snohomish county tomorrow

Interesting meeting tonight. I missed the very beginning, but heard about the Sound Transit potential proposal for the November ballot from Greg Walker, their Chief Planning Officer. Take aways were that Mukilteo needs to send a letter to our ST board members by July 10th if we want to have any input at all. Plus, that this new iteration is smaller (either 0.4 or 0.5 %) and it won't get us to Lynnwood on light rail, just Northgate.Which is just no good. What we do get is a bunch of bus service, which is fine until the buses get stuck in traffic. One really great thing is that there is still money for the improvements to the Mukilteo station. I drove by today and noted that there were 47 parking spots in use, with about 15 not being used. I think that's pretty good ridership (assuming there are even more riders who walked over from the ferry!).

There is one potential scenario that gets light rail to Lynnwood, but it uses our Snohomish county money to get from Northgate to the county line (inside King County), and would do it by 2023.

We also talked about growth in the county. I learned some more about fully contained communities-- terrible planning idea. Well, a decent concept if you could actually contain and build both the residences and the jobs. Instead, you just get dense housing way out on rural roads without the infrastructure to support them. Which then puts more pressure to expand UGAs, to grow in rural areas... County Councilmember Dave Somers is doing much (with Councilmembers Sullivan and Cooper's support) to work through the process so that they are not possible anymore. Though they don't affect Mukilteo directly, this is a good thing. Anything that exacerbates our traffic situation, as these would, is a bad idea.

County Councilmember Brian Sullivan talked a bit about a few things the council is working on. Good ideas on changing their docket process: Snohomish County does it every single year, charges no fee and spends 20 county planning staff members on it. King County does it every four years, so you do two dockets before the 10 year comprehensive plan update, and they charge a fee. That helps make proposals be more well thought out and more likely to actually make sense.
He also talked about the Manufactured Home Community Preservation Subcommittee. That's the one that Diane Navicky sits on. The outcomes of that process that he mentioned included incentives for local options, a process to be permanently zoned as a manufactured home park. I'll be interested to see what happens. It seems that there are definitely some legal constraints to deal with, but I love the concept. Carriage Club Estates, in our proposed annexation area, is a perfect example of a lovely community providing affordable housing, a sense of community and place, and a great housing choice for residents.

He also mentioned the Justice Center proposal-- $165 million for much needed improvements to the Sheriff's office, prosecutors offices, district court, other courts... Sounds like they really need it but the idea of putting that much money on the ballot seems--- well, I wouldn't do it. I hope the county comes up with a way to save and pay for that, and only asks for a portion from taxpayers.

We discussed a few other things, but those are some highlights.