City of Bonney Lake - Government - Departments - Community Development

Content adapted from Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington 'Featured Inquiries'.

Urban Growth Areas (UGAs) are those areas, designated by counties pursuant to RCW 36.70A.110, "within which urban growth shall be encouraged and outside of which growth can occur only if it is not urban in nature." Within these UGAs, growth will be encouraged and supported with adequate facilities. Areas outside of the UGAs will be reserved for primarily rural and resource uses.

Establishment of UGAs, per RCW 36.70A.110, which was enacted as part of the GMA, indicates that urban growth areas are to be "[b]ased upon the population forecast made for the county by the Office of Financial Management." OFM is to prepare a reasonable range for its population projections for counties, with the middle range representing the most likely population projection for the county. The County is the body that designates UGAs, and the statute mandates that the county must consult with cities in an attempt to reach agreement on the location of these urban growth areas.

The GMA requires that cities reevaluate their UGAs at least every 10 years to assure a continued 20-year land supply. In theory, if un-developable lands have been excluded from the UGA, there should always be 10 to 20 times the supply needed to accommodate growth in any given year. This should be enough to provide market choice and to avoid pushing up land and housing costs. Recognizing that growth pressures and market conditions can change over the course of 20 years, it will be important to monitor and reevaluate land supply more often than the 10 years required by the GMA. Land supply should probably be reviewed every three years, if not annually, to avoid surprises. King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, Clark and Thurston Counties, and the cities within these counties, must provide for annual collection of data on growth, development densities, and related information and evaluate such data at least every five years to assure that there is an adequate supply of buildable land to accommodate projected growth and meet county-wide planning policy objectives.

The Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board has stated that if the market factor exceeds the land supply needed to accommodate OFM's 20-year growth projection by more than 25%, the board will increase its scrutiny of the UGA designation. There appears to be no single right answer since growth pressures and the quality of land use data will vary from place to place. The answer may be to set a boundary that can be expanded and to monitor supply closely.

If drawn too tightly, urban growth boundaries could contribute to an increase in property costs. A major reason for providing adequate land supply and monitoring that supply is to avoid a substantial increase in property costs or an imbalance between land supply and demand.

Pierce County and Port Townsend/Jefferson County, Washington are exploring the use of growth phases or tiers within its UGAs. Communities in other states offer some tested examples of growth phasing techniques. The Summit County system limits development in its second and third tiers to 25 to 50 percent of the units allowed once the area becomes first tier. To develop at 50 percent, the developer must provide all major facilities needed to serve the development. The Twin Cities Metro Area uses tiers as a basis for tailoring different growth management strategies to different geographical policy areas. For instance, in the city centers (tier I), the emphasis is on redevelopment, in other fully developed areas (tier II) the emphasis is on infill, and in developing areas the emphasis is on rounding out available facilities. Special strategies can be applied to freestanding centers (tier IV), which have their own infrastructure systems and which serve rural areas. Use of tiered urban growth areas or other phasing strategies also can help assure that concurrency requirements don't tend to push development outward into areas where roads and other infrastructure have greater capacity. Clark County, WA and some cities within the county have established urban holding zones within UGAs, applying 10 or 20 acre minimum lot sizes until concurrency requirements are met. The Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board found the county's use of holding zones to be acceptable. The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development has developed interesting recommendations for growth phasing within the UGA. With this approach, local government would provide off-site urban service facilities within the UGAs with the goal of adding fully-served land to the urban land supply. All such public investment would be primarily in focused "public investment areas (PIAs)" within the UGAs. To develop outside the PIAs, even though still within the UGAs, a developer would need to provide all facilities at his or her own expense. This approach has successfully worked to focus development in Salem.

MRSC is of the opinion that, absent some existing contract to extend utility service to areas within the urban growth area, the city may, as a condition of providing utility service outside its limits, require that development within the area served conform to city land use standards. (Please note that if city standards are less restrictive than county standards, county agreement would be necessary).

In short, the provision of utility services to property outside the city's limits would be contractual, the terms of the contract being the agreement between the city and the developer. Outside of such a contract, there is little the City may do regarding compliance with city standards or the provision of impact fees, absent cooperation and agreement with the county. A city may also enter into an interlocal agreement with a county to apply city zoning and standards outside of the City and within the UGA.