It’S A City-County Disconnect Proposal To Keep Vehicles Moving Drives Planners, Engineers Miles Apart

A roads plan designed to connect Spokane County residents is driving city and county officials apart. The rift stems from a county proposal to build or improve a series of roads around the metropolitan area to ease traffic congestion. City officials fear it will inspire costly urban sprawl.

The “urban connector” system would widen existing roads and build new ones, linking heavily populated areas such as the Valley to the South Hill, and the West Plains to north Spokane County.

Frustrated by what they consider an effort to dodge growth-management planning, City Planning Director Charlie Dotson and Transportation Director Bruce Steele last month sent a letter to county officials saying they were removing the city’s two representatives from the road proposal’s advisory committee.

“We had absolutely no effect on the course of the study,” Dotson said. “We had to get out.”

Ross Kelley, the assistant county engineer overseeing the proposal, said he’s disappointed the city took its opinions and went home.

“Just because they don’t agree with what’s going on doesn’t mean they shouldn’t stay,” Kelley said. “They provided valuable input.”

The city-county break has a lot to do with the two governments’ approaches to the planning process mandated by the state Growth Management Act. It requires local governments to draft a 20-year comprehensive plan stating where growth can and can’t occur. Both the city and county are deep into drafting their own plans and hope to adopt them in late spring or summer.

Under the GMA, land-use plans are supposed to give birth to transportation plans, not vice versa, Dotson said. For example, if residents want growth contained where urban services already exist, they wouldn’t want to build new, high-speed roads in rural areas, he said.

The urban connector proposal is being studied in a vacuum, without concern for land-use planning and outside the public participation process required by growth management, he said.

“It’s a classic case of if they build it, they will come,” Dotson said, explaining the proposed road system is bound to attract urban growth to the county’s undeveloped areas. He added that fringe development promotes sprawl, causing a death spiral for cities. It kills downtowns, he said, destroying their revenue base and raising the cost of services for the people still living in the urban core.

Kelley countered that city officials are sounding the doom alarm way before there’s any cause for concern. The roads proposal is only in the study phase. If roads were built, development couldn’t follow unless county officials agreed to change the comprehensive plan, he said. The proposed routes lie largely outside the draft urban growth boundaries dictating where development can take place.

City officials are “making a big assumption that just because of this you get that,” Kelley said, adding that it will be difficult to change the plans once they’re adopted.

Dotson doesn’t agree.

“When elected officials are confronted by a developer who wants to do a large project, … they’re going to expand the growth boundary,” he said. “Anybody who honestly believes the comprehensive plan prohibits sprawl from occurring really isn’t being realistic.”

As to city charges that the county shut out the public, Kelley said the county recently embarked on a widespread effort to gauge public sentiment about the roads proposal. Opportunities for comment include breakfast meetings, evening workshops and a Web site.

Soliciting public comment earlier would have been premature, he said. “You can’t just hand people a blank piece of paper. You have to give them something to react to. … I don’t believe the city understands this process that we’re going through.”

The decision to study the road system came about earlier this year, after county officials and residents involved in growth management planning repeatedly suggested connector routes.

The state Legislature gave the county $250,000 to study the proposal. Since then, county engineers have been playing with maps to find the best connector routes. Now, those are being reviewed by a consultant.

A technical advisory committee that included citizen representatives has been overseeing the study, Kelley said. That’s the same committee that just lost two city employees.

Kelley considers the $182 million connector system a key to easing congestion throughout the county. While it doesn’t negate the need for the north-south freeway, building the high-speed road system could take several years. Unlike the freeway, where there’s a need to buy homes and costly property, much of the land in the connector corridor is undeveloped or includes roads like Bigelow Gulch that could be widened and straightened.

The study must be completed by January, when Kelley has to take a report back to the Legislature. At that time, the study could be incorporated into growth management planning, he said.

“We do need to do a better job of trying to connect (the study) to the growth management process,” said Paul Jensen, a planner overseeing the county’s GMA transportation plan. He said public input must be gathered before the connector project can receive any state or federal money.

So far, the proposal is getting varied reactions from residents.

Margaret Watson worked on the city’s citizen planning process for growth management. She also served on the advisory board overseeing the connector study. She loves the proposed road system.

“It’s about time we do something like that,” she said.

Ed Sharman, who lives along Bigelow Gulch, worries that improving the road near his home might bring about the development he’s been fighting since he moved there in 1963. He also thinks straightening the road’s tight curves will encourage drivers to go faster, increasing the number of crashes on the already accident-prone street.

“It’s going to make it even more dangerous,” Sharman said.

Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. IN A NUTSHELL City planning officials say the urban connector system of high-speed roads in rural areas will result in suburban sprawl along the routes, violating state growth management directives. County engineers argue that development can’t follow the connectors unless the county comprehensive plan is changed.

2. GETTING CONNECTED The county has scheduled a number of open houses and other ways to comment on the urban connector proposal: Breakfast forums to discuss the urban connector proposal are planned Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 a.m. in the Public Works Building. Three evening open houses are planned, all starting at 6 p.m. The first will be Tuesday in the west cafeteria of Mead High School, 302 W. Hastings Road; the second on Wednesday in the cafeteria of Ferris High School, 3020 E. 37th Ave.; and the third on Thursday in the cafeteria of University High School, 10212 E. 9th Ave. Residents also can log onto the county’s Web site to view the proposed maps and comment on the plan at www.spokanecounty.org. Throughout December, a video about the proposal will be played on Citycable 5 every Friday at 6 p.m., Saturday at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and Sunday at 7:30 p.m.