Open Letter to Citizens of North Bend

[Letter written by City of North Bend Administrator Londi Lindell]

On social media sites, I have been reading that if Mayor Hearing and Council Members cared for this community and/or its citizens, that they would simply stop all growth or better control the current explosive growth occurring within our town. Although I am unable to review all social media posts, I do try to review a number of sites in order to better understand our citizens and their concerns so we can be responsive to their issues.

I became concerned when various posts not only communicated a frustration with growth, but began to make personal attacks against elected officials by implying that “money” was being paid, “pocket padding” had occurred,  or somehow our elected officers are enriched through the current residential development occurring. Such allegations are blatantly false and I was offended. In my response post, I clarified the misconception that elected officials had anything to do with the administrative decision as to whether or not to grant a building permit as that work is performed by City staff.

Secondly, I agreed with Eric Miller’s comment that it was your “neighbors and friends” who were selling their properties to the developers and not the City Council or the City.  North Bend has nothing to do with a property owners’ decision to sell their property to a third-party for development. Third, although new construction does increase the City’s tax base in the short-term, the cost to the City to serve new single family residences (e.g. police, fire, parks, etc.) far exceeds such tax revenue in the long-term.  Thus, these types of single family residential developments are not the “pocket padding” agenda alleged in a post.

In fact, the Council has directed staff to focus on ways to encourage commercial vs. residential development. Unlike the majority of similar sized cities such as Snoqualmie, the majority of North Bend’s budget is generated by the business community and not from citizen’s property taxes. This is a real benefit to the citizens of North Bend.

North Bend’s property tax rate is $1.35 per $1,000 as opposed to the City of Snoqualmie which is $2.63 per $1,000. Citizens living just outside city limits in unincorporated King County have a property tax rate of $3.20 per $1,000 for road and fire services. The way we are able to keep our property tax rate low is because of the funds generated by our businesses. Your Council pushed backed against pressure from the development community to rezone these commercial zones to allow residential building.   

The North Bend City Council has also taken various actions to address the issue of growth over the last few years in response to both their concerns and your concerns about maintaining our rural character, including the following:

(1) Prohibited residential growth in commercial zones.

(2)  Reduced density.  When Mayor Hearing was elected, your zoning code allowed 8 to 10 homes on each acre in a zone called LDR or Low Density Residential. This has been reduced to only allowing less than 4 homes per acre with an average of around 3.5 homes per acre. What this means is fewer homes will be built as a result of these zoning changes. Fewer homes means fewer people and less traffic.

(3) A new zone called Constrained Low Density Residential (CLDR) was created by your Council allowing only 2 homes per acre and requiring a minimum lot size of 18,000 square feet even if the lot had critical areas. The CLDR zone covers the majority of large undeveloped residential areas within the city’s urban growth area which are not within the Downtown core and which do not have a “vested” application. It usually takes a few years for a large development application to work its way through a city process in order to become “vested.” Once an application is vested, changes in a city code cannot affect this application. Some of the developments occurring in our community today are the result of applications made a number of years ago.

(4) Council has directed staff to implement a new bike/pedestrian SEPA mitigation fee. These new funds will provide additional dollars toward acquiring new park and transportation features for bike/pedestrian trails.  We currently have the second highest traffic impact fee (TIF) in the state ($11,630 for single family homes (SFR) ; a park impact fee of $5,060 per SFR).  When I arrived 6 years ago, the TIF was around $600. I understand we have a transportation system which is in need of significant repair. However some of these issues are preexisting defects/problems. The law is quite clear in prohibiting the City from passing on repair costs for those preexisting conditions to the developer.

(5) Council partnered with the Si View Metropolitan Park District and King County to save 32 acres from being developed into a single family homes. Instead the Tennant Trailhead Park will provide walking trails and bike trails and eventually will connect to Rattlesnake Lake. Council also entered into a public private partnership to preserve the 5 acres adjacent to EJ Roberts from being developed and expanded EJ Roberts by 2.5 acres.

I understand the desire to maintain the status quo of our beautiful community. In fact, many of the posts encourage the Council to simply “stop,”  adopt a moratorium and ban all future development.  City staff have posted information in a Newsletter, press release and conducted a Town Hall Meeting in order to have an open discussion about the limitations on the City Council’s legal authority regarding these desires. Before I became a City Administrator, I was a City Attorney for over 20 years, so I have extensive experience in land use law. A moratorium is a land use planning tool which allows a Council to stop the clock for 6 months (with 6-month extensions subject to certain limitations) in order to evaluate changes to its zoning code. If a Council were to articulate that the purpose of a moratorium was to stop all future development for an unlimited time – such an ordinance would be illegal on its face.

The North Bend City Council used this moratorium tool when the first cottage developments were built as they were not consistent with the Council’s land use vision and they extended their moratorium for almost two years to ensure the code language properly reflected the Council and community’s vision.   However, there is no legal way for the Council to adopt an outright ban on future development through a moratorium as suggested in some of these social media sites.

The City of North Bend also has to plan under the Growth Management Act or GMA. The GMA is a series of state laws adopted in the 1990s which have various goals, including to concentrate dense urban growth in cities like North Bend and to reduce sprawl in unincorporated counties like King County.  I think many of our citizens would prefer the density we see in King County, which is generally zoned to only allow one house every five acres. However, this is considered an appropriate residential density for a county. If North Bend attempted such a residential zoning density and a property owner were to challenge such a zone to their property under GMA, the City would likely not prevail unless we could establish significant critical area limitations for such zoning. The GMA also created “urban growth areas” or UGAs inside of which cities were to grow at “urban densities.”  North Bend was identified as being an UGA and our corporate boundary is our UGA boundary.

In 1997, developers and builders didn’t believe cities were zoning properly to allow development fast enough, so they lobbied for an amendment to the GMA called the Buildable Lands amendment. The amendment basically requires the counties and cities to get together every eight years and calculate our land use capacity and project housing and job targets. During the last buildable land exercise, North Bend was allocated 665 new housing units. We will meet and exceed this number this year. New numbers are being generated and will be allocated to North Bend and other King County cities in 2019.

Some citizens on social media believe that once 665 homes are built, we can tell a citizen who wishes to build a house or sell their property that we are no longer accepting applications. That is not the case.  Not allowing a person some reasonable use of their property may constitute a “takings” under both state and federal constitutional law and would result in the City of North Bend being subject to potential litigation and damages. The Buildable Lands amendment and the housing target of 665 houses were simply a snapshot in time and a prediction by a group of planners during the last buildable lands exercise. It does not allow North Bend to tell someone who wishes to develop their property that they can’t because we reached our target of 665 houses.

I have many times shared my personal belief that the City Council cares deeply about maintaining North Bend’s rural character and small town feel as I have personally watched them struggle with the difficult balancing act of a state law mandate to plan zoning at an “urban density” while simultaneously meeting the community’s vision. I was then criticized for also being in the pockets of developers or being pro development.  Please know I, too, feel grateful to work in such an amazing and beautiful community and am committed to preserving North Bend’s natural beauty to the extent legally possible. The City will continue to promote our mutual vision within the confines of the various state and federal laws and regulations we operate within when reviewing applications for development.

Thank you,

Londi Lindell
City Administrator
City of North Bend