Small Town News

Growth Management Act helps define who pays land-use bill

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First in a two-part series.

Next week, Lachney's topics will include community plans, urban growth areas, and the Barney's Corner area.

For most people, the single biggest investment is their home and property. Yet, most homeowners can't tell you how their parcel is zoned, or what the permitted uses are, or the effects of the Growth Management Act (GMA)'. And frankly, as dry and boring as GMA is, it has a tremendous effect on the asset value of one's estate. Even greater, GMA has come to redefine the limits of municipal tax burden.

For years I have received calls from folks in the Eatonville area wanting to understand how a particular land-use regulation will affect their property. And, for years folks have asked me to write an article on how and why the system works the way it does, and for years I hesitated, not quite sure I could do the topic justice. The complexity and peculiarity make the subject squirrelly. Still, I finally decided to give it a go.

Generally speaking, land-use and zoning all changed in 1990, the year the GMA was passed by the Legislature. In a broad, perfunctory way, the act required counties, cities and towns to manage their growth with regard to consistency of use (zoning) and respect to the environment. Essentially, the state told counties/cities/towns, Write the rules, here are the guidelines. Love it or hate, growth management was here to stay.

It took a number of years for Pierce County to figure out how specific rules for GMA should be implemented. In late 1997, the county passed new sweeping land-use reform; from that moment on, the asset value (or potential asset value) of one's property changed dramatically.

Prior to GMA a property owner could cut off an acre, sell or build as they saw fit. Now, in the rural areas, land-use restrictions prevent subdividing to anything smaller than a 10-acre parcel (for clarity, I'll skip the exceptions). Further, zoning classifications restrict particular activities on these parcels.

"Unfair" could be heard from the landowners. Perhaps, but let's consider a slightly different viewpoint. That is, who really gets stuck with the development bill.

Prior to GMA, general zoning ran amuck. General zoning was more or less all property that didn't have the need for a specific-use permit to operate a regulated business. In practical terms, it was pretty much everything. Where modern zoning rules attempt to satisfy a "consistent use" tenet, general zoning practiced a psychedelic free love of uses. Commercial businesses were established next to homes, industrial sites next to neighborhoods and rural farms shoehorned everywhere.

This type of general use offered the property owner maximum flexibility to use their property. However, the consequences were disastrous. Lack of any type of cohesive planning promoted incongruent infrastructure. Inconsistent traffic patterns developed. Roads originally designed to carry farm products to market now had to support major truck traffic (Do you think anyone would have really planned to make Waller or Spanaway Loop a major connecting arterial?).

Even today, the consequences of run-amuck zoning show up as public debt. Long-term bonded debt obligation is taken out to rebuild infrastructure to support past developments. The development community might point to impact fees assessed on developers to reimburse government for infrastructure. But generally these fees are assessed at 30 to 40 cents per dollar of impact. And these fees only cover direct mitigation for specific impacts, not for large infrastructure improvements. One merely needs to look at Orting and ask why there's a two-lane country road supporting housing tract after housing tract to understand that development only pays for direct impacts - sidewalks, turn lanes, surface water retention, etc.

The end result is that the public, not the developer, pays for major infrastructure upgrades. Multiply numerous housing projects and strip malls throughout the county, and one figures out pretty quickly that the cost to keep up with public infrastructure to support sprawl is staggering. Today the county has tens of millions of dollars in debt obligations committed for decades; bonded obligation paying interest to someone for a very long time.

In a nutshell, GMA has one main purpose - to promote growth where buildup already exists, in the towns and cities. In doing so, it also minimizes the debt obligation (taxes) that have to be paid to otherwise support sprawl.

It is sometimes said, where people stand on the issue of GMA is directly proportional to their expected financial return. More importantly, GMA has helped to define who pays the bill.

Bruce Lachney lives in Eatonville and is a former Pierce County Planning Commission member.



Copyright 2010 The Dispatch, Eatonville, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2011 The Dispatch Eatonville, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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