FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK

AND ONE MORE THING...
Michael Kattermann, AICP
mkattermann@ahbl.com

As I write this, 2005 is just beginning. It's time to reflect on the year past and look forward to the year ahead. Another new year, another opportunity to do all those things I wanted to do last year and somehow didn't get to.

There is particular significance to me at this time because it also marks the last six months of my term as president. The first 18 months have gone by quickly - these last six will be gone in a flash. Some of the chapter's accomplishments in 2004 include:

• joint sponsorship with CTED and PAW of the four planners' forums around the state
• successful joint conference with the Oregon APA in Portland in October
• establishing a chapter-only membership for boards, commissions and associations
• continuing policy and legislative work with the GMA Working Group, including passage of four bills
• update of the Livable Washington report and
• adoption of a legislative platform for the 2005 session.

There were some other efforts begun in 2004 that are now coming to fruition, one of the most obvious is this new e-newsletter format for Planning Northwest. This format allows us to deliver the newsletter more quickly and efficiently and to a broader audience at less cost than our traditional paper version. We also are working toward publishing monthly sometime later in 2005. This is an opportunity to get out more information about the activities of our members.

Another advantage of this new format is a better link with our newly redesigned chapter web page www.washington-apa.org. Ferdouse Oneza, our "web mistress" has done an outstanding job maintaining our website over the past several years. In 2004, she began working with a web designer to update the site and transition from web maintenance to more of an oversight role. There's still some fine-tuning, but check it out. The e-newsletter publication and web maintenance are being performed under a contract with the Municipal Research and Services Center (www.mrsc.org), another important organization to planners in Washington and a potential partner for the chapter on other issues and ventures.

Another effort begun in 2004 that we hope to have completed in the first quarter is the chapter's Strategic Plan Update - 2005-2009. By the time you read this, a draft of the plan will be available for your review and comment on the website. Please take a look and provide your comments by the end of February. The board will be considering a final draft for adoption at our March meeting.

The chapter also is electing three officers this year: vice-president, secretary, treasurer. We have all been well-served by the three incumbents, Shane Hope, Bob Sokol and Steve Davenport, respectively. I hope they all continue to serve, either as officers or in some other capacity. This is also an opportunity for you (yes, you) to volunteer to run for office, serve on a committee, or lead a special project. Contact me at mkattermann@ahbl.com or check out the list of board members on the web site.

Certainly one of the biggest issues we will likely be facing this year is the Washington version of Oregon's Measure 37, the takings initiative. We have a history of good planning and growth management in this state and I would hate to see it jeopardized or undermined by an initiative like Measure 37.

The experts and pundits are still sorting out the meaning of the vote in Oregon, but one thing we know is that the packaging of the measure was deceptively simple and appealing - fairness for the "little guy," the individual property owners. There very well could be some individual property owners who benefit from such a measure, but the primary beneficiaries will be the opponents of good planning and growth management - advocates for a return to sprawl and degradation of critical areas. The losers will be the vast majority of Washingtonians that want a better qualify of life for themselves and their children and grandchildren.

We must do a better job of touting the benefits of good planning and the successes of growth management. This is our challenge for 2005. More to come...stay tuned!

GMA WORKING GROUP

GROUP FOCUSES ON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATES AND BEST AVAILABLE SCIENCE

Starting in the summer of 2003, APA and the Department of Community Trade and Economic Development helped create the GMA Working Group. The group ultimately was comprised of representatives from APA, DCTED, Association of Washington Cities, Washington State Association of Counties, 1000 Friends of Washington, Washington Environmental Council, League of Women Voters, National Association of Industrial and Office Parks, Realtors, and the Farm Bureau. AWC and WSAC both used one of their two slots for a representative of their respective planning directors associations.

Through the summer and fall of 2003 the work group paired down a list of potential problem topics associated with the GMA. The final list of seven produced four successful bills and direction from the governor to the Growth Management hearings boards to review their administrative rules and make appropriate changes. Efforts to resolve issues of the scope and timing of updates and best available science were not successful.

There was unanimous agreement of the participating organizations that the working group should be continued in preparation for the 2005 legislative session. The working group has been expanded by one with the addition of representatives of the Association of General Contractors. Invitations were extended to the Association of Washington Business and the Building Industry Association of Washington, both of which declined to participate. The first priority for the upcoming session is the two remaining issues left over from the 2004 session: comprehensive plan updates and best available science.

