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Citizen Driven DevelopmentWhat is the actual cost of development? The Growth Management Act and Shoreline Comprehensive Plan require citizen participation in land use planning and development. The City Of Shoreline engaged hundreds of its citizens in thousands of hours of meetings to come up with a comprehensive plan for what our city should be like for the next five years. Just because of that involvement it was a very well thought out plan. What happened? As professional planners took responsibility for implementing the plan, the focus shifted from requiring all aspects of the plan to be accomplished concurrently, to a narrow focus on meeting the dwelling unit goals and postponing other requirements. When market forces and developers are driving the decision making the long term cumulative impacts of development are disregarded. It did not help that a 1% cap was placed on property tax revenues. The only way around the cap was new development which could reset the base line for the 1% cap. In the short run it seemed as if the only way cities could cover their capital budget needs was to encourage tearing down older single family housing and replace it with new higher density housing. In the short term that does give the City a big increase in revenues. long term the cost of providing services to the new residents wipes out the gain. When market forces are driving zoning and land use policy it puts rising tax pressure on small businesses. They find the land their business is on is more valuable as high density residential property than if it was left commercial. The business owner sells the property and moves away. Cities are now losing the retail sales tax that the business generated. When citizens have control of development it can produce high quality affordable housing that is sustainable. The Southeast Neighborhoods Subarea Plan Citizens Advisory Committee is a work in progress with developers and neighbors in a conversation and planning process. The Shoreline Visioning Community Conversation also has citizen participation. |