OK, it’s abundantly clear now. King County planners want a lot of 40-unit apartments here, want private developers to build them and don’t really care what the community thinks. Despite five months of thoughtful, articulate comments overwhelmingly opposing a draft Vashon plan that far exceeds our water availability and ferry capacity, on April 18, King County planners made only minor modifications to its private-developer-based plan to radically increase the density of Vashon town.

If we need about 100 units of affordable housing and only have water for about 240 units, why are they planning for 10 to 20 times that amount at half buildout? A petition by 114 people urging a sustainable, not-for-profit, permanent affordable housing effort scaled to Vashon seems to have been completely ignored.

Talking with the planners Tuesday night was disturbing. Behind easily debunked assertions that they don’t expect a surge of development — never mind that the Sunflower project sold out in two and a half weeks, and that “no developer will touch these” — despite the many unsubsidized R-18 zoned “affordable” projects around the Northwest, there is almost total disregard for the impact that these changes will have on our community and for the comments submitted. The planners are focused on producing a lot of affordable housing, far more than Vashon’s need. It will be marketed widely and sell quickly.

They are allowing a very short comment period. The deadline is May 1. If you’ve been sitting back pondering the complexities of this plan, time is up. This is a historic moment for the future of Vashon. Please consider commenting on our community plan. You can make it simple and explicit: “I oppose density bonuses for private developers.” Email Bradley.Clark@kingcounty.gov and Joe.McDermott@kingcounty.gov.

— Frank Jackson

* Editor’s Note: The Beachcomber reached out to King County planner Brad Clark to ask about affordable housing and the density bonus. He said King County cannot legally “mandate housing be built by only one type of organization,” meaning that the county cannot write into the CSA Plan that only non-profit organizations will be able to use the density bonus. See the story on page 1 for more.