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Making Your Voice Heard: A Guide to Navigating the State's Growth Management Planning Act |
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Written On: November/December 2004 |
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Written By: by Kris Tefft and Kristen Sawin |
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Kris Tefft is AWB’s General Counsel and Kristen Sawin is AWB’s Political Director and Governmental Affairs Director for Environmental Policy.
Did you know that as an owner of commercial or industrial property, you have just as much right to participate in local land use planning as citizen activists and environmental groups? In fact, it is vitally important that you exercise those rights when laws and regulations affecting how you use and develop your property are proposed — because the activists trained to mold these policy decisions are not speaking for you.
A good example of the need to closely monitor local land use planning comes in a court case that AWB became involved in last month. Longtime AWB member Chevron USA, now known as ChevronTexaco, owns a 97-acre parcel of industrial property at Point Wells, which is used as an asphalt plant and is located just north of Seattle in unincorporated King County. The adjacent town of Woodway amended its Growth Management Act comprehensive plan to list Point Wells as a future annexation area and sought to establish interim land use control. But Woodway never told Chevron about their plans, and Chevron wasn’t able to participate in the planning process. Chevron has had to take their case all the way to the Washington Supreme Court to try to enforce their right to participate in land use decisions affecting their property.
To be sure, most counties and cities are better at involving the public in their land use planning under the GMA, and businesses rarely have to resort to litigation in order to make their voices heard on decisions affecting their property. The problem is that business owners don’t always know how to navigate the process that comes with the right to participate on critical land use issues. Here’s a guide both to what’s at stake in the coming years in land use decision making, and how to get involved at the local level.
What’s at Stake
According to a schedule set by the Legislature, the largest counties, and the cities within them, are supposed to complete an update process for their GMA comprehensive plans by the end of the year. Comprehensive plans are the jurisdiction’s general policy statements that guide future land use regulations. Additional counties across the state have to update their comprehensive plans according to the legislative schedule in 2005, 2006, 2007, depending upon the county, and then again every seven years after that.
Planning jurisdictions are required to create a public participation program to ensure “early and continuous” participation of stakeholders in planning decisions.
Beyond comprehensive plans, counties and cities are also updating their development regulations governing development near environmentally sensitive areas, like wetlands. These laws, called Critical Area Ordinances (“CAOs”) are to be reviewed and updated according to the same review schedule described above. A 1995 amendment to the GMA requires counties and cities to use “best available science” in designating and protecting critical areas, and there is widespread disagreement about what constitutes “best available science.”
For example, one of the most controversial CAO updates in the state occurred late last month in King County, where county scientists recommended buffers up to 300 feet around wetlands and streams and a requirement that land outside urban growth areas be as much as 65 percent undisturbed in any development action. In other words, if you own rural land and seek to clear or develop it, you could only build on 35 percent of the property.
Another set of updates soon to begin involve cities’ Shoreline Master Programs under the Shoreline Management Act (SMA) and the new SMA guidelines that AWB and the business community negotiated in 2002 after an AWB-led lawsuit struck down previous onerous guidelines. The first round of Shoreline Master Program updates is to be done by the end of 2005.
How to Get Involved
Given what’s at stake, it’s now more important than ever to get involved. Here’s how:
• Find out your city or county schedule for the comprehensive plan, critical area ordinance, and shoreline master program review and update, and put your name and contact information on any notice list so you can stay advised of meetings, hearings, and deadlines. And make sure to ask for a copy of the material under review.
• Talk to other business leaders in your area about common issues of concern, and develop the facts and arguments that support your positions.
• Attend any public meetings or hearings and testify. Realize that you are building a record before the county or city body that may be used later in a legal challenge. Marshall your best facts and arguments. At AWB, we are always willing to help members prepare for testimony and these kinds of public hearings.
• Consider how to wisely use the news and print media to raise awareness of your issues and concerns.
• Finally, get involved in these processes early and contact us at AWB for any member assistance you may need in navigating the maze.
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