There has been a lot written in the papers lately about congestion and safety issues on US Highway 2 between Snohomish and Stevens Pass. The roadway is only two lanes wide east of SR 9. The folks that live in the Skykomish River drainage area from Snohomish to Skykomish are mobilizing at a grass roots level because there has been no leadership from Snohomish County officials at any level to even draw attention to the problems at a minimum.
Everyone acknowledges that it is a federal highway, but it also runs through our county. I am sure our elected officials are working quietly behind the scenes with Congressman Larson and Senators Murray and Cantwell. They just don’t want to talk about it in public. It might jeopardize possible funding.
They all busted their butts to get the Wild Sky issue worked through the congress, and we all know how that will benefit our area. I think our county elected official from district 5 was doing all he could to satisfy the tree huggers on that one. I am just wondering how he is working to benefit the rest of us. And safety along US 2 would qualify.
At the state level things are not much better. There were a couple events in the recent past that drew attention to cable barriers along a stretch of I-5 (another part of the federal system). Sadly, there were fatalities associated with those events. I am not minimizing the tragedy suffered by those families, but the response to fatalities on Interstate 5 was that the State of Washington allocated and spent tens of millions of dollars to retrofit the cable barriers for many miles.
My first question would be “Are cable barriers a technology that is acceptable for highways of this classification?” I would assume the answer is “yes”, otherwise they would not be in use in so many locations. Then I would ask “Were the cable barriers installed correctly?” If they were not, then do we have recourse with the contractor that installed them? But if they were installed the way they were intended, we would have to assume these were just unfortunate accidents. I wonder if there will be more failed cable barriers? At least travelers on I-5 get cable barriers. On US 2, we get nothing.
My point is that our state leadership responded to a couple tragic accidents along Interstate 5 by spending millions and millions to patch that problem and by comparison after many, many fatalities on a short section of US 2, they put in rumble strips. I can’t help but think if we had local politicians working on this issue that would put their partisanship aside and do the right things for the corridor, “Substantial” improvements could be made. I am not holding out for that!
The first priority in government is the health and safety of the constituents. I see the cities working on their issues along the US 2 corridor, the people getting killed are their family members. I don’t see county government doing a thing except throwing a few traffic cops on the road for revenue generation purposes.
Maybe “Snohomish County Tomorrow” could be talking about cooperative planning and lobbying to get meaningful attention focused on the problems.
No Loss for Words 
I’M NOT FEELING SO GOOD ABOUT THIS ONE
by Steve DanaCounty Council members are probably feeling pretty smug today after shutting down the requests for expansion of urban growth areas. They are probably thinking that they really showed those guys who were trying to compete with the county. Everyone better know that Snohomish County is not going to let anyone else do their job of screwing up “rural urban transition” land.
It may be that the proposal by the city of Snohomish did not contain all the information they should have provided to justify an increase in their boundary. The criteria for expanding UGBs may be so technical that city planners are not bright enough to figure them out. The guidelines should be clear enough that political consideration is not the key component of a decision. Snohomish and the property owners will go back to the drawing board and do a more thorough job next time and it will be hard for the county to deny that after removing critical areas and buffers, there is not enough land left to meet employment and population growth targets within the existing boundary.
As long as there are sewer districts in the county to extend service into areas outside cities, Snohomish County doesn’t need to grant adjustments to UGAs. They usually come after the land has already been planned and developed under “County Guidance”. After the fact, the residents of these areas demand other urban services and Snohomish County just shrugs because they don’t offer urban services. Those would be “city” services. “Go find a city to take you on.”
The Lake Stevens Sewer District has been the tool used by the county to undermine the interests of the City of Lake Stevens. The county has been wildly granting plat approval to areas on all sides of the lake and on Cavalero’s hill for many years because they had a sewer provider that was not accountable to anyone else. If the county had worked with the city fifteen years ago when the UGB was first drawn, both parties could have talked about how the City of Lake Stevens would look in the year 2010. Instead, Snohomish County unilaterally made decisions that will profoundly impact that city forever. Not for the better.
It is not just in Lake Stevens though. Look at Seattle Hill. Snohomish County planning is responsible for every bit of that mess. Their facilitator in that neighborhood is the Silver Lake Sewer District.
Just think about it, if Snohomish County was not in the business of approving urban density housing developments, we would not be experiencing the sprawl everyone is complaining about. If the only way a parcel of land could be developed at less than “5 acre minimum lot size” was to be in a city, the county would look a whole lot different.
And think about this, every place in Snohomish County where there is an Urban Planning anomaly, Snohomish County government is at the root.
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