We have been critical of the Yakima County Commissioners decision to drop out of the Regional Planning Commission and frankly puzzled as to why they want to do this. This has lead to some confusion about the city’s role in annexation policy. The Yakima City Council got it right with a 7-0 vote on limiting annexations by not offering sewer service outside the city limits until standards can be agreed upon. I was quite surprised at their vote since 6 of them have been heavily financed by the Homebuilders and Realtors. We will be watching this closely as it appears the Homebuilders are a little miffed about the vote. Joe Walsh, CWHB Director is quoted in the Yakima Herald article:
For developers, though, there is clearly nervousness.
Joe Walsh, director of governmental affairs for the Central Washington Home Builders Association, told the City Council the development community is willing to help bring the city and county back together on regional planning.
“If the development community could play a role in pulling the city and county together, we’d like to offer that,” he said.
Now, since the Homebuilders are concerned about this vote and with an apparent rift with the County over development, we caution everyone to watch carefully to see if the CWHB ‘investment’ in their chosen politicians will pay off in lower standards for them. The fox is in the henhouse! Joe Walsh wants to play a role in bringing the County and City together. His CWHB have invested thousands of dollars the past 2 elections (approx 20k) to have virtually all the seats on both the County and city sewed up.
This vote was a good one for the city council. We’ll be watching for their knees to buckle. Leita and the Homebuilders aren’t pleased!
we need to be on guard to ensure the city council does not subsidize the developers’ sewer hookup charges in the future by increasing existing residential sewer fees like they did in the past.
I find this a very interesting development – no pun intended! The common thinking was that the county commissioners parted ways with the Regional Planning Commission in order to give the developers free rein in the areas adjacent to the City of Yakima urban boundary – lowering the standards and saving them money. Now the City is pushing back – it will be very interesting to see if they will enforce prior standards on the developers for access to the sewer system/waste water treatment facility. I wish the YHR would publish some work on this subject……
The term “lower standards” has been tossed around a couple of times here. What standards are you speaking of, and how do they negatively impact a buyer?
“Less rigorous county standards” was reported by the YHR – I am not a planner so don’t know the specifics, but usually more rigor includes a variety of standards that would increase cost to the developer. Why else would developers want lower standards if not for the bottom line? As a buyer, I would prefer higher standards that may involve quality, public safety,etc. I don’t see higher standards as a negative but as a positive value to the consumer/buyer. My interest in knowing more is why I asked the YHR to do some additional investigative reporting on the subject.
Yes, seagal, but what do the “standards” involve? Are they structural standards? Standards involving septic systems? Help me out here.
I find it funny that seagal wants the higher standard without even knowing what the lower standard is or what the standards are to begin with.