Local Planning Commision Meeting

Last night the City of Lynnwood had a meeting of the planning commission to discuss the Energy and Sustainability component of the Growth Management act of Lynnwood. In Washington state we passed a citizens initiative was was to force the government, state, county and local, to deal with growth.We wanted to protect wild land, farmlands and green spaces. So when we passed this, all governmental offices had to draw up plans, define what all the land in their area of governance would be, how to use it and what the development practices would be that are then practiced.

Essentially, this plan is the master development plan because all development must pass through this filter now. All growth must be managed, we did not want sprawl like you see in other parts of the country reaching form the Puget Sound to the Cascades. From the Cascades across the farmlands to the boarder with Idaho. So over the next 5 years they, the government, went through all of their land and worked with the county and state to determine where they could grow the urban, suburban areas and what they could not touch.

So Last nights meeting was in response to a State law that requires the state to address Sustainability and Global Warming issues. this forces local administrations to adjust their growth management acts to address these concerns dictated by the state. I have read the Sustainability statements of the surrounding towns and found them woefully lacking on energy policy. Lynnwood on the other hand addressed mostly energy. This is due to the commissioner tasked with writing the draft getting the grant based on addressing energy. Sustainability part was was added later. I attached 3 different plans. One for Edmonds, one for Mountlake Terrace and one for Lynnwood. The Lynnwood plan is the first draft.

When I showed up, the Planning commission was meeting in t conference room and there were only 3 of us to testify. 2 were from environmental organizations I was the only one there to push then in the direction of local energy generation. After the fist public person talked about the need to protect our watersheds, we touch 5 big water sheds we touch. 3 go directly into the sound and 2 into lakes. Some of there are very damaged. A sustainability component should address this. However, this was not my focus.

I spoke for about 5 minutes on the need to address the concept of Peak oil and the impact the loss of petroleum will have on our commmunity. I pointed out that Lynnwood did not have any farmland, and I saw no chance of taking out stipmalls and houseing developments to make farm land, so we were dependent on bringing food for outside.

I pointed out that we had a descent bus system, but it is a County run system, so as a community we had no transportation component that we could control. I pointed out that electric, plug in hybrid were going to happen and when they become available it would occur quickly. When this occurs, there will be great demands on the grid and electrical supply. that the best way to help this would be through the code/planning requirement.

This took me into the we need to make new developments have energy generation capabilities part of my little talk. I pointed out that small wind was viable, with zoning changes to make it possible for us to put towers in our yards. That Solar was viable as well, Seattle gets about 60% the sun as San Diego. This makes this an option.
I then pointed out that REQUIRING new development was only one of the roads. We also needed to come up with ways of helping current already existing houses and small businesses to retrofit their locations.

We need, some type of guidance from the city to move us down this path. I thought that my ideas were heard out, unfortunately no questions. A comment but nothing like the buzz around the Adopt a Stream guys speech. I know, what do you expect, saving streams are something that people can look at and SEE a difference and it is pretty. Energy is a hidden time bomb and a difficult one to see or get your head around.

I will continue to pursue this plan. The gentleman working on it is interested in working with me. So I will. I will spend my time doing whatever he would like me to. I will bend over backwards to get some local, distributive component in the local energy component. Like I have said in posts and other blogs, my goal is a expanded, distributive model. Were everyone trickles a little bit of energy into the grid. It won't solve the problem. We must have large scale projects feeding our houses and businesses with good cleen energy. But if we all do our part, and local government MUST step in to help us do that, then we can get off oil and move towards a cleaner, safer energy future. I want local government to reduce the zoning impairments, possibly encourage small power through financial and tax incentives and lead people to do this. Remember the Victory Garden movement? Why can't we take this approach with energy?
sustainability plans.zip
I will let you all know how my next meeting goes.

dan