As of this writing (December 2004) progress has been made on both topics, although final agreement has not been completed. Comprehensive plan update discussion has focused on the extent and interval of mandatory updates with a particular eye toward smaller, slower growing jurisdictions receiving a deferral as long as their growth is slow and they are fully compliant with the GMA's requirements. There is general agreement that the smallest cities and counties should receive a deferment, while the larger, faster growing jurisdictions should not. Discussions about those jurisdictions falling between have not been conclusive. No final decisions have been reached yet on exactly where the break should fall.

The BAS discussion has focused on providing clarity to the current statute without reducing the requirements. Of particular interest is better defining where and how BAS can be determined and applied.

The working group will meet in early January to finalize bill language. At that point each organization will have the opportunity to review and approve the draft proposals. The charter of the working group requires that each and every organization approve the language before it is presented to legislators for sponsorship. APA will rely on the Executive Committee for formal approval, working in close contact with the co-chairs of the Legislative Committee. APA's representatives (two are permitted) to the working group are Mike McCormick and Brad Collins. Steve Butler will oversee the effort for the board and serve as the point-of-contact between the board, Legislative Committee and our two representatives. If you would like to know more about these subjects and our progress into the 2005 session, contact Steve Butler at sbutler@ci.seatac.wa.us.

SECTION NEWS

SOUTHWEST SECTION NEWS
Richard H. Carson
Director, Clark County Community Development Department

Clark County's 20-year Comprehensive Plan was adopted on September 7, 2004, and now 14 petitions for appeal are before the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board.

Board chair Holly Gadbaw met with all participating attorneys in December to discuss consolidating specific issues. Most of the appeals were from property owners unhappy about not being included in the plan. However, two environmental groups filed and several business interests joined to file a lengthy appeal regarding many issues.

The board approved a 60-day extension and the actual hearing is not expected until July 2005.

The City of Bellingham, Whatcom County and the Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) wanted to do better at discouraging sprawl.

There had been strong community support in Bellingham for making the town more walkable since the early 1990s, but growth continued to reach outward, reinforcing auto-dependent development patterns. Though all three agencies had independently adopted policies to discourage sprawl, they decided attacking it as a team would be more successful.

In early 2004 they agreed to work together to create a comprehensive strategy for infill development, setting as a goal their desire to accommodate the 20-year forecast 40 percent population increase without enlarging the adopted urban growth boundary (UGA). Bellingham's Community Forum on Growth Management was born. Its mission? To create a physical development strategy, winning community support for a compact urban form.

It was an ambitious project, with multiple objectives:

• Engage as many community members as possible in discussions about growth, urban economics, urban design and the Growth Management Act
• Describe tradeoffs and impacts of different growth management options and explore specific design solutions
• Strengthen government communication with the community, making forum information accessible, understandable and easy to find
• Facilitate greater understanding of neighborhood concerns
• Complete the project quickly, finishing in time to have its policy recommendations incorporated in agency comprehensive and strategic plans.

Over the course of the summer and fall, the city, county and WTA sponsored a six-hour planning seminar, five neighborhood meetings, a planning fair, urban design charette, and a policy workshop. There also was a staffed "drop-in center" downtown, displaying the project's status in gallery format and serving as an active planning studio where urban design solutions were being developed. A project Web site (still on line at www.studiocascade.com/bhm_index.html) also kept pace, posting meeting minutes, project schedules and progress reports throughout the process. In all, more than 1,000 residents participated in the forum in some fashion.

The final report, presented on November 17, 2004, identified 23 urban villages targeted for increased development intensity, accommodating nearly 13,000 new residential units. Twenty-nine policy recommendations, 12 immediate work program recommendations, and a uniform urban village design methodology will help the community transform Bellingham into a more compact, more walkable place.

"The aim was to adopt a long-range strategy to guide development into urban villages," says Jorge Vega, Bellingham's community development director. "People here want to keep Bellingham and Whatcom County beautiful. The county's growing, and this is the only way to accommodate that growth while still preserving the quality of life residents love."

A key to the project's success was its deliberate and assiduous community outreach approach, as well as its ability to apply urban design theory to the Bellingham context. "We created a process that educated residents on urban design and GMA and then involved them in a discussion, in a variety of ways, to help them tell us what they wanted to see," explains Barbara Ryan, a Bellingham City Council member.

