Growth Plan Sent To Commissioners County To Hold Public Hearing On Interim Growth Boundaries

A committee has cleared the way for Spokane County commissioners to make a monumental land-use decision before the end of the year.

After three years of work, the county’s Growth Management Act steering committee voted Wednesday to send recommendations for “interim urban growth areas” to commissioners.

The 12-member committee includes commissioners, and representatives from the Spokane City Council and the county’s small towns.

The boundaries, which may be changed when commissioners hold a public hearing Dec. 27, determine where urban development is encouraged and where it is forbidden.

Any delay in the committee’s decision would have meant commissioners couldn’t hold their own public hearing until next year. Commissioners had to wait until they received the recommendation before advertising the upcoming hearing, and couldn’t buy an ad any later than Wednesday without violating the state’s minimum requirements for providing advance notice of meetings.

The timing of the commissioners’ decision is key. If it’s made this year, Commissioner Steve Hasson will have a vote. Commissioner-elect Kate McCaslin takes Hasson’s place in January.

Developers and environmentalists assume Hasson will more closely follow the committee’s recommendations, putting huge areas of the Valley and North Side off-limits to development.

Commissioners said they are in an awkward position, being members of a committee making recommendations to themselves. In fact, Commissioner Phil Harris refused to vote.

“If I say, ‘Yes, I agree to this’ and at our (Dec. 27) meeting say, ‘No, I don’t,’ I’ll get the heck beat out of me,” Harris said.

Harris, an outspoken critic of the Growth Management Act, added that he “won’t be bound by any recommendation.”

The committee recommended small growth areas around each town, and north and south of the Spokane city limits. In the Valley, small lots would be allowed wherever sewers are planned in the next 15 years.

But some land already subdivided was left out of the designated urban areas, typically because neither the county nor the city can afford to provide the areas with urban services. They include Five Mile Prairie, Moran Prairie and the Valley’s Ponderosa neighborhood.

Like most of the county’s growth management meeting, Wednesday’s was attended by only a few worried land owners.

“You are toying with some very, very large investments,” said Walter Knopp, whose 31 acres along the Newport Highway was left out of the urban growth area.

For 30 years, Knopp said he’s paid high property taxes because his land is zoned for commercial development. Now, unless the urban growth boundaries change, the zoning means nothing.

Once adopted by commissioners, the interim boundaries will rule land-use decisions for about a year, while county officials write new land-use regulations. Then, commissioners will adopt permanent urban growth areas.

During that year, new lots can be no smaller than 10 acres outside the urban growth areas. Thousands of existing undeveloped lots are exempt from the regulations.

In most counties, interim boundaries change little before being made permanent.

State law stipulates that the urban growth areas be no larger than necessary to handle the newcomers who are expected to arrive in Spokane County during the next 20 years.

The boundaries can be reviewed and modified periodically. Like the original boundaries, any changes can be appealed to a state panel established to settle disputes arising from the Growth Management Act.

, DataTimes