Notes:
Notes:
"Fully Contained Communities--Our rural areas are at great risk today from urban growth area expansions, ill-planned growth, rural cluster subdivisions, and Fully Contained Communities (FCCs). Three Snohomish County Council members tried to take a stand recently for better managed growth. They were shot down. An FCC, a new city of 15,000 people, is on the drawing board for the Seven Lakes area just west of Marysville. A second of these monstrosities may be closer to reality on the west bank of Lake Roesiger. The threat is real. It is an emergency. In a grand attempt to deal with FCC policy and codes that were adopted under a pro-development council several years ago, County Council Chair Dave Somers recently introduced an emergency ordinance to adopt a moratorium on FCC applications. Unfortunately, my council member, John Koster, was the lone vote against the moratorium, causing it to fail. I suppose KosterÃÂs vote should be of no surprise since he has been a proponent of FCCs all along. His defense is that there is no emergency because the council can deny the permit application at any time, that he knew nothing about the emergency ordinance until the day before the vote, and that his fellow council members were just politically grandstanding, falls on deaf ears. I had asked Koster weeks before to support the measure and appears to be grandstanding himself while leaving his rural constituency at risk. More importantly, the FCC codes are confusing as to when an FCC would vest, confusing not only to the public, but even to Koster and the countyÃÂs own planning director, as they each have a different interpretation. Time is of the essence, both for us as a community, and for the forces that want to level the trees that shade our homes and put up a brand new, self-glorifying city. The County planning department is already having pre-application meetings with the developers of Falcon Ridge, the FCC proposed for Lake Roesiger and vesting is possible in four months. ItÃÂs a confusing topic, to be sure. So IÃÂve done my research and poked into the details. So letÃÂs just deal with the facts. Fact One. The County Council during the 10-year comprehensive plan update tacked on extra 15,000 people to the planning to allow for a FCC. They did this after they had already set their target population goal from within a range of choices. In other words, those 15,000 people run with the FCC. If we donÃÂt build an FCC, we donÃÂt plan for those people. When the first 300,000 more people move here, then can talk about creating an arbitrary number to justify an FCC. Fact Two. The code is broad and confusing and obviously open to interpretation as to when vesting of the application occurs. First I was told it vests early in the process before the Hearing Examiner recommendation and county council vote. Then I was told it vests later in the process after the county council approves it. Further, if the developer meets the code, and the Hearing Examiner recommends approval, the council would run the risk of a Superior Court appeal and would lose that appeal if they donÃÂt approve the FCC. As anyone knows who has dealt with a development application at the Hearing Examiner level, this is not the time to try to prevent a development from happening. Fact Three. While there was public participation in a stakeholder committee to develop the policies for an FCC, they were not asked to help develop the codes. In fact, the FCC process described by Koster as ÃÂexhaustiveÃÂ and inclusive of the public, stopped at the door. ThatÃÂs where the developers walked in. The attorney for the proponent for the Lake Roesiger FCC actually wrote up code for consideration, which was then adopted by the previous developer-friendly majority council of Gary Nelson, Jeff Sax and John Koster, and the current FCC code looks frighteningly similar to that written by the developer attorney. Forgive me if I donÃÂt bother to feign surprise. But make no mistake, while the public has to sit and wait to see what the County Council will do about this emergency, the proponents of two possible FCCs will be working hard to get their applications ready for vesting. Once again the developers have all the advantage. So itÃÂs time to blast the sirens. An emergency exists and will continue to exist until all the council members to the right thing and protect the rural areas of Snohomish County."