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Buildable Lands Program for Thurston County
In 1990 the State Growth Management Act (GMA) was passed requiring local cities, towns, and the County to develop detailed plans on how they planned to accommodate growth. These are called Comprehensive Plans. At the same time the seven cities and towns and Thurston County developed county-wide planning policies that laid out how Thurston County was to grow as a region. Under these policies, Thurston Regional Planning Council was formally asked to review land supply and planned densities to ensure that the urban areas were large enough to accommodate 20 years of projected growth.
The legislature added a monitoring and evaluation provision to the GMA in 1997. This provision is often referred to as the “Buildable Lands Program.” It affects six western Washington counties (Clark, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston) and the cities and towns within them. Thurston Regional Planning Council was asked to develop the Buildable Lands Report for Thurston County, based on its long history of monitoring land supply. The first report was issued in 2002.
The Buildable Lands Program in Thurston County answers two key growth-related questions. The first is whether residential development in the urban growth areas is occurring at the densities envisioned in local comprehensive plans. The second is whether there is an adequate land supply in the urban growth areas for anticipated future growth in population and employment.
The answers to these questions will help communities in our county determine if they are developing the way they want to.
September Report Now Available (amended October 2007 & April 2008)
In 1997, the state Growth Management Act was amended to add a new growth monitoring section. Meeting the requirements of this new legislation came to be commonly known as the “buildable lands program” because of the law’s emphasis on determining how much buildable land is in the urban areas of six counties including Thurston County. Under the legislation an evaluation and monitoring report was due September 1, 2007.
The Buildable Lands report was amended in October 2007 to reflect changes in the Population Forecast for Thurston County that were accepted by TRPC in late September 07.
Table 3-12 of the Buildable Lands report was amended in April 2008 to reflect changes to the urban growth boundary in Tumwater.
The Report was developed by Thurston Regional Planning Council on behalf of Thurston County, the town of Bucoda, and the cities of Lacey, Olympia, Rainier, Tenino Tumwater, and Yelm.
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