| County
council approves Birch Bay community plan
By
Jack Kintner
After
nearly four years of work and a great deal of talk and
revision, the Birch Bay Steering Committee’s
Community Plan was approved by the Whatcom County Council
Tuesday night on a series of procedural votes.
The
document sets out guidelines for Birch Bay’s
development for the next 20 years in such areas as land
use, housing, transportation, parks and recreation, economic
development and governance. In 20 years the plan assumes
that a population of almost 10,000 people will live within
the Birch Bay Urban Growth Area (UGA), roughly twice
the number living there now.
Whatcom
County Planning and Development Services manager Sylvia
Goodwin said that the current pace of growth is already
ahead of plan predictions. Last July, when the council
modified the plan by removing about 800 acres from the
UGA at Point Whitehorn and Birch Point, she noted that
the UGA still had space for the 3,500 additional homesites
the plan says will be required, “but
if the current rate of growth since the year 2000 keeps
up we’ll
need more like 5,560 new homesites.”
The
steering committee meets next on October 13 to discuss
neighborhood boundaries. On Saturday, October 23, a general
Birch Bay meeting will be held at Christ the King’s
satellite church in the Peace Arch Mall at I-5 exit
266 (Birch Bay-Lynden Road). The agenda includes
breaking into neighborhood groups to elect representatives
to a new steering committee that will oversee implementation
of the plan. “Some
of the old faces will continue,” said committee
vice-chair Kathy Berg, “but it’s been
four years and maybe there’s some fresh faces,
too, who want to give it a try.”
Implementation
issues will deal primarily with prioritizing and
creating the structures the plan says will be needed,
including everything from new roads to new schools, new
parks and ways of protecting sensitive habitat. Designated
commercial areas include sites at Blaine and Birch Bay-Lynden
roads, Lincoln and Shintaffer roads and Blaine and Alderson
roads, an area that currently is undeveloped.
An
issue lurking behind much of this is that of incorporation,
an issue last addressed and turned down by voters in
1992. “As
a county we like to encourage that by making it
easy to do should Birch Bay decide to do that,” said
Goodwin, “because
as these quasi-urban areas grow it becomes difficult
for the county to provide services.” As an example
of what the implementation phase involves, Goodwin said
that when faced with providing services the steering
committee might decide to push for incorporation or it
may decide to pay for services with a combination of
user fees and taxes. |
