurrency means that we put infrastructure (roads, sewers, schools, etc.) in place at (or before) the time we build houses. While that may appear to be just plain old common sense, it seems to have eluded us in recent times. This is no doubt due to a combination of increased demand for housing, high cost of infrastructure (at least $20,000 per single family residence), an unwillingness of the builder / developer community to shoulder the entire cost of new infrastructure, and an unwillingness of citizens to tolerate ever increasing property taxes. In a period of slow growth it is relatively easy to squeeze in a few more houses without major new improvements. When growth accelerates, as it has in Kitsap in recent years, major new improvements become critical.
Once we get the non-compliance crisis behind us we must get on with the business of genuinely dealing with concurrency. This is slippery ground. We can easily go too far in either direction.
If we build houses without adequate supporting capital facilities, we will degrade our services. We will have overcrowded classrooms, overflowing garbage dumps, clogged and overflowing sewers, etc. and etc. Not a pretty sight.
On the other hand, if we attempt to arbitrarily and rapidly impose concurrency, we will in fact cause a shutdown of a major segment of economic activity in this county - the building industry. That is not a pretty sight either.
This is reality. It would still exist if GMA went away. Properly managed, I believe GMA can be a useful tool.
Let the debate continue. But
while
we are debating, let us all remember that we are all "downstream" from
each other.