County, cities discussing how to handle growth

Growth is expensive.

So much so that County Commissioner Mark Richard said he is willing to consider charging developers “mitigation fees” for new roadwork – a position opposite his testimony as legislative director of the Spokane Homebuilders Association on impact fees in the county’s comprehensive plan a few years ago.

“The biggest change is the fact that I used to work for the homebuilders and Realtors, and today I work for the Spokane County citizens,” Richard said.

As Spokane County plans for 197,000 new residents in the next 20 years, city and county leaders are talking more about how to cover the cost of roads and other infrastructure.

“What we don’t want is to be in, is a situation where we are competing with the county for urban development,” said Spokane Valley Councilman Steve Taylor.

The routine criticism from Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake and Spokane is that much of the land added to urban growth areas to accommodate the county’s population estimate will occur in places that feed traffic into cities while sending tax dollars to the county treasury.

In choosing a 2026 population estimate of 639,000 people, Commissioner Todd Mielke said, the county is simply trying to avoid the expense of spending too much or too little on public improvements over the next two decades.

“The medium forecast is the number most likely to show up,” he said. “Let’s figure out what is going to happen and give us a little cushion.”

New urban growth areas to accommodate more people must be chosen before Dec. 1. Each city must submit an estimate of land available for development and its capacity to provide water, roads and other services. Where development occurs, commissioners said, will then be a function of finding the areas that can best handle it.

On developer fees to pay for growth, Mielke said state law might prohibit imposing an impact fee regionwide. He would be willing to look at fees for improvements related to specific projects, but he said a tax on all real estate transactions might be more fair.

In the past, talks between the county and cities on coordinating the urban planning for new growth areas have stalled regularly because county commissioners want some assurance developments won’t automatically be annexed into cities.

Taken separately, the issues surrounding joint planning, official population estimates and tension over annexations can seem like little more than bureaucratic haggling buried in the processes required by the state’s Growth Management Act.

Together, though, the population numbers and joint-planning agreements could shape growth in Spokane County, and the destination of residents’ tax dollars, for decades to come.

“We’ve been talking about talking about it for quite a long time,” said Taylor, who sits on a committee of elected officials across the county that advises the commissioners on growth management issues.

Spokane Valley has led the push for more joint planning on the edge of cities. The City Council points to the uncertain future of intersections along Sullivan Road that have taken on more traffic from 400 acres the county recently opened to development south of the city limits. If the traffic is coming from Spokane County, they say, so should some of the funds to upgrade roads.

Earlier this year, the Spokane Regional Transportation Council commissioned a regional study that will provide a basis to do just that. It will analyze for the first time the feasibility of a system to look at growth’s impact on roads on a regionwide basis.

Scheduled to be completed this fall, the study will give politicians a more scientific basis for any agreement to divide up the cost to improve busy roads that cross city boundaries.

Last week, a joint planning agreement that could put some of the study’s goals in place moved a bit closer to reality at a meeting of elected officials, Mielke said.

A draft agreement on the table would require that cities be notified when a big development goes in next door. It also would give city planners early access to meetings with the developer.

Mielke said there is also movement to make guidelines on roads, storm water and zoning more consistent countywide.

While annexations, with their impact on city and county coffers, seem likely to remain a sticking point in the foreseeable future, elected officials say they are moving closer to cooperating on growth and transportation planning that crosses the city limits.

“I think we are seeing quite a bit of progress on those talks,” Taylor said.