Subsidizing Rural Development - A blatant case study

Lummi Island - Providing transportation between a rock and a hard place

People who live in our county's cities are starting to learn the lesson that they are often called upon to share an increasing portion of their tax dollars to support services for those who live in the more rural areas of the county. For years the County through planning and zoning decisions has encouraged lot creation in rural areas, which in turn has encouraged people to “drive till they qualify” since cheaper housing has been available the farther you are willing to drive. Places like Birch Bay, Peaceful Valley, Sandy Point Heights, Sudden Valley, and Lummi Island were all places where families could find an affordable first home, and where lower income folks could more likely afford the rent.

Now we have thousands of people living in these far-flung areas, and while their homes may have been cheaper, providing them with county services is way more expensive. On top of that many of these rural residents seem to believe that the sheriff, the fire department, and the ambulance should show up in the same amount of time as if they lived on Maple St in Bellingham, and they want their roads to be wide and smooth so they can drive fast to get to town where they for the most part work and shop. Ironically, many of these rural characters are some of the most outspoken against any hint of raising taxes to pay for services, instead preferring to continue to allow services for the majority of taxpayers who live in urban areas to decline so their taxes can be used to provide “essential” services to these rural dwellers.

There is no place quite as easy to see and evaluate this problem as Lummi Island, and the current quandary regarding the lease for docking facilities with the Lummi Nation has brought it front and center. Without getting into that lease quagmire, and the increased costs that will have to be put on someone, lets just take a look at how much Lummi Island is already being subsidized by others in the county.

I believe when most people pay taxes to the County they believe that some small “fair share” of that tax money goes to support each of the services that the county provides. While not everyone might agree on the need for all the services, the services at this point include law enforcement, courts, roads, elections, controlling disease, planning, parks, protection of natural resources, economic development, a variety of social services, etc. So for rural residents of Lummi Island how much of their county tax dollar supports these services?

• In round figures the 2010 assessed value of all property on Lummi Island is $270,079,836. This equates to 1.08% of the total countywide assessed value of $25,077,540,196.

• The 2010 assessment for the Road Fund is $1.3361 per $1000 of value, so people on Lummi Island will pay $360,854 into the Road Fund. This equates to 2.12% of the total Road Fund collected countywide.

• The 2010 assessment for the General Fund is $1.02054 per $1000 of value, so people on Lummi Island will pay $275,627 into the General Fund. This equates to 1.08 % of the total General Fund collected countywide.

• The 2009 Lummi Island Ferry operating expenditures were $2,545,688. According to current county policy 45% of ferry operating costs are supposed to come from county taxpayers, and 55% of the costs are supposed to come from collected fares. In 2009 the taxpayers share was $1,145,560, which equates to $509,079 more than all the General Fund and Road Fund taxes that will be collected on Lummi Island in 2010. In other words all property taxes collected on the Island for the General Fund and Road Fund fall over a half million dollars short of covering the cost of just the ferry, and provide no support for other county provided services such as law enforcement, courts, road repair, elections, health department, planning, parks, etc. Of course property taxes only account for about 50% of the General Fund and 75% of the Road Fund, but it is clear that sales tax and other revenue sources paid by people on Lummi Island do not come near paying for the ferry, let alone a per capita share of other county provided services.

Now before my friends on Lummi Island go to look for their pitchforks let me be clear that I am not suggesting that people on Lummi Island should pay 100% of the cost of the ferry. Just like I am not suggesting that the people who use Mosquito Lake Road pay the millions of dollars recently spent to replace the Middle Fork bridge, or that people in the Deming area pay 100% of the millions of dollars that have been spent to protect their area from flooding, or that people in Columbia Valley pay 100% of the hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent to build them a Resource Center, or that the handful of families that live on Rutsatz Road pay 100% of the tens of thousands of dollars that was recently spent to fix their road from river damage. The theory and promise of government is that if we each pay our small fair share, that money will go much further to provide desired services and protect us all from catastrophic losses (violent crime, spread of infectious disease, flooding, loss of our homes or income source, pollution of our drinking water, etc) then if we each had to try to provide those things for ourselves.

