Does the PRSC benefit Kitsap?

Many Kitsap residents have come to question the county’s continued participation in the Puget Sound Regional Council, particularly in light of that organization’s mission statement, “Vision 2040,” which is a region-wide, long-range, land-use planning policy.

This review is meant to address the underlying question, “Is Vision 2040 beneficial to Kitsap?”

And given the overarching environmental extremism that now infects the development of Vision 2040 policies, the answer is clearly no.

While the environment is the most important factor in the overall strategy, transportation has now also become evident as the major “tool” for implementation of that strategy.

The first hint of what is to come is Vision 2040’s opening statement, “Development patterns of the last half of the 20th century often separated people from jobs, focused on accommodating the automobile and altered critical ecosystems.”

PSRC’s failure to recognize Kitsap’s realities and to make any effort to accommodate that leads Vision 2040 away from benefit to Kitsap.

Keeping in mind that “region” refers to the greater King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap County area — some of the development “policies” (DP’s) established by Vision 2040:

• (DP-4) encourages adherents to, “Accommodate the region’s growth first and foremost in urban growth areas.”

• Also in (DP-4), the stated goal for the region is to “direct growth and development to a limited number of designated regional growth centers.”

• (DP-7) gives “funding priority – both for transportation infrastructure and for economic development – to support designated regional growth centers consistent with the regional vision.”

• (DP-16) directs “commercial, retail, and community services that serve rural residents into neighboring cities and existing activity areas to prevent the conversion of rural land to commercial use.” Also, “The region will permanently sustain the ecological functions, resource value, lifestyle, and character of rural lands for future generations by limiting the types and intensities of development in rural areas.”

And so on and so forth.

The sum total of these and other goals and policies is to force development into fixed-boundary urban growth areas while making current rural areas fixed in nature and essentially off-limits to development.

A specific impact on Kitsap is that Silverdale, a designated “regional growth center,” will have to accommodate approximately 16,500 new residents and 14,000 new jobs.

Realistically, that would require about 7,500 new housing units in the one-square-mile “center” of Silverdale.

While the 14,000 jobs would be most welcome, it is not clear how the employers would also fit in the center and where they would come from.

In the end, based on the policies of Vision 2040, the Silverdale we know today would be gone, and in its place we will have a new version of the major housing suburbs of Seattle.

Interestingly, the cost of the infrastructure for the county-controlled urban areas would be borne to a large extent by the rural residents of the county (more than 50 percent of county residents), while that same group of taxpayers would receive little direct benefit from the improvements — and in some cases be specifically excluded from similar benefits in rural areas.

Under Vision 2040, PSRC controls the distribution of federal and state transportation funding to the four-county area of King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties.

These funds are available for use as a hammer to force compliance with the policies of Vision 2040.

The message from PSRC seems clear: “Do it as we direct or funding will not be available.”

This is a clear example of how PSRC has taken power to direct the development of Kitsap County according to its obvious east-Puget Sound orientation, with almost no real representation by Kitsap residents.

Recall that Kitsap County has only 4 percent of the vote in PSRC, based on population.

Again the question we are trying to answer: “Is the impact of Vision 2040 beneficial to Kitsap County?”

Clearly, it is not.

Karl Duff

President of the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners