SEQUIM — The new year looks to be a new story for Sequim’s leaders, with a slate of big questions headed, like a herd of elk, toward this small town.
Ken Hays, the new mayor, and Steve Burkett, the city manager in his third month at the wheel, are planning a public discussion in February of one of Sequim’s key issues: how much developers should pay to build here.
That discussion of “impact fees” — charges that help fund parks, streets and municipal buildings — has been lodged beneath Sequim’s other pressing problems for more than a year now.
But now Burkett, a veteran manager of several larger cities, is finally at his post, while Hays, an advocate of increased impact fees, is moderator of the City Council for 2010 and 2011.
Two opponents of impact fees, former mayor Walt Schubert and longtime council member Paul McHugh, are no longer on the council; McHugh didn’t run for re-election, and Schubert was defeated by Ted Miller, a strong voice in favor of higher development fees.
Forum, hearings
Burkett is busy this week drawing up a time line for at least one public forum next month. That will be followed by council hearings and, potentially, the adoption of fees to provide money for improved roads, amenities in Sequim’s parks, and a new City Hall and police station.
Burkett will present this time line to the council next Monday, during its meeting at 6 p.m. in the Sequim Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
Hays, meantime, acknowledges that some in the real estate industry — a primary driver of Sequim’s economy — fiercely oppose impact fees. And along with mayor pro tem Laura Dubois, he has been accused of wanting to shut out developers completely.
That’s incorrect, the mayor said.
“We don’t want to stop growth,” Hays said. “But we don’t want to encourage it at all costs.”
Pay for growth
To Hays’ mind, as builders build subdivisions and shopping centers here, they must pay for the roads, recreational spaces and public facilities that a growing population demands.
Sequim cannot, he said, continue to foot all of the bills for park maintenance, new traffic signals and other public facilities.
More and higher impact fees “are not about stopping growth. They’re about keeping the city from going broke,” Hays said.
Yet “there hasn’t been public dialogue about [impact fees]. Let’s put our personal opinions aside, and come to the table and talk about it,” he added.
“This is about money for the city,” and especially for parks and street improvements. Traffic, Hays said, is the No. 1 determining factor for quality of life in a city. Parks are a close second, he believes.
Urges caution
Longtime City Council member Bill Huizinga, however, is urging caution.
If Sequim charges “excessively” for any kind of development, he said, development is not going to take place inside the city. Instead it’ll go out to unincorporated county land, in what’s known as sprawl.
At the same time, Huizinga has been a stalwart advocate for providing more affordable housing, something that could mean higher-density development and high-rise buildings.
Huizinga has been pushing the housing issue for years now. He can only hope that 2010 will be the one in which the council will enact an ordinance requiring developers to make a portion of their new housing units affordable to lower-income buyers.
Hays, meantime, feels strongly about another problem that has languished since he took office in 2008: the Town Center Sub-Area Plan.
“Sequim still has a heart and soul: its downtown,” he said. City leaders must take steps to keep that center vibrant, and not let all of the retail and residential development slide out to the edges.
Lively mix in Port Townsend
Look at Port Townsend, Hays added. It has people who live inside the city core, for a lively mix of residential, shops and workplaces. That’s what a healthy downtown needs, he said, along with an atmosphere that promotes walking and window-shopping.
So development of the Sub-Area Plan, a blueprint for revitalizing the district around the Sequim Avenue-Washington Street junction, is on Hays’ to-do list for the year.
Dubois agrees and adds a few more things to her list. Among them is finding a site for a new City Hall — a puzzle that has plagued Sequim for about a decade.
Frank Needham, the city’s capital projects planner, said he’s looked at a staggering 74 possible sites over the past three years. Now Burkett has moved the site search under the umbrella of the Public Works Department, so Needham is working with interim director Jim Pemberton on finally settling on a site, starting preliminary engineering work and finding the financing. The time frame for all of this: five to seven years.
Hays, for his part, believes both the new city manager and the newly reconfigured council are poised to renew their focus on Sequim’s challenges.
Though he said the relationship of the members has been dysfunctional at times over the past two years, Hays predicted “a very functional council” from this point.
And when it comes to contentious, long-delayed topics such as impact fees, “here’s the bottom line: We need to talk about it.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.