Under current county policy the people on Lummi Island are not supposed to pay 100% of the ferry service but only the 55% that gets collected as ferry fares, and then their small percentage of the 45% of the costs that come from taxes. I was not arguing that they are not paying enough, but only using the Lummi Island example to point out that development in rural areas, wherever it occurs, rarely pays for itself and has to be subsidized by those in urban areas. My main point is - before we start arguing about the fairness of such subsidies we should at least stop making it worse!

Unfortunately it appears that some on the County Council, perhaps a majority, while apparently ready to throw the folks on Lummi Island under the bus on these rising ferry costs are also still in favor of encouraging more lot development in rural areas which will just continue to increase the same type of subsidies in other parts of the County. While a logical, slow, predictable correction of these subsidies may be valuable over the long run, it makes no sense to pull the rug out from under these communities after encouraging this type of development for years. But I am not sure any such correction is the plan of the current Council, instead I think those in urban areas better hold onto their wallets, and those in places like Point Roberts, Acme, Kendall, Lummi Island, Deming and Lake Samish better watch your backs because it appears the County Council is just planning to continue the subsidies by allowing services to continue to erode for most taxpayers and robbing existing subsidies from some to appease others. Dumb growth returns to Whatcom County.

It should also be noted that the people of Lummi Island did recognize the problems of such dumb growth and through their comprehensive planning efforts asked that Lummi Island be down zoned to protect their quality of life and their finite water source from being depleted through excessive development and drilling of more exempt wells. Exempt wells in areas where water is already over allocated is another dumb growth subsidy, but that rant will have to wait for a future blog.

So as the cries escalate for making folks on Lummi Island pay their "fair share" watch to see whether the underlying cause of such rural subsidies is going to be addressed, or whether appeasing the selfish grumblers by throwing one area at a time under the bus is a more politically feasible solution than acknowledging and correcting our dumb growth history.

August 10, 2010 - Issue of the Week

Tuesday will be the last Council meeting until September 14th, so the agenda is packed with a number of important items, and there are a number of things that will be discussed that the public has not been privy to because they are being “added in” at the last minute.

Here are the ones that I am trying to focus on, although a million gallons of oil dumped into to a river in Michigan from a pipeline has diverted my energies significantly.

Interim Lake Whatcom Subdivision Moratorium - This “interim” moratorium has been in place and renewed every six months since 2005. About a month ago we tried to make this moratorium permanent but that failed because some Council members still don't believe that additional development in the watershed will have any negative impacts on water quality. Others argued that they didn't want to take people's property rights (in this case rights that don't even exist yet) without using taxpayers money to pay them, and they wanted more time to try to develop such a system. That is all chronicled here.

On Tuesday we will see whether there are four votes to extend the moratorium again in hopes of developing some sort of transfer of development rights (TDR) program to compensate property owners. I suspect we will know the outcome fairly early in the day since it is scheduled in the Natural Resource Committee at 9:30 AM. Both Bill Knutzen and Ward Nelson are on that Committee and one of them will have to vote in favor of this moratorium for this to pass. While Kathy Kershner has voiced support for a TDR program, she is on vacation and will not be at Tuesday's meeting, so my sense is that this will come down to Bill's vote, since Barbara Brenner, Ken Mann and I are already on record as supporting this.

There will be a public hearing on this in the evening.

Lake Whatcom Management Plan - At the evening meeting we will be asked to approve the 2010-2014 Lake Whatcom Work Plan. In general this work plan is much easier to read and figure out what is really proposed to go on for the Lake. I think it includes the programs we need to implement to address numerous water quality problems and the pending TMDL. Unfortunately while the programs are listed and catalogued there is not much real commitment to actually implement them, especially from the County. At this point it seems pretty clear that we know what needs to be done (just as we have known for years now), but unless we can beg grant money from the feds or state we really have no intention of moving forward in a timely manner.

For the five years I have been on the Council there has been an ongoing discussion about creating some sort of Stormwater Utility District around the Lake to help fund movement of these programs. This plan does not address that huge issue, and without it getting addressed this plan, like all previous plans, amounts to hoop jumping without any clear path toward success. I am considering voting no on the plan because I no longer want to be a part of the deceit the County has for years foisted on the public and other agencies about how much we care. If we cared we would develop a dedicated funding source, instead of hoping money to protect the lake will somehow magically appear.

