Planning Sense, Discipline Needed

Anyone expecting holiday houseguests knows the value of preparation. Who will pick up whom at the airport? Who will sleep where? Is there room for all at the table? Enough food?

Imagine, then, the task facing Spokane city and county planners: Get ready for 130,000 new residents who will arrive by 2016.

That chore, required by the state Growth Management Act, has proved contentious and litigious. This week, the local governments will be in court over a complex suit that may have little practical impact in return for what it’s costing taxpayers to pursue it. At issue is how soon the city and county must produce the calculations they used to draw the “interim urban growth area” where an estimated 72,000 of the newcomers will need streets, sewers, water lines, electricity, natural gas and garbage service.

The boundaries will affect the development potential - and therefore the value - of land. They also will determine how well the community is able to halt leapfrogging developments and the inefficient demands such sprawl places on urban services.

So, when Spokane County tentatively identified about 10 square miles of urban growth area outside but adjacent to the city of Spokane, a number of property owners whose land was not included filed a challenge. Late last year the growth management hearings board for Eastern Washington ruled that the local governments had not shown clearly enough how they decided the proposed area would handle 20 years of anticipated growth.

Go back and include your calculations, the board told the planners. But the board gave them two options: Either recompute and show us your math now or provide the math when you submit your final urban growth boundaries.

When the county chose the second option, the landowners appealed to Superior Court. The board subsequently withdrew the second option; then the county appealed.

But as lawyers filed writs, the planning work moved forward. The final urban growth area should be decided by spring, meaning the time it would take to comply with the first option won’t be much shorter than the time to comply with the second. When the county’s attorneys go to court this week they are expected to make that point by presenting comparative time lines.

Meanwhile, the city is heading into an intense period of reports and hearings on its comprehensive plan.

Depending on the growth strategy adopted in that plan, the amount of urban growth area needed could actually shrink.

That wouldn’t please developers and land owners, who long for an expansion, but it would be good news to those who value compact as opposed to sprawling land-use development which, after all, was the main purpose behind the Growth Management Act.

In other words, Spokane County’s approach is under attack for embracing the law’s intent too earnestly.

That makes this community an anomaly in Eastern Washington, where other counties have tended to favor generous growth areas that tolerate sprawl and make development interests grin in anticipation.

Spokane County’s population growth will not end in 2016. How efficiently and economically we provide for it will depend on whether planning sense and discipline prevail now.