New ordinance would challenge zoning code | Letters, Jan. 16
Published 5:42 pm Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Bainbridge Island Planning Commission is about to complete work on two affordable-housing ordinances.
The first is inclusionary housing. It’s complex, mandatory, and will undoubtedly be court-challenged (think lawyer fees). But as it now stands, developers will be required to build more housing than existing zoning code permits. It applies island-wide for developments of five houses or more. Developers will pay a fee of $10 per square foot for the “living space” of market-rate houses they build in addition to existing zoning density allowances.
This money will go into an affordable-housing fund. For each 10 developer bonus density houses spread over the island, the fund will garner enough money to build one affordable house or apartment. The key point: 10 market-rate bonus houses, one affordable house or apartment.
The developer will have the option of building one affordable house for each bonus-density house, but the chance of that happening is extremely remote since far more money can be made by paying the ridiculously low fee-in-lieu.
The inclusionary zoning ordinance is in near perfect conflict with our existing and legally adopted comprehensive plan, but that comprehensive vision is being ignored by well-organized affordable-housing advocates… the same group that talked the city into hurriedly spending $4 million to buy a portion of the Quay. Very luckily for Bainbridge Island taxpayers, that effort died.
The second ordinance is for innovative housing projects. This one might actually be worth considering. It’s a “show us what you can do” experiment. It’s been written to maximize housing density on three Ferncliff tax parcels and the Suzuki property, which the city wants to substantially densify to get maximum financial return for constructing a new police and court facility.
On the Ferncliff property, 48 housing units are planned on 6.02 acres that are currently zoned for 3.5 units per acre, or 21 houses. That’s 27 houses above existing zoning, so the taxpayers and neighborhood will have to decide if that’s an acceptable density after the innovative plans for the property are made public.
The city also has said it will soon make public the number of affordable-housing units existing on Bainbridge. That will be a refreshing stroke of municipal openness to island taxpayers so they can have a better basis of evaluating some of the affordable-housing advocates’ claims and need for these ordinances.
Robert Dashiell
Tolo Road