And Now for the “Public Process? Who Needs a Stinking Public Process?” section.

Thursday afternoon, the day after the agenda for the Council meeting is made public, Sam Crawford submits a resolution to start the process for dismantling the County-wide EMS system. In his email with the resolution he said:

“I would like to discuss the attached Resolution at the Tuesday evening Council Meeting. I would like to bring it to a vote.”

While the EMS system does have huge territory issues between different groups, the system as a whole continues to deliver outstanding ambulance service county-wide. The Herald did a background piece here. There is no doubt that these issues need to be worked out, but the plan that the voters approved included a revamped ambulance advisory board made up of representatives from the cities and county and the emergency response experts that run our system, and tasked them with making recommendations regarding the budget and conflicts. That voter approved conflict resolution system has not yet been used, so in my opinion this move to dissolve the EMS system is way premature.

Even more troubling is the way the resolution was introduced so as to keep it off the publicly available agenda. An item like this that moves to do away with a voter-approved system should at a minimum be shared with the public so the public has time to comment. I have posted the proposed resolution here, because as of Saturday morning it still was not publicly available anywhere else.

10-Year UGA Review - In the same “who needs public process?” category we have another attempt by the Council majority to expand the UGAs. This is the same ordinance that they have wasted huge amounts of time on for months now, but once Sumas and Nooksack decided that they didn't want to have to pay for the legal defense of something that is already scheduled to happen next year anyway, the Council had to introduce a new ordinance to only include a chunk near Ferndale and a small piece in Birch Bay.

While there has been plenty of opportunity for developers and their consultants and attorneys to comment on this process there has only been one public hearing, and that was on an entirely different ordinance. This is also a Comprehensive Plan amendment which is supposed to go through the public process of our Planning Commission, but that hasn't happened either. So what we have on Tuesday is a new ordinance for a Comp Plan amendment, with two cities removed, a bunch of new “findings of fact,” and no hearing for the public to comment on it.

To make things even more fascinating it appears that perhaps even more changes will be made to the ordinance before it is voted on Tuesday evening. Late Friday I received a copy of an email from Barbara Brenner to the Council's attorney Karen Frakes, basically saying she thinks Sam Crawford's proposed new finding-of-fact to help justify the Birch Bay expansion is a good idea. You can read that email exchange and the new "fact" here. What's more fascinating is that the language in Mr Crawford's new finding of fact which he sent to Ms Brenner on 8/5 is nearly exactly the same language from a letter submitted to the entire Council from the developers consultant on 8/6, so I am left to assume that Mr Crawford and developers consultants worked together on this new “fact” which will be voted on with no public review or hearing.

Public process? Who needs it when you have developer's consultants and lawyers to give you the facts? I'm sure they are looking out for what's best for the public.

July 27, 2010 - Issue of the Week

Breaking News - The UGA Proposal that the Council has wasted months on, shrinks even further and is pulled from agenda.

This afternoon the Council got an email saying that the ordinance that the relatively new Council majority has spent months preparing to overturn the UGA reductions that the previous Council passed has been pulled from the agenda. Seems like the cities of Sumas and Nooksack reviewed comments received in the past few weeks and have decided there is little reason to spend taxpayer money to defend a poorly written County ordinance, when they can most likely get the same results next year during the already planned UGA review. Could Ferndale be so wise?

Now the Council majority has to reintroduce a new ordinance that only includes the expansion of the Ferndale UGA and a small area in Birch Bay, and I'm guessing schedule another hearing. Quite the waste of time from visions of expanding UGAs by thousands of acres - West Blaine, Caitac, Yew Street Rd etc - to swapping a UGA reserve in Ferndale to a regular UGA. How many thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted on this boondoggle that is already scheduled for next year? Now that's some fiscally conservative planning.

UPDATE - 7/2710 5:45 PM
It appears there will not be an additional hearing on the new reduced UGA expansion ordinance. Legal counsel says we only are required to have a hearing if we are adding additions to an ordinance, but since we are just removing two cities and changing many of the findings that is not considered a substantive change.