Ryan's counterpart on the Whatcom County Council, Seth Fleetwood, agrees. "This process is crucial for Bellingham's and Whatcom County's future. The report presents recommendations that touch us all, including rebuilding trust with the community, reinforcing interagency coordination, and outlining expectations for urban village and community design."

Studio Cascade, Inc., led the consulting effort, with support from The Transpo Group, ECONorthwest, ALSC Architects and Willie Miller Urban Design and Planning.

GMA AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING RESEARCH

THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT ACT AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Daniel M. Warner, professor of Business Legal Studies, Western Washington University
daniel.warner@wwu.edu

Probably the most telling complaint against growth control is that it will drive up the price of housing and squeeze out the poor and "young families,"¹ and others whose well-being society ought to protect.

"The development industry has repeatedly used the housing affordability issue to defeat growth controls on the grounds that anything that restricts the supply of housing, or pushes up the costs, will affect housing affordability."²

A basic axiom of the theory of supply and demand is that if you decrease supply, you increase cost. But, amazingly - because intuition says growth restraints would cause housing prices to rise - it is unclear what effect - if any - growth restrictions have on housing prices.

The relationship between growth restrictions and housing cost is very difficult to determine because those areas with growth controls have such controls because the population is increasing rapidly: it is hard to tell if the controls cause the price increase or if basic market forces cause it.

The Los Angeles-based Reason Public Policy Institute examined the effects of growth management laws in Washington, Oregon, and Florida. The study - reported by the Washington Policy Center - found that growth management laws accounted for about one-quarter of the increase in Washington's housing costs from 1990-96.

In 2000, they calculated, the median home price in Washington state was $125,310; without the GMA it would have been $120,245, about a $5,000 difference.³ There are, of course, many factors affecting affordability, including cost of land and raw materials, location, median income, household size, availability, demand, and the quality of the public schools.⁴

Compared to the Reason Public Policy Institute, other researchers have found little or no direct relationship between growth control and housing prices; some have suggested growth management policies may actually increase supply relative to demand.

Chris Nelson, who studied the question in Seattle, noted that housing prices tend to go up where sprawl is controlled, but partly because these are nicer places to live, and so there is more demand.

Mike Flynn, the Washington Association of Realtors' vice president of governmental affairs, agreed that growth management is only one element in affordable housing: "There are a number of factors to which housing is sensitive."⁵

And Arthur C. Nelson, et al., in a "discussion paper" from February 2002 concluded as follows:

Market demand, not land constraints, is the primary determinant of housing prices. The strength of the housing market is the single most importance influence on housing prices whether growth management programs are present or not. The effects of growth management policies on housing prices are much more complicated to isolate because of the variations in policy styles and implementation, the structure of local housing markets, the patterns of land ownership, and the stringency of other local regulations. Even research on the effects of urban growth boundaries (UGBs), focused largely on Portland, Oregon, suggests that UGBs can affect land values, but their effects on housing affordability remain in dispute. For example, economists have found that Portland's growth in housing prices is more attributed to increased housing demand, increased employment, and rising incomes than its urban growth boundary. Moreover, after an initial spike in housing prices between 1990 and 1994, attributed by economists to rapid increases in jobs and wages, Portland's housing prices since then have risen at about the national average. The reason may be that despite limiting the amount of land, Portland's growth management policies actually increase housing supply relative to demand.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough that housing prices depend upon the relative elasticity of demand, especially within metropolitan regions, than on any other factor, including growth management (Part VII, Conclusions).⁶

Another Washington state researcher concluded as follows: "[T]he growth management literature cannot prove a direct correlation between urban growth boundaries and the rising cost of housing, and concedes that market forces may be the stronger factor."⁷

Justin Phillips and Eban Goodstein, in an exhaustive article in Contemporary Economic Policy, examined the effect of Oregon's growth management act on housing prices in Portland. In that city, it had been claimed, the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) was "precipitating an affordable housing crisis in Portland."⁸ Phillips and Goodstein found to the contrary.

