The issue boils down to how much rural land can be turned over to residential development in the near future. Sims and some council members think very little. A lot of people are going to see restrictions placed on what they can do with their family land as government intervention at its most intrusive.
Sprawl costs too much in services and quality of life.
Indeed, the levels of growth are mind-boggling. Even if residential building will start to moderate with the return of 8 percent mortgage interest rates, we're seeing enough permitting to fill anybody's pipeline. That doesn't even include remodels. DDES projected 143 new residential applications for the Sammamish Plateau but received 262, largely because applicants were trying to get into Sammamish before incorporation. The permit rush into Sammamish for four months was 83 percent more than the department expected for all of 1999.