FCCs will be road to Skagit County ‘suburbanization’

Changing county planning rules to permit fully contained communities (FCCs) “opens the door for making this county suburban,” said Margery Hite last Tuesday, Jan. 11, during an online Community Conversation sponsored by the Skagit Valley Food Co-op.

“Growth in Skagit Valley: Our Future, Farming & FCCs” drew about 90 Zoom participants, La Conner residents among them.

Hite is on the grassroots campaign ‘Right Growth, Right Place’ advisory group, which opposes permitting FCCs.

She described FCCs and their likely impact on Skagit County in great detail.

“These are enormous residential villages with commercial buildings, built in the country, featuring a mix of condos, large and small houses and apartments up to eight or 10 stories tall,” she said. Built by private developers, “they are like a city, but with no city services.”

The same is true for “affordable” housing that is developed using federal funds. “They have to build it, but they don’t have to make it work, and there is no accountable housing authority,” said Hite.

Neither county nor local municipalities planning policies provide for permitting FCCS. Last spring Skagit Partners LLC asked county commissioners to amend Skagit County’s Comprehensive Plan. In May the commissioners “docketed” LR20-04, “Fully Contained Communities (FCCs) petition,” their first step to considering FCCs. They made this decision even though close to 800 citizen comments opposed docketing.

If the petition were approved, Hite explained, the Skagit County Comprehensive Plan would establish criteria for consideration of a new fully contained community, consistent with the Growth Management Act.

That would give the green light for Skagit Partners LLC to develop a community for 3,500 people near I-5 and Cook Road.

Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland and the Skagit County Farm Bureau oppose the proposal, Hite said. The Skagit County Drainage and Irrigation District Consortium, which represents 12 local districts, has placed a letter in record stating that the current system could not handle the additional runoff from so many residents.

“Farmers say this will make it impossible to farm,” Hite said.

A second major concern is transportation. “Because the houses will be outside the budget of most Skagitonians, we will be creating a commuter community, a community not focused here,” she pointed out. “Looking at the routes away from this area, we are already suffering from pretty bad backlogs, especially the Cook Road interchange.”

Increased demand for rural public safety is a third concern. With no city police, these communities would have to rely on the sheriff’s department, which already provides services to about 52,500 rural residents – including those in La Conner – in 1,735 square miles. Firefighting services would be provided by the local volunteer fire departments.

“Permitting FCCs would be a huge change in plan,” said Hite, a former attorney for several Washington counties and cities.

The county’s comprehensive plan and county-wide planning documents all assume growth will happen in cities and towns – and that it will be gradual. But FCCs grow quickly.

Hite noted that the sudden influx of people into the proposed FCC site on Highway 99 would be “a tremendous block to vote for or against levies from the Burlington Edison School District. That’s a big concern.”

While FCCs do not initially lead to sprawl, within 10 to 15 years, all the land between the FCC and the nearest town could be filled in. By then the typical FCC has been annexed so the town can provide policing and other resources.

“Policymakers say FCCs are a tool for growth, but if you want growth in the cities and towns, that is where you need to center it – not create an FCC,” Hite said.

“If FCCs are approved then anyone with an FCC proposal can go forward,” she noted. Permission given cannot be rescinded, even if the county decides to change rules or seeks for the project to be overturned by the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board.

Local governments are pushing back against FCCs.

In 2009, Snohomish County overturned rules it adopted in 2005 that would have allowed FCCs. Skagit County municipalities are expressing their disapproval. Last October La Conner’s town council passed a resolution that ended “the Town Council of the Town of La Conner expresses its opposition to new fully contained communities.”

This month the city councils of Mount Vernon and Sedro-Woolley passed resolutions “Expressing Concern and Opposition to the Potential Authorization or Support of Fully Contained Communities by or Within Skagit County.”

“It is very helpful for cities and towns to weigh in and say that this isn’t coordinated growth, let’s cooperate,” said Hite.

It’s also important for residents to get their comments into the record by signing the petition on the Right Growth Right Place website.

“The first layer of response is ‘don’t do this, this isn’t what anyone wants,’” she concluded.

County commissioners to defer FCC approval

Two days after the Coop conversation, the Skagit County Board of Commissioners announced that it will consider a resolution clarifying docketed petition LR20-04 at a meeting 9:30 a.m. Jan. 20.

The resolution seeks to defer LR20-04 because the county did not follow the correct process when docketing the FCC proposal. The resolution requires the proposal to be reviewed and approved by the Growth Management Act Steering Committee, and for Skagit County Planning and Development Services to process LR20-04 consistent with this resolution.

Sources said that this action does not kill the proposal, but tells the applicants that they have to start over.

To view the Jan. 20 meeting on Zoom: skagitcounty.net/departments/CountyCommissioners/main.htm.