Residents study land planning
A room full of otherwise ordinary citizens took their first steps to becoming land planning and development experts Thursday night.
A standing-room-only crowd of more than 100 people filled a Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District meeting room and heard how the Growth Management Act works, Urban Growth Area boundaries are set and Spokane County zoning designations are followed. Their motivation was to stop a planned 1,650-home development south of the city’s current limits, a project citizens say is too much, too soon.
“We need to be the eyes and ears that keep an eye on this,” said Paul Shields, who lives on Liberty Lake. “We need to hold these guys’ feet to the fire.”
The city of Liberty Lake has been working for the past few months to add 2,350 acres of land to its Urban Growth Area, specified by law as being available for high-density housing and future annexation into a city.
Developer Marshall Chesrown has said he plans on building 1,600 homes and a golf course on acreage south of the current Legacy Ridge development in Liberty Lake.
The land is currently a rolling, open hillside with a few scattered 10-acre plats holding single homes.
That open hillside is what drew Steve Shirley into helping to form a group called CAUSE – Community Addressing Urban Sprawl Excess.
He spoke to the gathered community members Thursday night to explain the tedious and lengthy process by which the city can approve the Urban Growth Area.
The last time people became so passionate about this issue was when the city incorporated in 2001, and residents around the lake refused to join in, Shirley said.
“We’re really at ground zero,” said Shirley, who has been spending his time away from his chiropractic business studying land-use regulations. “We’re not anti-growth, we just want sensible growth.”
Bruce Andre, a lake resident who is helping with CAUSE, said the city is already having trouble taking care of its own residents.
“It’s clear they’ve totally outstripped the infrastructure,” he said. “We’re short on schools, tight on roads, we’re in trouble in many ways, and yet they want the development to continue.”
An assistant planning director with Spokane County said Liberty Lake may run into some obstacles with its request. Some of the land the city is requesting is zoned as rural conservation land, which the county discourages from being used as urban development.
“The county typically isn’t looking at that,” said Pam Knutsen, assistant building and planning director for Spokane County. “We would consider an applicant’s request and listen to the public hearing and encourage public participation.”
The county, which will make the final decision about the Urban Growth Area, should also be invited to all of Liberty Lake’s public hearings, something that hasn’t been happening, Knutsen said.
City planning director Doug Smith said the city has an obligation to plan for future growth, and the city should be proactive in trying to make sure it’s done right.
“If we know people are coming, we’ve got to ensure that we’ve got the necessary infrastructure and facilities to accommodate it,” he said. “Ignoring it is the worst thing you can do. Those that want to ignore the reality, they’re going to find that we’re not prepared.”
Smith said the increased public participation has been useful.
“It’s been very emotional on one side, very analytical on another side, and somewhere in the middle we have to meet.”