Tag: Futurewise

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Keep Multi-Family Zones at Higher Densities and Preserve Farmland

A few weeks ago you received an action alert from farmer Tristan Klesick and I, asking for your help in telling the Snohomish County Council to not adopt changes to the County’s Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program. Unfortunately, the County Council did not listen.  Instead, Council’s decision was a missed opportunity and allowed exemptions for single family homes and townhouses from the TDR program, and preserving valuable farmland and local food sources.  

If that wasn’t bad enough, now the County Council is considering removing even more land and development from the TDR Program!

The County Council is considering reducing minimum density requirements in multi-family zones–even those multi-family zones around Highway 99 are perfect for transit-oriented, mixed use redevelopment.  This would allow for single family homes and townhomes in areas that are best suited for higher densities.  It would also remove more land from the TDR program, which would reduce opportunities for protecting critical farmlands in Snohomish County.

If the Council approves, we will lose opportunities for affordable housing near transit; we will lose receiving areas for TDR development credits to preserve farmland, and we’ll have further expansion of our urban growth areas into our rural lands.

That is a lose-lose-lose situation.  Ultimately, if the Council decreases densities in our Multi-Family zones, we will also be adding more and more cars to our roads creating more traffic nightmares, adding more pollutants into our air and water, and giving the developers exactly what they want…open season on our rural lands for more sprawling development!  And we won’t be helping our farmers preserve farmland!

Please CLICK HERE to send a message to the Snohomish County Council today to tell them NO to reducing minimum densities in our Multi-Family zones, and YES to keeping TDR receiving areas intact for these zones to help preserve farmland and local food sources.  

Our Council needs to hear from you!  They need to know that you want housing choices for all income groups and higher densities in the multi-family zones that will help jumpstart transit-oriented development.   We need long-range planning regulations that will house our growing population near transit and urban centers, reduce car trips that are polluting our air and water and clogging our roads, and save farmland from urban sprawl.

The hearing is at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 15th!  Please CLICK HERE  to send the message before the hearing.  If you can, please attend the hearing and speak directly to the Council.

Thank you for your help!

Kristin Kelly, Snohomish/Skagit Program Director, Futurewise

P.S.  If you would like more information about how to support your local farmers and about Klesick Farms, contact Tristan by Clicking Here.

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Kristin Kelly
Email: [email protected]
Phone:
Address: 1429 Avenue D, #532
City: Snohomish WA 98290

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Preseving Local Food Options & Farmland, Part II

Week of June 21, 2015

Preserving local food options and farmland should not be this hard! The United States has been blessed with some amazing Natural resources like good Farmland, Forest lands, grazing lands, minerals, water and waterways. And since the day this country was founded we pushed west.  Forward Ho! Surprisingly?!?!?!, we reached the Pacific Ocean and no longer can push west.  So what are we going to do now to wisely use the finite natural resources we have been blessed with to provide a quality of life for generations of future citizens?

Farmers are like any other member of our communities. We have kids, grand kids, we have to go to the dentist and doctor, save for weddings and retirement. We also have to manage a large community resource called farmland. And in the last 20 years that management has included an ever increasing regulatory burden, otherwise known as additional expenses to run our farms. And the closer your farm is to the city it gets more complicated, and if you happen to farm next to a river and a city, WOW!

Given the County Council’s appetite to not use Zoning or TDR as mechanisms to shift the Development pressure away from our farms at the moment, we need a different strategy.

I think fair pricing, not price gouging is a part of the solution, but supply and demand drive prices. Having more farms selling to more local folks will keep food prices affordable and have the biggest impact on saving farmland today.

To accomplish this, each of us will have to be intentional. I believe small-to-medium farmers are the key to feeding our local communities. Literally, bringing a box of good to more people is the solution. I have intentionally positioned Klesick farms to play a larger part in feeding our local communities. We have moved to a new packing facility, we have expanded our delivery days and are working with more local growers to get more local food to our customers.

The solution is to have more of you! Yes more of you: customers who are intentional about supporting local farms. It is that simple: the more local customers, the more local farms. So preserving local food options looks like eating locally from local farms! We need more intentional eaters!

Look for information on Facebook and in your inboxes this week as we roll out a new summer campaign to preserve local food options and farmland.

 

Together we can make a difference!

 

Farmer Tristan


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Preserving Local Food Options & Farmland, Part I

Week of June 14, 2015

Last week, Klesick Farms and you, our Good Food Community, teamed up with Kristin Kelly, the executive Director of Snohomish County Futurewise, and the Pilchuck Audabon Society to encourage our County Council to “preserve local food options and farmland.” In 2012 the County Council voted 5-0 to implement the current Transfer of Rights Development (TDR) program. Last week the Council voted 4-1 to essentially gut the TDR program and give the development community the “green light” to build more single family homes. So now the County Council has “caved” in to the developers’ wishes, meaning our urban areas will still receive most of the incoming population growth.

If the Council would have stood on their decision to support TDR, that growth would have still gone to our urban areas, but we would have been able to preserve, forever, thousands of acres of farmland at the same time. The Council, except Dave Somers, didn’t want to hold the line and require the development community to use TDRs. Council members Ken Klein, Terry Ryan, Brian Sullivan, and Stephanie Wright voted against TDR. So now Snohomish County residents will still get the extra growth, but the developers will get more profits and no farmland is protected. That is not a win-win; it is a windfall profit for a few landowners and developers.