Is Portland's UGB responsible for an affordability crisis in that city? The answer is, probably not. While the UGB has likely imposed upward pressure on prices, the results indicate that the effect has been fairly modest. The large price increases Portland has experienced over the past 7 years most likely reflect the conventional housing market dynamic. . . - a speculative bull market riding on the back of an initial demand surge.⁹

Again, it is very difficult to determine whether increases in housing costs can be attributed to growth-management controls. The best that comes out of any of these studies - including the Washington Policy Center - is that growth control may have some modest effect but that mostly, it is not growth controls that drives housing costs up, it is growth - population increase.

There are various responses - if not solutions - to the problem of affordable housing. These include inclusionary zoning (requiring all new developments to have some percentage of housing geared to lower-income buyers - perhaps impact fees on those properties could be reduced); linkages (requiring the new commercial development contribute to an affordable housing fund or build suitable nearby housing); promoting community land trusts (typically a non-profit entity that buys land and builds low-rent housing); flexible residential zoning (permitting granny flats).

Allowing everything to be built up like Los Angeles is not a reasonable solution. Opening up large areas of vacant land for development would in no way solve the problem of affordable housing.¹⁰

END NOTES

1. George Lewis, Growth Management Act Continues Driving Up Housing Prices, Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal, June 13, 2003; available online at www.kpbj.com/moneynews/articles/2003-06-13-MNY-01.html (last accessed December 4, 2003):

LCOs AND GMA GOALS

COMMON GROUND: THE ROLE OF LAND CONSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS IN MEETING GMA GOALS
Gabe Snedeker, AICP and Peter Dykstra, Esq., The Trust For Public Land

The Growth Management Act (GMA) establishes 13 planning goals, including retention of open space, fish and wildlife habitat and enhanced recreational opportunities, reducing sprawl, respecting private property rights, and encouraging natural resource industries. Some people find apparent contradictions in the GMA planning goals and most planners find challenges in accomplishing more than one of these goals simultaneously. Further complicating planners' valiant efforts to meet these varied goals, GMA's framework legislation offers limited guidance on how to achieve goals that are critical to maintaining our quality of life.

In our struggle to meet the challenges and fulfill the promise of growth management, planners need to leverage the support and direct efforts of allies - groups who actively support long-range decision making consistent with GMA in the face of real political and economic pressures. Land Conservation Organizations (LCOs), ranging from local land trusts who work in a limited area, to regional organizations like the Cascade Land Conservancy, to national organizations such as The Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy, play a critical role in meeting growth management goals.

LCOs work cooperatively with private property owners to secure lands for recreation, open space, wildlife habitat, and resource dependent economies, thereby helping to reduce sprawl while respecting private property rights. A new breed of entrepreneurial LCOs have emerged and are achieving substantial success in bringing divergent interests together to conserve open space and working resource lands. Several of these groups have had notable recent successes in Washington State.

So who or what are these organizations? What have they achieved and how did they do it? Why are many planners clueless about these organizations? How can planners and LCOs work together effectively? Why do some planners still view them as just another interest group that should be kept at arms length?

Collectively, America's more than 1,500 independent land trusts and land conservation organizations have helped protect nearly 9.4 million acres through land acquisition, purchase of conservation easements, and by transferring land to public agencies to protect important conservation values.¹ LCOs are local, regional, statewide, and national nonprofit conservation organizations directly involved in helping protect natural, scenic, recreational, agricultural, historic, or cultural property. LCOs ideally work to preserve land that is important to the communities and regions where they operate. However, the nature of and the relationship between the open space and parks planning done by local governments and the conservation planning of LCOs appears to vary widely and there is room for increased cooperation.

LCOs can often respond more rapidly to conservation needs than governments. LCOs now operate in every state in the nation and in cities, suburban, rural, and resource lands protecting land of local, regional, and national importance. Most LCOs do not have enough money to buy land outright or maintain large holdings over the long term, so they rely on donations, purchase conservation easements to protect certain conservation values, or establish revolving financing accounts or innovative financing mechanisms to allow the temporary ownership and transfer of land to governments. In some cases, LCOs will seek donations from private funders and grants from private foundations to buy important land. Some LCOS are getting more involved in helping their communities develop additional funds to finance land protection efforts. Sometimes land is set aside and donated to a land trust as part of a development proposal - a landowner agrees to develop part of the land if the rest is permanently protected.

LCOs range in size, geographical focus, and types of conservation work. Here, we introduce just a few of the ones that are working in Washington State - one national organization, one regional organization, and one local land trust. There are many other examples of each kind.

