Woodland Bottoms residents fear inclusion in urban growth boundary

WOODLAND — From Kim Everett’s home outside of Woodland, she can hear cars driving, trains passing and planes flying.

“It’s not quiet, but it’s peaceful,” said Everett, 53.

Everett and her husband moved in about two years ago, looking to leave behind increasingly crowded Vancouver. Everett works as a nurse practitioner and spends part of her workweek at her home office, from where she can look out and see her three horses. Beyond her pasture, there’s a farm where she can watch cows graze. On clear nights, the stars glow.

The fear for Everett and many of her neighbors in the Woodland Bottoms area is that they might lose some of that peacefulness as Woodland officials move deeper into discussions about expanding Woodland’s urban growth boundary. It’s a topic the city’s planning commission has discussed the last few months, and will go before the city council on Monday.

The planning commission recently voted to recommend that the city council expand the urban growth boundary in the area adjacent to the city south of Horseshoe Lake between the railroad and Lewis River down to Wyman Road, according to Travis Goddard, community development director for the city. From the city’s point of view, the discussion has been centered around how to plan for expected growth. According to the city’s most recent comprehensive plan, Woodland will need an additional 1,292 housing units by 2036.

Part of the recommended changes would allow a developer to build homes on the property behind Everett’s street, meaning Everett and her horses might not live a fence away from a herd of cows, but instead a few hundred new neighbors.

“What happens if they put a road back there?” Everett said. “What if someone crashes into the fence, or tries to jump up? How can I protect my horses? We can build a sturdy wall, but then we lose the view.”

Everett wanted to move to a rural area specifically to fulfill her lifelong dream of owning horses. She grew up in a military family and served as a military nurse.

She and her husband have talked about moving to Yacolt or Amboy if development kicks into gear, but there are issues being even farther away from things like a grocery store. She also bought her home using a Department of Veterans Affairs loan, meaning she didn’t have to put down any money.

“It sounds like an aviary,” said Seaman, 55.

Seaman moved to the area to get away from a subdivision in Battle Ground because she couldn’t take all the noise. Her plan has been to pay off her house and retire.

“It’s depressing that this beautiful retirement with serenity probably isn’t going to happen,” she said. “I never thought they’d be able to turn agricultural land into residential. Silly me.”

Part of what drove Seaman out to Woodland was her interest in hobby farming. She keeps chickens, used to have horses and has a tractor she uses to maintain her property. A big concern for her is what happens to her ability to burn if her property is included in the urban growth boundary. She’s allowed to burn at her home because she’s outside Woodland’s urban growth boundary, where bonfires were prohibited in 2007.

Seaman fears that if her property is added to the urban growth boundary, annexation into the city won’t be far behind.

In the planning commission’s recommendations, it says “the property owner shall enter into a developer’s agreement with the city that includes the following: agreement to annex into the city of Woodland prior to connection to the city’s water and/or sewer utility.” Goddard said the city’s desire is for growth to occur as part of the city.

“The city would like to be able to capture some of the expenses that comes with that growth,” he said. “We would like the school district to get the revenue associated with impact fees, and so we’ve been talking about a 76-lot subdivision south of town. If that occurs in the city, that’s $380,000 of school revenue for capital projects. Whether that’s paying off debt, paying for additional building construction, paying for additional land, that’s a lot of money for the school district to lose out on.”

Whose decision is growth?

While the city council can take action on the recommendation Monday night, all the council can really do is request the expansion. Ultimately, Cowlitz County has the final say. Cowlitz County officials didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

Elaine Placido, director of community services for Cowlitz County, spoke at a planning commission meeting in January, and said county officials aren’t “opposed to future development efforts that will expand housing options, choice and affordability.” She also said development needs to be planned in collaboration.

“If we expand our urban growth boundary, at this point we are just decided on what our request would be,” Goddard said. “Cowlitz County is the government body with the authority to set growth boundaries.”

That’s been part of the issue for Everett, Seaman and plenty of their neighbors who have testified at various meetings these last few months. It isn’t just the growth coming their rural neighborhoods, but it’s having these decisions made for them. They don’t live in the city and can’t vote for the people making these decisions. A group created a petition to oppose the expansion that was signed more than 600 times, but Bottoms residents still feel left out of the discussion. Seemingly everywhere the eye looks in the area catches a glimpse of a yellow sign with one message: “Save Our Bottoms.”

Seaman said that she spoke to at least 50 neighbors about signing the petition, and only one person didn’t sign because they were hopeful their home’s value would increase with nearby development. At various planning commission meetings and a city council workshop, most people who speak during public comment are opposed to the expansion, other than the developers.

Neighbors have also felt like they’re not getting direct answers on what it means to be included in the urban growth boundary compared with being annexed. Everett, Seaman and others have wells and septic tanks. Goddard said the city has standards in place to continue existing wells and septic systems until they need to be replaced or have some major work done. Then, people will most likely have to hook onto city services, which they will have to pay to do and then pay fees to use.

“The issue for me is how are you going to serve me?” Everett said. “I don’t need city water. I don’t need city sewer. Nobody needs more taxes.”

While Everett has been frustrated by a lot during this discussion, she’s at the point where she just wants to know what the actual decision is. That might not be coming, though. Goddard said the city council will discuss its five-year plan in 2021, and he said if the council isn’t comfortable making a decision on these changes right now, it would make sense to table them, do more work and talk about them again at that time.

Some have said they don’t think now is the time to discuss growth. Instead, the focus should be on improving the city’s infrastructure, including the packed Interstate 5 Exit 21. The city and Washington State Department of Transportation are conducting a joint study on Exit 21. Mayor Will Finn said earlier this year he thinks the growth discussion should wait until some other infrastructure issues are improved.

While Woodland Bottoms residents aren’t generally eager to see the growth, they’d like to know what is going to happen to their neighborhood so they can figure out what to do next.

“We all came down here because we wanted to live in a small, quaint town,” Seaman said. “We didn’t want to live in Hazel Dell.”