The Columbian recently provided a front-page story concerning the county’s booming housing market, featuring the large Pacific Lifestyle subdivision under construction on N.W. 179th Street, as county government works to ease “our housing shortage” by building many hundreds of new houses in the area for out-of-state buyers. It failed to mention that most of this new construction is being built on rural land, recently annexed into the city of Ridgefield, or converted via other means such as our Discovery Corridor.
These developments have many negative effects on local residents and on the environment, with pollution and traffic disturbances. The one open lane through the area looks and feels like the surface of the moon, and often has large steel plates and raised access covers in the roadway. When these huge projects are completed, area residents will face dozens of “For Sale” signs along our roads, and will be stuck in much more traffic. Trophy schools sell high-end houses, so new school levies and bonds will need to be funded from increased property taxes.
If recent history is repeated, what we will not get is anything meaningful in mitigation: no new bike lanes, trails, or parks. With our current county government, local residents come last.
