To date, smart growth in Kitsap County is essentially as defined by the Kitsap Smart Growth Coalition. The mission of the Coalition has been three-fold:
1) Establish a forum where the many legitimate perspectives on growth in our community can be heard;
2) Get out of the box and combine those perspectives to create solutions that meet our specific needs, and;
3) Multiply the effects of those solutions many times to test their ability to meet our future growth. Our basic task is pretty clear, “How can we provide for the addition of 400-600,00 additional people who are likely to live here without sacrificing our quality of life?”

We have progressed with a large conference, held workshops to hear from others, and built a list of forty consensus-built goals. Our group to date includes interests from builders, environmentalists, government, realtors, economic development and other community groups.

Some have attacked smart growth national trends or issues; those attacking have not come to our Coalition meetings so they do not really know what we discuss. We consider the issues facing Kitsap County to be unique, and our understanding of what we will look like with the additional population is likely different from other places of similar size. For example, we have a history of perimeter development due to the fact that early residents could only come to Kitsap by water. Also, most residents seem uninterested in massive cities, but want to retain more manageable sized communities. Pretty much all seem to agree that Kitsap should retain significant rural and natural characteristics, safe communities and good transportation.

The formula will clearly include setting goals for what community values should survive in the future, then removing barriers and establishing incentives to help us retain them as we grow. Strategies may include helping defray the cost of appropriate redevelopment, building infrastructure to attract growth where it should go, or committing to helping small growth drivers combine forces to meet economies of scale. Along the way we would hope also to achieve better protection of those areas deemed essential to remain untouched, and better predictability for all our residents.

Our adopted goals have helped us see where we believe we should go, but we recognize they do not provide all answers. It has been said that smart growth is mostly an urban philosophy, that is probably true so far. And solutions like mixed use, walkability and public transportation can apply to absorb some of our growth in a high quality fashion. But we also need smart rural decisions and feel we can find them by working together. No, we do not hope to remove people from their rural residences, take away cars or commit us all to row houses, as some have exaggerated.

It is easy to say the results of our efforts may not answer every complaint, but in fact it has never been called “perfect growth.” We have seen the mistakes of other places. We just know we can do better, for the benefit of our community.