Also, in 2012, Council members Brian Sullivan and Stephanie Wright voted for the TDR program. If they would have voted the same way this time or committed to stand with TDR, I wouldn’t have had to ask for your help. Ironically, Council members Brian Sullivan and Stephanie Wright were not running for reelection in 2012, but they are this year.

What really bothers me is the lack of integrity that exists in our political process. This change to the TDR program “came out of nowhere” and was timed to limit public participation and placed into legislation where there is no repeal process. Where is the transparency in that!

This week Kristin and I will be asking for your help again to send one final email message to the County Council expressing our dissatisfaction with their vote and a desire for more transparency in the process. Please join us in sending a strong response for the Council to preserve our local food options and farmland by implementing wise growth policies going forward.

Kristin Kelly and I both believe that the Snohomish County can balance the need to accommodate the future growth with protecting our farmlands. It is more than doable. Click here to send your response to the Snohomish County Council.

Respectfully submitted,

Farmer Tristan


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Tristan's Letter to the County Council

Tristan is headed off this morning to talk to the Snohomish County Council.
Here’s the letter he’s bringing with him.

A huge “Thank you” to each of you who have responded so far. And for those of you who haven’t, there’s still time. Don’t wait, today, June 10th, 2015 is the close for the discussion. Add your voice to protect Snohomish County Farmland!

 

Good Morning, My name is Tristan Klesick and I am a local farmer from Stanwood. Before I begin, I wanted to say “thank you for choosing to be leaders”. Leadership is a rare commodity today and those who are willing to make the final decision are also rare.

I have been in the food and farming business for over 20 years and the last 15 years I have been involved with the TDR issue. The County has sent me to Maryland and California with then Councilman John Koster and Senior Planner Tom Niemann to study what worked and didn’t work in the TDR world. I was also co-chair of the Snohomish Agricultural Economic Development Action Team or SAEDAT.  The Current TDR program is a solid policy.

Local farmland is an economic driver that provides local, regional and national food, helps keep taxes lower, provides habitat and flood storage.

I appreciate the tension surrounding Amendment 13. This issue is important enough to me that I engaged my community of customers and asked them to help me preserve local food options and farmland. I sent an email to 8000 people on my list and posted it on my FB page. As of this morning, that FB post has been seen by over 20K people and shared over 225 times.

My customers understand that growth is going to happen, infrastructure needs to built, but preserving the ability to feed our citizens is equally important.

The current TDR program is a good start at managing that growth and also ensuring that local citizens will have local food.  Snohomish County needs the Development community to build the infrastructure to handle the growth and the TDR program, as it is, should also streamline that process for them. I understand that it is a new paradigm, but planning now to feed the current and future residents of our county is a part of that new paradigm.

This year I have seen the need for my farmland to produce more fruit and vegetables, because the local demand is increasing, but also because the “traditional” vegetable producing regions like Arizona and California are in major droughts. If things don’t return to somewhat normal precipitation, Snohomish County Farmland will be even more important to our county and this region.

My constituents, who are also your constituents, will want to hear how Council members Somers, Klein, Wright, Sullivan and Ryan voted. I will report back to them. I would love to report back to them that each of you led on the issue of managing growth and preserving local food options and farmland by voting no on amendment 13!

Thank you

 

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Please help me preserve local food options and farmland in Snohomish County

Dear Friends,

This is Tristan Klesick of Klesick Farms writing you today with Kristin Kelly, Smart Growth Executive Director of Pilchuck Audubon Society and Snohomish/Skagit Program Director for Futurewise, asking for your help with an important issue that will preserve our local food options and farmland, both today and in the future. 

We know, and I believe you will agree, that protecting farmland and helping farmers will ensure a healthy, local, and safe food supply for our county and region, as well as maintain a quality of life we all are thankful for and enjoy.

A few years ago our Snohomish County Council members made a very wise decision about the future of our growing county.  Growth is inevitable, but wise growth is the goal.  The County Council adopted a countywide Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) Program, which will give the development community the ability to increase densities in our urban growth areas to accommodate the future growth.  The developers would need to purchase a development certificate from our county farmers in order to get increased densities in parts of the county that are better equipped to handle more growth. 

Even though the TDR program was put together with an array of stakeholder consensus from farmers, the development community, environmental community and businesses, the development community no longer wants use the TDR program (to preserve farmland) for the increased housing density.

This is why we need your help!

We believe the current TDR program is a win-win for local citizens, developers, and farmers!   We (Tristan and Kristin) have spent years working on an equitable solution to preserve farmland.  We have shared our views on the proposed changes to the current TDR program, but sadly it is becoming apparent that we will need local voters to help us convince the County Council to not cave into the desires of the development community.

Help us convince the County Council that any change in our current TDR program is unacceptable.

Kristin and I have written an email to the Council and now is your chance to share your voice.  Please Click Here to add your voice to the discussion by sending an email the County Council before June 10th, when they reconvene for a public hearing.  You can add your story and your own thoughts to the email, urging the County Council to protect our local food options and farmland today and into the future.  

Also, calling your council member will help as well.  Just leave a message on their voice mail… call 425-388-3494.

Snohomish County Council District 1–Ken Klein

Snohomish County Council District 2–Brian Sullivan

Snohomish County Council District 3–Stephanie Wright

Snohomish County Council District 4–Terry Ryan

Snohomish County Council District 5–Dave Somers

Together we can ensure a bright future for our children. Click Here to send an email to the County Council today

Tristan Klesick, Klesick Family Farms

Kristin Kelly, Futurewise and Pilchuck Audubon Society