Planning itself needs more planning
Published 6:00 pm Thursday, March 20, 2003
Whatever else one may think about the state’s
Growth Management Act, it is a full-employment-for-planners measure, mandating not only extensive planning for community change, but also frequent revisions of those plans.
Pursuant to those directives, the city’s Comprehensive Plan is being reviewed and updated in its entirety, a process that began over two years ago and is not yet finished. Controversial revisions to the city’s shoreline management program (of which you may have read a news account or two) have gone through the Planning Commission and been forwarded to the City Council, to be taken up in the near future. And later this week, the process of reviewing and updating the city’s critical areas ordinance gets under way.
Nor is the GMA the only source of planning directives. A Washington Supreme Court decision last year cast doubt on the validity of the open-space provisions in our city’s subdivision ordinance. In the course of re-examining that rule, the council decided to address related concerns about so-called flexible-lot provisions.
The city’s approach, both at the staff and council level, has been to take up these issues in sequence, finishing one before starting the other. While that may keep the task at a manageable size, some fear that overall coherence suffers. For instance, the council’s land-use committee is now considering whether to require bands of vegetation around the perimeter of subdivisions, and to require retention of at least some significant trees. But can those issues really be addressed without also taking into account requirements for buffers around critical areas such as wetlands and slopes, requirements that have not yet been developed?
What is needed here is a holistic vision of land use – which, presumably, should be our Comprehensive Plan – then a group of internally consistent ordinances that contribute to that vision. We, as a community, will have trouble accomplishing that objective through the present process of drafting an ordinance dealing with one aspect of land use, passing it, then moving on to the next piece. We need instead to debate and pass such codes all at once, so a specific problem like protecting wetlands is dealt with in a coherent and systematic manner, rather than being addressed in multiple ways in different code provisions at different times – likely by different people, as planners and council members change over time.
While that holistic approach requires a lot of effort, we do have time – our completed updates aren’t required until the end of 2004. And once completed, they should have a significant shelf life.
“One step at a time” may generally be good advice, but not here. Why not take our time and look at the whole picture?
