Cascadia Weekly
7/27/2007

Letter to the Editor
by Eric Hirst

Jack Petree’s letter in last week’s Weekly mischaracterizes the Futurewise position on single-family homes. Futurewise supports a diverse mix of urban housing options, including single-family homes, apartments, condos, and townhouses.

Futurewise is a statewide public-interest group focused on healthy communities and cities while protecting farmland, forests, and open space. Futurewise favors Smart Growth, land-use patterns that accommodate an expanding population in ways that benefit current and future residents. Such patterns focus development inside existing cities, where infrastructure (e.g., roads, water systems, parks, and libraries) already exist, minimizing the cost to taxpayers for these expensive capital investments. Such infill (building up rather than out) protects rural areas.

A group of us recently formed Futurewise Whatcom, the local chapter of Futurewise. Our chapter works to ensure that Whatcom County and its cities manage growth responsibly. Our goal is to ensure that local governments implement Washington’s Growth Management Act to benefit citizens rather than special interests. We promote impact fees to ensure that new developments pay their fair share of public infrastructure costs (so existing taxpayers are not burdened with these costs). We urge the Whatcom County Council to limit the size of the urban growth areas to prevent rural sprawl. Bellingham is the 11^th most populous city in Washington, but it ranks 52^nd in population density. This disparity in rankings shows that Bellingham—without expansion of its urban growth area—has ample land for a diverse mix of new housing units.

To achieve a better future for Whatcom County, we need your help. Please contact us (see www.futurewise.org/whatcom or email EricHirst@comcast.net) and get involved with our work. After all, it’s our community, our choices, and our future.

Eric Hirst
Member, Steering Committee
Futurewise Whatcom
July 27, 2007