Reardon vetoes Snohomish County Council, wants to keep 'mini-cities' as development option

Environmentalists Tuesday denounced Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon's veto of an ordinance that would have eliminated a type of planned community featuring dense clusters of homes and shops in the county's rural areas.

A coalition of seven environmental groups, including Futurewise, People for Puget Sound and the Washington Environmental Council, had urged Reardon to sign a bill approved by the County Council in August to remove from the county's Comprehensive Plan the type of development known as fully contained communities.

Kristin Kelly, program director for the group Futurewise, said Monday's veto calls into question Reardon's support for the environment.

"This is something the citizens have clearly said they don't want," said Kelly.

A Seattle developer has proposed building as many as 6,000 homes near Lake Roesiger, a sparsely populated area about 10 miles from Monroe and Snohomish. It would fall under the fully contained community zoning.

The developments, sometimes called "mini-cities," concentrate growth in a planned community. In exchange for the county permitting dense residential construction, the developer is required to set aside open spaces, to make at least 30 percent of the housing affordable and to include land for commercial development with the idea that residents will be able to work close to home and reduce commutes.

But the Puget Sound Regional Council last year recommended that counties avoid creating new fully contained communities "because of their potential to create sprawl and undermine state and regional growth-management goals."

Kelly said that the experience of fully contained communities in King and Pierce County has been that they don't attract major employers but rather force residents to commute long distances to existing jobs; they also create traffic jams, increase infrastructure costs to taxpayers and hurt water quality.

In vetoing the ordinance, Reardon said that fully contained communities were added to county development options in 2005 after "extensive review and public debate."

He said the county's code reflects the lessons learned in other counties and ensures that the developer is responsible for infrastructure costs.

"Properly regulated FCC's can offer a thoughtful alternative to the sprawling growth we have seen throughout Snohomish County," Reardon said.

The County Council voted 3-2 on Aug. 12 to eliminate fully contained communities from the Comprehensive Plan. Council members John Koster and Dave Gossett voted against the measure. Four votes are necessary to overturn a veto.

Gossett said he feared that without the option of the planned communities, future growth would fall heavily on his district, which includes Mountlake Terrace, Bothell and Mill Creek. He said growth over the past few years has made traffic in the south part of the county "extremely bad." He said the new construction often wasn't accompanied by adequate infrastructure, including parks and surface-water management.

Gossett said projections call for the county to grow by 100,000 people over the next decade. If the fully contained communities are eliminated as an option, he said, "Where are we going to put the growth?"

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com