Opinion - Top opinion

POSTED: Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

Growth areas debate must focus on preserving county

The Whatcom County Council plans to meet from 9 a.m. to noon and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3, to begin hammering out plans for future urban growth areas around all of the county's seven cities.

A lot is at stake. Some communities are upset with the proposals put forward by County Executive Pete Kremen and the county planning commission, which would limit the size of growth of their cities in the future. They say those plans handcuff their ability to provide places to work, shop and live.

For many years, this board has recommended the smallest urban growth areas possible in all of our communities, including Bellingham. Why? Because time and time again for the past 25 years, citizens of our county have overwhelmingly said protecting rural areas and limiting sprawl is their single most-important goal. In our county, guaranteeing we aren't over-run with sprawl similar to Snohomish County or Southern California is a concern that tops even crime and health in the minds of citizens.

Our leaders have failed in attempts to limit sprawl - witness the newest Bellingham neighborhood about to sprout up on and around King Mountain, a once fine rural area home to horses and fields and rural living.

"But," opponents of our stance would say, "King Mountain was in a previously identified urban growth area." Exactly. Taking a rural area and making it an urban growth area and then eventually annexing it into a city is the definition of sprawl. The cities get larger, the pressures to convert land spreads farther, and one mile of urban growth follows another.

We also believe that more people will continue to move to our great county. Only realistic plans that restrict growth outside cities will be able to effectively deal with that increasing population without ruining what residents hold dear.

A few weeks back, our board met with Kremen to talk about the urban growth proposal he put forward that will be at the heart of the County Council's deliberations. He told us that he believes there is a middle ground between too much sprawl and unrealistic restrictions, and he tried to formulate a plan to find that common ground.

Kremen, for example, has proposed an urban growth area for Lynden that is smaller than the city wants, but larger than what is preferred by the activists trying to preserve agriculture in our county. But he says the area proposed by the city of Blaine is four to five times what that city really needs.

The question now is can our County Council find that realistic middle ground when they are going to face tough criticism from all sides to do so. We will start finding out this week.