Letters to the Editor
Letter to the Editor | Consider infrastructure along with housing
Over the past year, Gig Harbor residents have heard a great deal about housing, infrastructure and the substantial changes to local development regulations required by the Legislature. What remains much less clear is whether those issues are actually being addressed as one coordinated effort.
That distinction matters.
Housing policy does not exist independently of transportation, sewer, stormwater and other public infrastructure. When the state requires cities to accommodate additional housing types and densities, the appropriate local response is not simply to determine how many units can fit within a zoning district. It is to determine how those requirements can be implemented within the physical constraints of the community and what infrastructure will be necessary to support the resulting development.
Gig Harbor Now reported last year that the Community Development Department was working on a much broader development code overhaul intended to implement recent state housing legislation while modernizing the City’s zoning regulations. At the time, that effort was described as addressing development comprehensively, that broader effort appears to have given way to the considerably narrower Phase 2 housing proposal now before the Planning Commission.
Meanwhile, Public Works is confronting many of the consequences that should inform those land-use decisions. Earlier this year, the City commissioned additional analysis of the Borgen/Burnham/Canterwood/SR 16 roundabout specifically because contemplated multifamily development could cause the intersection to exceed the City’s acceptable level of service. The resulting recommendation was essentially to monitor development and prepare an infrastructure improvement if growth reaches the modeled level.
These should not be separate conversations.
The question should not be whether Community Development can write zoning regulations that accommodate additional housing while Public Works later determines what infrastructure is necessary to accommodate it. The two departments should be working from the same assumptions, growth scenarios and implementation strategy from the beginning.
Recent public discussion suggests that residents are seeing the same disconnect. Letters published in Gig Harbor Now have repeatedly raised concerns about traffic, sewer capacity and whether infrastructure is keeping pace with development. More recently, residents appearing before the Planning Commission questioned proposed increases in housing intensity, parking standards and the ability of existing infrastructure and public services to accommodate additional development.
Those concerns cannot simply be dismissed as opposition to housing. They are legitimate planning questions.
The Legislature has certainly constrained the City’s choices. Gig Harbor must comply with state housing requirements, and pretending otherwise is not a serious policy option. But state law does not relieve local government of the responsibility to plan. If anything, reduced local discretion makes coordinated planning more important.
What seems to be missing is leadership bringing these pieces together.
Community Development should be able to explain what additional development capacity the proposed zoning regulations create. Public Works should be able to explain what that development capacity means for transportation, sewer and stormwater systems. Finance should be able to explain how necessary improvements will be funded. And the administration should be able to present those pieces to the Planning Commission, City Council and public as one coherent implementation strategy.
Instead, the public appears to be receiving pieces of the discussion at different times and in different forums: housing regulations at the Planning Commission, transportation capacity at council study sessions, individual development impacts through project review, and infrastructure concerns after projects are already proposed.
That is not an effective way to manage a period of significant legislative change.
The City does not need to choose between complying with state housing law and protecting the infrastructure and character of Gig Harbor. It needs a coordinated strategy for doing both.
Before moving further with substantial changes to residential zoning, City leadership should bring Community Development and Public Works together and publicly demonstrate how the proposed development capacity, transportation network, sewer system, stormwater infrastructure and capital improvement program fit together.
Residents should not have to assemble that picture themselves from separate staff reports, Planning Commission meetings, traffic studies and individual development proposals. Bringing those pieces together is one of the fundamental purposes of local planning and, more importantly, of organizational leadership.
For a city that regularly touts leadership and leadership development in departmental updates and other public communications, the apparent lack of coordinated leadership on one of the most consequential planning issues facing Gig Harbor is difficult to overlook. Leadership is more than an organizational value or a professional development exercise. It means establishing a clear direction, ensuring departments are working toward the same objectives, and taking responsibility for bringing competing priorities together. With housing policy, infrastructure and community concerns increasingly intersecting, that leadership should be readily apparent. Right now, it is not.
Karen McCarthy
Gig Harbor