Published: Wednesday, June 6, 2012, 12:01 a.m.
South County
It's the cities causing sprawl
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Regarding the Sunday Viewpoints commentary, "Unincorporated south county needs a better plan.": I couldn't disagree more with Messrs. Hough and Grieve. As a private sector civil engineer who lives in and was born and raised in unincorporated Southwest Snohomish County, it appears to me these gentlemen should have picked a house to buy in Lynnwood or Edmonds. Unlike them, my wife and I made a conscious decision to buy our homes in the county because of consistent rules which allow more freedom. We can still have a fire pit in our backyard and nobody can say we can't have chickens (unless it's become fashionable to some County Council members).
Now that they live in southwest Snohomish County they argue the best course to take would be to layer individual cities' desires and additional bureaucracy over the county planning code. As if Lynnwood is an example of the kind of planning we should have in south county.
Lynnwood thinks 8,400-square-feet is as small as a lot should be in single family residential (SFR) zones and they don't allow mixed use! How backward is that? This is the Urban Growth Area and you have houses in Lynnwood on arterials where they are forced to remain low-value single family homes rather than become duplexes or multifamily.
Snohomish County planning sees that a buffer of higher density homes should be along arterials with a transition to larger lot SFRs beyond, and they have allowed, and in some zoning overlays incentivized, the very logical mixed use where people may commute to the lower level rather than drive to their job. Bothell is so backward they don't even allow duplexes in SFR zones like the most common in southwest county (which is four to six dwellings per acre). So you could own a place that's not quite a dump, but isn't a nice place and it sits on a 13,000-square-foot lot, but you couldn't put a duplex there and they wouldn't let you split it into two lots! These two cities cause urban sprawl.
Everett is a well run city and guess what, they aren't pushing for big annexation areas. Brier and Woodway are too busy with internal politics; Mountlake Terrace has an insignificant role in the UGA; Mill Creek wants to be Redmond west and don't even get me started on Edmonds. As far as I'm concerned you can go have your Edmonds Kind of Day and just leave the small city planners out of the southwest county's future.
Ron Riach, P.E.
Lynnwood
Now that they live in southwest Snohomish County they argue the best course to take would be to layer individual cities' desires and additional bureaucracy over the county planning code. As if Lynnwood is an example of the kind of planning we should have in south county.
Lynnwood thinks 8,400-square-feet is as small as a lot should be in single family residential (SFR) zones and they don't allow mixed use! How backward is that? This is the Urban Growth Area and you have houses in Lynnwood on arterials where they are forced to remain low-value single family homes rather than become duplexes or multifamily.
Snohomish County planning sees that a buffer of higher density homes should be along arterials with a transition to larger lot SFRs beyond, and they have allowed, and in some zoning overlays incentivized, the very logical mixed use where people may commute to the lower level rather than drive to their job. Bothell is so backward they don't even allow duplexes in SFR zones like the most common in southwest county (which is four to six dwellings per acre). So you could own a place that's not quite a dump, but isn't a nice place and it sits on a 13,000-square-foot lot, but you couldn't put a duplex there and they wouldn't let you split it into two lots! These two cities cause urban sprawl.
Everett is a well run city and guess what, they aren't pushing for big annexation areas. Brier and Woodway are too busy with internal politics; Mountlake Terrace has an insignificant role in the UGA; Mill Creek wants to be Redmond west and don't even get me started on Edmonds. As far as I'm concerned you can go have your Edmonds Kind of Day and just leave the small city planners out of the southwest county's future.
Ron Riach, P.E.
Lynnwood
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