2026-03-30-CDS-SS-BRIEFINGS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chair and members of the Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Gina Peckman and I am a community member of Kittitas County along with a member of the Easton community working on the sub-area plan. The Growth Management Act is built on a simple principle. Goal 12, codified in RCW 36.70A.020(12), states it plainly: public facilities and services necessary to support development shall be adequate to serve the development at the time it is available for occupancy and use, without decreasing current service levels below locally established minimum standards. That is the concurrency requirement. It is not optional. It is the law. RCW 36.70A.070(6)(b) goes further—it requires the County to adopt and enforce ordinances that prohibit development approval if the development causes level of service to decline below adopted standards, unless improvements or strategies are in place at the time of development, or a financial commitment exists to complete them within six years. (And in Kittitas County Conservation v. Kittitas County,the Growth Management Hearings Board found this County noncompliant on transportation concurrency—specifically because the County could not cite any provisions that would prohibit development approval when level of service standards were not met.That finding is still instructive today. ,APR-P73 expands LAMIRD boundaries—pushing more intensive development into rural areas that have no sewer, limited water,volunteer fire service, and roads the County already cannot afford to maintain.The County's own transportation analysis identifies a $91 million funding deficit over 20 years. And the proposed solution? Privatize the roads and shift the costs to rural residents. LU-P39 opens rural commercial zones to residential, and tourism uses with no size limits, no density caps, and no infrastructure triggers.There is no concurrency analysis.There is no requirement that water, sewer, fire, or road capacity be confirmed before development is approved. The Workforce Housing Rural Innovation Overlay can be applied anywhere residential is permitted,which is essentially the entire county, again with no concurrency requirements tied to it. And PUD guardrails under RR-P21 are being weakened, removing the constraint that PUDs in rural areas cannot create high-density environments requiring urban services.