July13, 2010 - Issue of the Week

The Shift from Protecting Farmland to Protecting Development?

First, apologies for not keeping up with the blog of late. Because of the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico the U.S. Congress has ramped up oversight of everything to do with oil, so over the past few weeks I have been involved with six Congressional hearings in DC concerning pipeline safety. Not much time for much else, but its important to try to strike while Congress has an interest, so perhaps something positive can come from such a terrible disaster.

So what's happening this week? Well certainly what is getting the most attention is the hearing and probable vote to pander to development interests and expand Urban Growth Areas (UGAs) beyond what the Council and County Executive came up with last year. Last year's decision brought the County into compliance with state law regarding the UGAs. But instead of attending to other growth issues the County is still out of compliance with this new pro-sprawl Council has wasted nearly eight months revisiting a decisions that the County is already required to revisit again in 2011 - next year. Now that's fiscally non-conservative planning for you.

While I suspect that issue is a done deal the other idea that will be discussed on Tuesday is Ward Nelson's idea of getting rid of the Agriculture Protection Overlay (APO). The APO applies to land in the rural zone that has valuable agricultural soils. The main idea is in the areas with this valuable farmland require people who are intent on subdividing their property to cluster the homes to allow a large portion of the land to still be available in the future for farming. While clustering certainly isn't the silver bullet to protect all farmland, in many cases it is one tool that can be used to preserve large chunks of land that can remain in productive farmland, either by the owner or leased to a local farmer.

The APO was one of the ways the County "designated" farmland to comply with the Growth Management Act. If the Council changes this designation I suspect it would create troubles for staying in compliance with this important aspect of protecting rural character and resource lands.

This should be a fascinating discussion with Ward Nelson now wanting to get rid of the APO overlay because he feels the tool is not worth the difficulty it creates for people who want to subdivide and develop their property. Sam Crawford has already questioned whether the goal of protecting 100,000 acres of farmland is even important. He also has repeatedly stated his intent to halt the funding for the Purchase of Development Rights program, which is one of the few farmland protection tools we have that is actually working. Where the rest of the Council falls in this farmland protection versus do nothing to impede development in rural areas argument I can't predict.

The discussion will be in the Natural Resources Committee at 9:30 AM in the Council Chambers.

June 15, 2010 - Issue of the Week

Does the Whatcom County Council Care About Lake Whatcom? Soon we'll know.

At last week's Council meeting the Council voted 6-1 to reject a downzone in the Lake Whatcom watershed that would have helped prevent somewhere between 100-200 potential new homes. After years of this being in place as a temporary moratorium I was the only vote in favor of removing this potential development from the watershed through this downzone.

As anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention would know the quality of the Lake has been declining for years, and all the science and all the studies show the decline is caused by development around the lake. The County already has legal obligations to control pollution into the lake under our stormwater permit, and we will soon also be under legal obligation to clean up the lake from both the Department of Ecology and the U.S. EPA under the pending TMDL. The key to meeting our cleanup requirements will be to institute programs that make the lake think that 80-90 percent of all the development has been removed and natural conditions exist. This is a huge undertaking, and adding more development to the watershed is just plain ignorant from both the standpoint of what is good for the lake, and also what is good for the taxpayers who will have to pick up the cleanup tab.

The vote to not make years of a temporary moratorium permanent certainly is the first indication that the new Council may care little about the state of Lake Whatcom. In July, the Council will have to decide how much funding to request for the Lake in the coming two years. That will be another interesting indication, especially with Chairman Crawford wanting to reduce spending by nearly a million dollars a year in the fund that pays for lake protection. Then toward the end of the summer the still in place moratorium on subdivisions in the watershed will come up for another vote to renew it or let it lapse and allow those homes to be built. That will be the final indication of where this Council really stands.

I am sure the Department of Ecology and the U.S. EPA are watching all this with some fascination, wondering when they need to step in and remind the County of its obligations.