Founded in 1972, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) works to conserve land for people to enjoy as parks, gardens, and other natural places, ensuring livable communities for generations to come.² TPL has helped protect over 1.6 million acres of land with a land value of more than $3.5 billion for the public in over 2600 conservation projects. Unlike most other LCOs, TPL works on acquisition in urban areas, as well as suburban, rural, and wilderness areas.

In addition to its conservation transactions work, TPL also works with local communities on conservation finance and conservation vision, or "greenprinting." Across the country TPL's Conservation Finance Program has helped local governments and communities establish about $26 billion in funding for new parks and open space protection in the last eight years. TPL's Conservation Finance work includes identifying funds for single acquisition and building strategies to secure large-scale multi-year funding for comprehensive parks and conservation programs.

On the conservation vision side of things, TPL's greenprinting is a smart growth strategy that emphasizes land conservation to ensure quality of life, clean air and water, recreation, and economic health. In Washington, TPL has done greenprinting work in the Mountains to Sound Greenway and the Columbia Gorge, and King County, and currently is preparing greenprints in several other areas around the Puget Sound and Washington State. TPL's greenprinting work furthers the work of local planners by helping to prioritize land acquisitions that will help communities meet their GMA goals.

The Cascade Land Conservancy (CLC) is an entrepreneurial nonprofit land conservation organization conducting voluntary transactions to preserve natural and open space in King, Kittitas, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kittitas counties.³ CLC works collaboratively with individual landowners, organizations, and local governments to protect and steward wetlands, shorelines, forests, wildlife and rare plant habitat, stream corridors, and urban open spaces. Established in 1989, the conservancy has permanently protected approximately 130,000 acres of land, and currently is negotiating to protect many thousands more. The conservancy focuses on protecting land that is close to population centers. It accepts land as a donation, purchases it, or transfers it to public ownership, often serving as a broker to identify and negotiate the most effective ownership to protect important lands. It establishes conservation easements tailored to preserve special features and explore available strategies or create new ones to provide permanent protection. It also provides stewardship services to land owners to protect habitat functions and values.

Current initiatives include the protection of working forests on the foothills of the Cascades, the creation of salmon sanctuaries along our region's highest quality rivers and streams, and stewardship of Seattle's urban forests. The conservancy's Cascade Dialogues is an ambitious project to establish a conservation vision and agenda for the region over the next 100 years using extensive community discussion forums and a benchmarking program to measure our progress.

The Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust (VMILT) was founded in 1990 by a dedicated group of islanders who were concerned about preserving Vashon and Maury.⁴ VMILT's mission is to preserve natural ecosystems and the rural character of Vashon and Maury islands. VMILT has focused on the most critical habitat areas and unique ecosystems. Since being founded, VMILT has helped in the acquisition and permanent protection of hundreds of acres of property on the two islands.

VMILT, like many local land trusts, does not focus exclusively on land acquisition, but also on education. VMILT has developed an active education program that teaches people about their natural surroundings and about stewardship of their own lands. VMILT hosts classes on native plants, on birding, on salmon stream monitoring, island geology and groundwater - a variety of topics. VMILT's most popular class is its forest stewardship class, which teaches participants how to write a forest stewardship plan. Through this class, VMILT has helped to enroll another 1000+ acres in a semi-preserved status with the King County current use taxation programs.

In addition to the community education provided by local land trusts such as VMILT, planners should take note of how the new breed of LCOs has gone about coalition building in its planning and acquisition efforts. Every LCO at work today has been successful in partnering with resource industries or developers, environmental groups, and government. The results have been stunning, with hundreds of thousands of acres in Washington being permanently preserved as parks, working landscapes, and fish and wildlife habitat. By showing the benefits of conservation for resource dependent communities and our quality of life, these groups are proving that conservation is a value shared across partisan and interest group lines.

Planners need to leverage the efficacy of these groups by encouraging, partnering with, and helping to focus the efforts of these organizations by doing what we do best: planning. We can promote partnerships with land conservation groups through language in our comprehensive and functional plans, regulatory incentives, who we define as "stakeholders," how we structure open space taxation programs, and a myriad of other ways. Planners are the right group to help these non-profit groups coordinate, identify and prioritize conservation targets. Comprehensive plans and parks plans should be used to help both local governments and LCOs identify conservation targets.

