FCCs: Could They Forever Change Our Rural Valley?
by Beverly Faxon
In the midst of a difficult agricultural year of drought and heat, many local farmers have carved out time to advocate for the future of farming in Skagit Valley. Others in the valley have joined in, asking for thoughtful future growth, in harmony with decades of planning agreements. A proposal to create Fully Contained Communities (FCCs) in Skagit County sparked a campaign in opposition, called Right Growth, Right Place: FCCs are Not the Answer. Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland is organizing and acting as the fiscal agent for the campaign, an alliance of concerned citizens and organizations, including, among others, SPF, the Skagit County Farm Bureau, Evergreen Islands, Indivisible and Home Rule Skagit. What set off the alarm bells? Bill Sygitowicz, a developer with a group named Skagit Partners, LLC, but based in Whatcom County, proposed to the Skagit County Commissioners that they amend our County Comprehensive Plan—those polices that determine how and where growth happens in the County— to allow FCCs to be built in Skagit Valley. The developer, who has tried, and failed, multiple times to gain County approval to build a large subdivision (called Avalon) in the countryside north of Burlington, changed tactics in 2021. He backed off of asking for permission for a specific development and instead proposed amending the County’s Comprehensive Plan to generally allow the building of large developments on rural lands. To the disappointment of hundreds of individuals and citizen groups who mobilized with little notice to submit opposing comments, the County Commissioners agreed to consider his proposal and are now examining whether or not to allow FCCs.
What is an FCC?
“Fully Contained Communities” are dense communities of housing, located in rural areas, outside of existing urban growth areas. Although the name suggests an inclusive, self-sufficient village, opponents find this misleading. Writing in the Skagit Scoop, Margery Hite, former lawyer for county and city governments, summarizes the characteristics of an FCC: “An FCC is a housing development, designed and constructed by private developers, made up of hundreds or even thousands of houses and apartments, with supporting commercial building space, in what is now the countryside. . . An FCC is not part of a city or town . . [it looks] like a city, [but] without a corresponding government to provide police, fire, road repair, drainage upgrades, or any of the maintenance and repair services that make a city livable. Without city government, the burden of paying for those services will fall to County taxpayers.” “To the eye,” she adds, “an FCC looks like a huge subdivision.” For scale, the current proposal projects a development of over 3,600 people (almost four times the population of La Conner). Only a few counties in Washington State have experimented with creating FCCs. In two of these counties, Snohomish and King, negative experiences led both to ban any future FCCs.
Conflicts with Existing Policies
When Washington State passed the Growth Management Act in the 1990s, the goal was to mandate growth planning and control sprawl. Decades later, a web of policies and recommendations at the city and county level, as well as from advisory groups, delineate how growth should happen in Skagit County. Among these are the Countywide Planning Polices (CPPs), which are mutually agreed to by both the County and the local municipalities of Burlington, Mount Vernon, Anacortes, Sedro-Woolley, and La Conner. These policies create a county-wide framework guiding how each government writes its own Comprehensive Plan. It is easy to get tangled in a morass of agencies and acronyms here, but for now, the crucial part is this: all of these policies and guidelines, dating back to the state Growth Management Act, have consistently opposed the creation of FCCs. Kirk Johnson was the senior planner for long range planning in Skagit County, working for the County from 1998 to 2017. He worked closely with County Commissioners, the planning commission, and the public on proposed amendments to the County Comprehensive Plan, development regulations, zoning, and land use. According to Mr. Johnson, the County does not have the authority to unilaterally change the Comprehensive Plan. Mr. Johnson has written that the County can’t “amend its comprehensive plan and development regulations in a manner inconsistent with the regionally adopted CPPs.” He states that pursuing this course is “a waste of time and resources because it will ultimately be found non-compliant and overturned.”
What is the County’s Position?
Peter Gill, current Long Range Planning Manager for Skagit County, emphasizes that the idea to build FCCs does not originate with the County, but with the developer’s proposal, “It is a petition brought to the county by a
developer that is interested in building a new community. The important part of this is that what we are doing now is more process—it’s not project-based. This is about starting a dialogue about how to grow.” The argument for FCCs is the need for housing and the claim that cities can’t or won’t provide housing within existing urban growth areas. Says Mr. Gill, “There is a recognition that a housing problem exists in Skagit County, so this underlying need is one of the things that is driving it from the proponents’ point of view. That is also why the county is interested in discussing it.” The County Comprehensive Plan calls for 20% of the population growth to be in rural areas while 80% should be in urban growth areas. Mr. Gill states, “We are closer to 30% of growth in the rural areas. When you step back, you can see that the growth is happening. Rural locations are getting population. It’s happening one way or another. Under this proposal, we would be looking at the polices by which the County would allow a new community to be developed.”
What Farmers Worry About: Drainage, Traffic, and a Farming Legacy
The Co-op’s commitment to sustainable food production and supporting local suppliers prompts us to ask: why do FCCs worry the local farming community? John Anderson, President of the Board of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, explains why SPF views FCCs as an urgent issue, “SPF’s reason for being is to advocate for farmland and for the continued economic viability of farmers in our valley. As farmers we have two main concerns: traffic and drainage.” Mr. Anderson points out, “Farmers deal with traffic—they need to be able to move equipment and produce in a timely fashion. Dairy and crop farmers need to use our roads, and delays of increasing traffic are costly. Concentrating the amount of people in an FCC in a rural area would adversely affect neighboring farms.” Drainage is one of the most worrisome aspects of an FCC. Says Mr. Anderson, “People may not think about it, but drainage is vital to the health of local agriculture. We have drainage districts set up for the past century for this. It is our fear that our existing systems aren’t able to handle something as concentrated as drainage from proposed FCCs. We have concerns about dealing with the runoff from so much impervious surface.” Uncontrolled runoff can lead to flooding, soil deterioration, erosion, and pollution. The Skagit County Drainage and Irrigation Districts Consortium was formed in Skagit County in the late 1800s and represents 56,000 acres. Its elected commissioners work to ensure drainage and irrigation infrastructure is maintained. In a letter to the County Commissioners, the Consortium detailed their concerns about the effects of high density FCCs on drainage infrastructure and landowners downstream. Says Executive Director Jenna Friebel, “As an area is developed, we get more and more runoff, but little capacity to handle it. We have ditches that were built 120 years ago to serve farm drainage that were never intended to manage urban storm water.” (continued on page 13)
skagit valley food co-op • the natural enquirer • october–december 2021 3