Of course there is some serious smoke and mirrors in play. Like last week, as an excuse to vote against the permanent moratorium, some members stated they just wanted time to work on a Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program. While this may sound like a legitimate idea, and I will certainly vote to extend the temporary moratorium to give them the chance to get such a TDR program in place, anyone who has actually studied TDR programs doubts this can be accomplished. It is even more unlikely that these Council members can create such a program without the help of our rapidly dwindling Planning Department staff. Even if they do manage to draft a good ordinance it would be hard to succeed without staff to come up with interlocal agreements, and ongoing promotion and care.

Anyone who has studied TDR programs would realize that we have way too may desired sending areas (Lake Whatcom watershed, prime farmland, Drayton Harbor, etc) and way too few (none) receiving areas. Without receiving areas TDRs will never work, and there is no reason for the cities or developers to help create receiving areas as long as the County Council continues to provide them with more and more high density areas for free. For years I have said that if we are serious about these types of programs (TDRs and PDRs) then we need to make sure we tie the development of receiving areas to upzones. Most every study I have seen agrees that upzones need to be tied to these programs if there is much hope of substantial success. Unfortunately the Council seems unwilling to do this, and continually gives away all our potential leverage. If Council members are really interested in creating a viable TDR program then I hope they will delay the vote on the expansion of the UGAs around Ferndale, Birch Bay, Nooksack and Sumas until we can add language to use these areas as receiving areas, and develop the needed interlocal agreements. If they are unwilling to do that then all this talk about creating TDRs is nonsense.

The County produced its own feasibilty study on the potential of TDR programs in early 2009. It can be found on the County's Agricultural Program website at: http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/planning/agricultural_program.jsp That study also concludes that TDR programs will be problematic here without some tie to UGA expansion and dealing with the tens of thousands of development rights previous councils have approved in the rural areas. Again, the Council has been unwilling to deal with either of these issues, both of which undermine viable TDR programs.

Below is a link to the Department of Commerce's TDR clearinghouse page, which contains all sorts of information. Below the link are some snippets of information I pulled from the referenced report regarding TDR programs that might help you understand this better than I have explained it above.

http://www.commerce.wa.gov/site/1308/default.aspx


From the report - Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) in Washington State: Overview, Benefits, and Challenges


“While many TDR programs have been enacted, not all have not been successful. In fact, only a handful of programs have protected 5,000 or more acres of land, and some have not generated a single transaction.”


“Inadequate receiving areas. Without adequate receiving areas, there is no market for TDRs and a TDR program cannot succeed. A few second-generation TDR programs require the purchase of TDR credits as a condition of any upzones. ... This type of mechanism can help address the need for receiving site designations and take advantage of demand for upzones.”


“In areas where zoning already allows development beyond what the market can support, there is no value to a developer in participating in TDR. Similarly, if rezones to higher densities can be achieved without participation in TDR, interest in TDR will be undercut.”


“Lack of program leadership and transaction support. A review of TDR history shows clearly that adopting legislation to enact a TDR program is not enough, by itself, to ensure program success. Active support and leadership are needed to foster a robust marketplace for TDR transactions. Especially at the outset of a program, support is needed to overcome the natural uncertainty that property owners may feel in considering a new and unfamiliar form of real-estate transaction, and the unease that developers may feel about a new step or option in the development permitting process. Public education, program advocacy, and transaction support appear to be key ingredients in successful programs, especially when the program is young.”


“Ensure Zoning Compatibility Some jurisdictions have initiated TDR programs with a large-scale downzoning of resource-based lands to be preserved, using TDR as a means of compensating landowners for the development restrictions and creating a strong incentive for participating. (For example, Montgomery County [MD] downzoned its agricultural lands from 1 unit per 5 acres to 1 per 25, allowing TDR sales based on the original zoning density.) While widespread downzoning may not be feasible in many areas, zoning must be consistent with the long-term conservation goals of a local plan. Landowners wishing to continue farming or forestry activities may resist the idea of a permanent development restriction (conservation easement) on their property. For example, where zoning in an agricultural area allows 1 unit per 5 acres, property owners may well expect incompatible development on neighboring properties, which would undermine the long-term viability of farming in the area and thus make a conservation easement unattractive. Furthermore, the smaller the lot sizes allowed, the greater the number of development rights that must be assigned - perhaps exceeding the capacity of receiving areas to accept these credits.”