Planners can also leverage the efforts of LCOs "in the field" by being aware of this option when approached by a land owner or potential developer. Particularly where high value critical areas are involved, conservation and transfer of all or a portion of the property may be the best option for everyone involved. Planners should be able to provide property owners with detailed information about the future use of their property, including temporary and permanent conservation strategies such as open space taxation and conservation easements and working with an LCO.

LCOs can be particularly effective where opportunities may exist for the eventual transfer of a high value property to local government for protection as park and open space. These discussions should occur as early in the process as possible because there is a very real chance that a public planner bringing up the conservation option at the wrong time during intense regulatory decision making could be accused of holding a land owner hostage.

It is important for the planner to provide information early in the process and work hard not to have a bias that would preclude due process for the landowner down the road. Some local governments have found success by maintaining a "firewall" whereby discussions relating to conservation and possible transfer are spearheaded by a parks department director or other person outside the planning department. However, the planner should not simply ignore an opportunity in the hopes that a parks department or local land trust will seize it; often the planner is among the first to find out when a property is likely to be developed. Parks departments may be so consumed with the day-to-day tasks of running a parks system that they may not devote sufficient time to identifying conservation targets.

Traditional views of the relationship between regulators, developers, and the environmental community may have hindered partnerships between planners and LCOs. Planners need a greater awareness of how these groups can fit into the growth management picture for a wide range of communities. LCOs help even the most conservative communities respect private property rights while meeting open space, habitat, and economic objectives.

The bottom line is that the efforts of many of these organizations have proven to be often more effective than governments in meeting the goal of preserving working landscapes and securing lands for parks, open space, and permanent urban separators. These organizations often have more credibility with land owners and citizens. LCOs that are plugged into the regulatory process are in turn more effective and gain a broader understanding of what Growth Management planners are trying to accomplish.

LCOs provide a non-regulatory means to achieve important GMA goals. With the passage of Measure 37 in Oregon in November, the owner of private real property is entitled to receive just compensation when a land use regulation is enacted after the owner or a family member became the owner of the property and the regulation restricts the use of the property and reduces its fair market value. There is a strong possibility that Washington will face a similar ballot measure in the near future. Planners must place increased emphasis on non-regulatory tools to achieve GMA goals given the political realities we face.

Traditionally, planning often has been promoted as a framework for rational decision making, with the planner as an independent technical expert. Although the role and the motives of planners always have been subjects of debate, we no doubt have gained credibility from the promotion of the rational planning model. Not surprisingly, planners often have viewed the political process with deep cynicism, as something to be politely tolerated at best. These factors have led many planners to neglect the important but messy work of consent building and to avoid public partnerships with all but the most non-partisan of groups.

As planners institutionalize the pursuit of detailed policy frameworks, such as growth management, we are increasingly viewed as just another interest group promoting social change or as a tentacle of overreaching government. The result of planner political apathy combined with increased public skepticism about our mission is predictable: plans gutted by the political process or left to collect dust on the shelf, many of the fundamental objectives of our citizenry unrealized.

The challenges before us are simply too great for planners to go it alone. Planners must avoid being viewed as primarily political actors. But we can improve our effectiveness by seeking diverse partnerships with groups sharing elements of our vision for a planned, sustainable, livable, and economically strong future. We should not expect our allies to passionately pursue certain elements of this vision, or even to be able to articulate the entire vision. These working partnerships may be issue- or even situation-specific. It is up to planners to knit these issue coalitions together and to keep a holistic eye on the big picture.

Ultimately, for most people planning is largely about the physical form of development on the ground and the human and biological health of the larger landscape. Many of planning's most recognizable, most celebrated, achievements are urban places created and landscapes preserved. Planners need to reach out more to land conservation organizations and others who are doing some of the heavy lifting of growth management. Increased communication with our growth management allies will create stronger and more effective partnerships that are built on common ground.

END NOTES

1. 2003 Land Trust Census, conducted by the Land Trust Alliance, see www.lta.org/aboutlt/census.shtml

2. More information about TPL and the work of its Northwest Regional office in Seattle can be found at www.tpl.org.

3. More information about CLC and its work can be found at www.cascadeland.org.

4. All information regarding Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust was taken from its website: www.vashonlandtrust.org.