By Ron Barca
My concerns are these:
The pace of this comp. plan alteration is not conducive to professional planning review and timelines necessary to do good research and planning.
The volume of demand will outstrip all logical planning practices. Planning discipline should dictate that a metered approach is used in letting out more inventory into a heated market.
We can not supply the safety valve for residential housing in the Metro market. I know that certain individuals do not wish to speak of the whole market because some of that market resides out of the State of Washington.
However, we compete for jobs in that market and residences are created to supply the regional job market. If we truly want people to live and work on this side of the Columbia, we must get our job growth front loaded in the equation.
Otherwise we are just creating housing for the Oregon job market while being satisfied with retail clerk job growth to serve the suburbs. Housing inventory will turn over in a very short period of time.
The public couldn't afford the last plan without the hidden taxes of school bonds, library bonds, sewer capacity constraints causing rate hikes, storm water fees, etc.
The city of Vancouver is raising taxes on many fronts to pay for the growth it has already experienced. The city of Ridgefield has just raised taxes. The city of Battle Ground has the highest sewer and water rates in the county already.
These are the places that we are planning on concentrating the growth???
The public has passed bonds to get relief out of the last round of comp. plan induced growth. Is the public receptive to paying more for the same level of service; or, in some cases, to pay more for a reduced level of service?
By raising the growth rate again, school district plans will be inadequate and public safety will be constrained in the number of available police officers and in the amount of response time emergency responders will take. Can we really plan to include a level of service for parks and reserve that capacity in our vacant and buildable land inventory if we do not budget for the procurement and operation of these same parks?
This is not a fiscally conservative plan. This is not a plan that the average citizen in the county would embrace.
If you do not work within the building industry, how could front loading all of this additional residential land, available for construction, be represented as being in the best interests of the current citizens of Clark County?
The citizens are being asked to shoulder a greater burden without any tangible benefit. Why- because we can? Show me the data that says collective Clark County will be better off for the increase in growth.
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