“On the receiving side, zoning and TDR participation are also closely linked. As noted in the section above, zoning that matches or exceeds market demand for development negates the profit a developer might achieve through TDR. Reducing the base zoning in TDR receiving areas is an option to reinforce the profit incentive. However, downzoning may not always be feasible and may even conflict with city planning objectives that favor concentrated growth. An alternative approach is to incorporate TDR provisions into any rezone approved by a jurisdiction, whether through a comprehensive plan update or through individual requests for zoning reclassification (see Pierce County and Malibu examples above). Under this approach, a portion of the increased value created by the increase in development potential can be allocated to support regional conservation goals. If, on the other hand, developers are successful in achieving such upzones without participation in TDR, there will be little demand to fuel the TDR marketplace.”

May 25, 2010 - Issue of the Week

Protecting Farmland - One Small Piece At A Time

On Tuesday the Whatcom County Council will again take up one of the tools available for protecting our local farmland when we review this year's applications for the Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) Program. Through this program the County uses money from the Conservation Futures Fund to purchase development rights (the right to put a house on the property) from land that falls within targeted areas for protection. This program only deals with willing sellers of such rights, and we don't buy the actual land we just buy the right to put a house on the land that goes with the current zoning (example - a 40 acres piece in an area zoned 1 house/ 5 acres would have 8 development rights). A conservation easement is then placed on the property making it impossible to develop that land in the future.

This is a relatively new program with the first development rights purchased in 2004. In the past six years about 89 development rights have been purchased, protecting 671 acres of good farmland from future development. The cost was about $4.5 million, with the County paying about half of that since the program always tries to use matching state and federal grant money that is available for such purposes. As you can see it is not a cheap program with each development right (each property gets a separate appraisal) costing in the neighborhood of $50,000.

Every survey taken in the County in the past ten years has shown strong support for protecting farmland, and all the various agriculture advisory committees support this program as one way of doing it. This program is one way that the larger community can help farmers keep farming by providing a capital infusion as payment for their development rights. It's a win-win with the farmer getting money needed to keep farming, and the community ensuring that the valuable farmland will be there to farm in the future.

Studies of the prime agricultural soils in the county show that we have about 4000 development rights within those target areas. At $50,000 per development right it would cost about $200 million to protect all that prime farmland through this program. That's where the rub comes in. Normally the Conservation Futures Fund generates about $1 million a year for such purposes, but this year it will only generate a little over $400,000 because the Council majority decided to shift money from the fund last year to other purposes such as law enforcement, courts, planning, the Health Department, etc. It is unclear if that shift will remain in place or whether the money will be redirected to the real purposes of conservation. Even at $1 million per year it would take us way more time than we have got to protect farmland through this program alone.

Some on the Council have said that the PDR program is so slow and ineffectual that why bother with it at all. Sam Crawford has announced his intention numerous times in the past year to put a halt to this program, and has also stated that he thinks it is too late to protect farmland here so let's just move on. On Tuesday we will for the first time find out where the rest of the Council stands on this PDR program. Most everyone, except Mr. Crawford, has given lip service to protecting farmland, so on Tuesday we will find out whether it was just lip service or whether they are willing to sign the check or have other ideas how to do it. For those on the Council who supported gutting the Conservation Future Fund this will be a difficult conundrum.

Personally I think this is a great program to allow all of us who say we want to protect farmland prove it by spending some of our tax dollars to support those willing farmers who are also proving they want the land there for the future of farming also. In 2010 this tax will cost the owner of a $300,000 property $5.14 to help conserve farmland and other valuable conservation areas. Seems like a good investment in the future to me. Yes, progress with just this program is slow, but any progress is better than the alternative.

If you want to read the information about the program and see what properties are up for possible inclusion this year, you can find that information by clicking here. This will be discussed in the Natural Resource Committee at 9:30 AM in the Council Chambers on Tuesday.

***** UPDATE 5/25/10 *******

The Council's Natural Resource Committee (Nelson, Knutzen, Weimer) has recommended unanimously a recommendation that the full Council approve the resolution that will allow the staff to move forward with the evaluation of these proposed properties for possible purchase of these easements. The Council in the future will have to approve the final purchase and sale agreement with the property owners.

