Local leaders: 60,500 more residents will live here in 2031

JARED PABEN - THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

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Leaders from Whatcom County and each of its seven cities envision another 60,500 people living here two decades from now, and soon they'll plan where those people will live.

The Growth Management Coordinating Council, an advisory body, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, said the county's population would increase from today's 191,000 people to about 251,500 people by the year 2031. The population projection is an important first step in changing urban zoning countywide to allow enough housing and business development to accommodate new residents.

The next steps:

COMMENT ON GROWTH
Whatcom County plans to provide opportunities to comment on the county's future growth through several vision workshops:
-- 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, at Bloedel Donovan Park, 2214 Electric Ave. in Bellingham.
-- 9 to 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, at Bellingham Public Library, 210 Central Ave.
-- 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, at Lynden Community Center, 401 Grover St.
The county's Planning Commission will also hold a work session on the estimate of how many new residents Whatcom County will get by the year 2031 before making a recommendation to the County Council.
-- 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, in the Northwest Annex Conference Room, 5280 Northwest Drive. This will not be a public hearing.
To send written comments to the commission, send them to Becky Boxx at rboxx@co.whatcom.wa.us or 5280 Northwest Drive, Bellingham, WA 98226.

Determine how many people should live in each city and Birch Bay, Columbia Valley and rural areas. The county's current comprehensive plan, which plans out to 2022, says more than half of the county's new residents should live in Bellingham, 32 percent in the other cities and less than 17 percent in unincorporated areas, including Birch Bay and Columbia Valley.

In planning out to 2031, county leaders could stick with that or change those percentages.

The county and cities must measure how many homes and businesses could still be built in specific areas. This may include deducting some land under the assumption that landowners for whatever reasons will decide not to develop. The decision on whether or how much to deduct has proved controversial in past planning.

The county must change zoning to ensure there's enough room for new populations. This is a balancing act, said David Stalheim, Whatcom County's planning director. If the county tries to squeeze cities, new residents could decide to move into rural area, eating up valuable open space and farmland with housing, he said. It could also drive up home prices in cities. On the other hand, the county doesn't want to expand cities' boundaries too much, because that could lead to leap-frog development and sprawl.

Whatcom County must do all the work by June 30, 2009. The county did a review last year, but it was challenged in front of a state growth board, which decided the work wasn't good enough under state law and approved the new deadline to do the work properly.

Planners who advise the coordinating council had recommended a higher population projection of 257,000 people in 2031, a number first proposed by consultants Berk and Associates. The Seattle consultants came up with the number by extending a previous projection that has turned out to be pretty accurate, according to a memo from Berk and Associates to the coordinating council.

But the County Council could choose anywhere between a low estimate of 218,981 people to a high estimate of 329,759, according to the memo.

Anti-sprawl group Futurewise wanted the coordinating council to hold off until the public weighs in on the population estimate, saying most people in the county would favor a lower growth number.

"We believe that we can better adapt to a resource-constrained future if the county is growing more slowly," wrote group steering committee member Eric Hirst and chapter director Cathy Lehman. "By resource constrained, we mean a future with limits on greenhouse gas emissions, much higher prices for gasoline, and scarce supplies of clean water, and a future recovery from the current crises in national financial and housing markets."

On the other side, growth researchers Jack Petree and his son, Clayton, say the county is undercounting future housing demand. In a Sept. 15 letter to planners, Clayton wrote that Generation Y will soon hit the housing market, boosting housing demand beyond historic levels. The county is also overestimating the number of people who will live in each home, he wrote.