Snohomish - Is the Snohomish County Council slowing development because of the transportation system melt-down? Most intelligent thinking people would see the recent actions by the Snohomish county council as non-growth oriented. Seattle-Everett metro area is now ranked second in the nation for congestion, barely being beat by Los Angeles CA. Does that sound like Washington State has a grasp on traffic? Maybe the county council has figured out something that the rest of us already knew, the governors plan isn't working! Let's take a look at a few items that came before the council over the last couple of years.

South Snohomish UGA, this was a complete waste of county time and was more about pandering to special interest groups then it was about fact of law. More family businesses are being harmed by these delays, inaction and property restrictions then by any other local issue, especially when it may turn out that it was all for not. Two local politicians signed on for this lambasting of property rights and hopefully they will have the decency to apologize if their actions are found to be inaccurate. As a sub note, the environmental reasons cited during the activist rampage where found not to exist according to the state. The state is now filling some of those same areas for their own projects.

Paine Field, this subject has been around for a while now but only recently came under fire from the FAA. Once again the County is acting without thinking and this time it may cost millions in grant money.

Snohomish  Lake Stevens UGA fight, not even our freshman rep. who worked with Mike Reed to help lobby for the annexation of the property into Snohomish's northern UGA, could get the deal done and being a lobbiest is there business. First the county delayed action, and then they sent it back to the cities to hammer out. That means another five year delay and more money wasted.

Are all these and many others simply a coincident or is the county saying they cant grow until the governor fixes the traffic crisis. A crisis brought on by short sided planning not unlike the U.S. oil dependency brought on by environmental regulation. If people wanted to take the bus they would and now with the bulk of the project money going to HOV  multimode expenditures we will be hard pressed to see freeways being widened for the average Joe.