There was an interesting discussion of where the Conservation Futures fund came from and whether it was voter approved or not. Here is some background on the Conservation Futures Fund which is used to buy these types of development rights on farmland, as well other park and conservation areas.

• The Conservation Futures tax was approved by the County Council by ordinance in 1992

• After complaints about taxation without a vote of the people the Council sent the tax to a non-binding vote in 1996. The tax was approved by 57.7% f the voters.

• In 2001 there was an attempt by the County Council to budget expenditures from the fund so 50% would be spent on farmland protection and 50 % on other parks/conservation lands. This ordinance was passed by the Council, but was then vetoed by Executive Kremen because of concerns about losing flexibility about how the money could be used.

* The original ordinance, later approved by the voters, set the levy rate at $0.0625 per $1000 of valuation. Or $18.75 per year for a $300,000 property. That rate was collected from 1993 through 2001. In 2002 because of Tim Eyman's I-747 the rate began to decrease. By 2009 the levy rate had fallen to $0.03949 per $1000 of value, or $11.85 on a $3000,000 property.

* For 2010 the rate was further decrease by the Council to $0.01714 per $1000 of value, or $5.14 for a $300,000 property. This was done to shift some of this money to other general fund purposes.

May 11. 2010 - Issue of the Week

Not much of a blog this week. I was invited a couple days ago to testify to a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives about pipeline safety on May 20th and 150 copies of my testimony needs to be delivered to them in DC by next Monday. I've pretty much got blinders on reviewing ten years of pipeline incident data, so with that and the 428 pages in my Council packet this week I have little time for this blog.

A few items on this week's Council agenda that are worth watching.

The same items I wrote about last time limiting the Council's ability to use banked capacity will be voted on this week. The vote was postponed last time because Council member Brenner had not read the proposals carefully enough and didn't realize that the proposals would become effective immediately instead of putting it on the ballot this fall for a vote. She asked for more time to consider it, and the majority of the council gave her two more weeks.

In the Natural Resources Committee meeting at 9:30 AM on Tuesday there will be a presentation by Farm Friends on their research into natural resource banking. This is an interesting concept that would work to save farmland by creating markets (kind of like carbon trading) that would create such protection. Hopefully Farm Friends have come up with some concrete ideas for implementing this idea, in the past it was quite unclear where the market (millions of dollars necessary) to protect the farmland would come from.

At 11 AM in the Finance Committee we will be talking about spending nearly $4 million on widening Lincoln Road out near Birch Bay. On the one hand this has been the top priority of the Birch Bay community for a long while and has been delayed multiple times. This project made more sense when it was part of a larger project that included a developer funded cnnnector road to shunt traffic from Birch Bay Village to Lincoln Road to reduce traffic on Birch Bay Drive. Unfortunately the developer funded portion of the project is on indefinite hold because the development has pretty much totally dried up. Without that part of the project this road widening is mainly to serve residents of Blaine that live in Semiahmoo and pay no taxes to the County for such road projects.

We will also be talking about applying for a $300,000 grant that if awarded would require the County to provide $300,000 of matching funds. The grant would be used to help acquire part of an old golf course along the Nooksack River in Ferndale for the development of Riverplace Park. I think this is a prime opportunity for a future park, but I do have some significant concerns about the funding sources to be used for the match. On the application it lists Conservation Futures funding as the source, yet the voter approved Conservation Futures fund has been seriously diverted into the General Fund to cover current holes in the budget. There is also mention of using Flood Funds for the match because the area is an "important area to preserve for off river storage capacity during flood events." The area is in the flood plain and can not be developed, so the storage capacity during floods will be there with or without the Flood Fund being used to help purchase it.

Finally, at 1 PM we will be talking about a draft ordinance to once again amend the Comprehensive Plan to expand the Urban Growth Areas around Sumas, Nooksack, Birch Bay and Ferndale. This is the current Council majority's plan to expand UGAs beyond what the County Executive's plan called for last year and what the previous Council approved.

Should be a full day.