2017-2037 Comp Plan Update Enabling Ordinance with Exhibit A

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Page 58 Future development will be required to pay its fair share of the capital improvements needed to address the impact of such development and the portion of the cost of the replacement of obsolete or worn out facilities. The different methods of payment allowed for these capital improvements include:  Voluntary contributions for the benefit of any public facility.  SEPA mitigation payments.  Dedications of land.  Provision of public facilities. Future development will not be required to pay fees for needed public facilities to reduce or eliminate existing deficiencies. The growth forecasts, to be used for planning purposes and the specific growth targets for each UGA, are developed using the Kittitas County population projections established by the State of Washington Office of Financial Management (OFM). The OFM prepares high, medium and low forecasts for each county, with the middle range representing the most likely scenario. Kittitas County jurisdictions determined that the high forecast best represents growth trends in this area. This 2% growth rate was selected as a slight refinement to OFM’s projections, based on a review completed by Berk & Associates in July 2016. The OFM projections are provided as a range of low, medium or high. For Kittitas County, the OFM projections range from 0% growth for the low projections, 1.08 percent growth for the medium projection, and 2.13% for the high projection. Typically, Counties and Cities will simply adopt the medium projection to for their planning purposes. Because the medium projection is OFM’s actual estimate, and the high and low projections are to provide for a margin of safety, it is assumed that the medium projection will be the most accurate in most cases. Occasionally, however, a local government will have reason to believe that OFM’s projections are not reflective of local conditions. In such cases the burden is on the local government to refine or overturn the OFM projections before using different projections for comprehensive planning. While Kittitas County is not using the middle projection for this Comprehensive Plan, the projection of 2% as the growth rate, which falls between the high and medium OFM projections, is well within the range for acceptable planning practices under GMA, because it does still fall within the overall range of OFM projections. The County’s decision to deviate from the OFM medium growth projection is based on careful analysis and local knowledge of the growth patterns and trends in recent years, as well as well-founded projections of what to expect in the future. In 2015 Kittitas County and the Cities/Town within the County entered into inter-local agreements to study the 2012 OFM projections. This resulted in the Berk & Associates report, which lists several factors that argue in favor of a higher than medium projection growth rate, including the emergence of Kittitas County as a retirement destination. Also, as housing prices and cost of living have increased in King and Snohomish Counties, the desirability of Kittitas County as a location for long distance commuters has increased substantially. This trend is not expected to change over the next 20-year planning timeline. In addition to the Berk analysis of OFM’s 2012 projections, data released by OFM in September 2017 support the County’s decision to use a higher than medium projection growth rate. The OFM publication “Growth