SEQUIM – When the state and Clallam County came out with population and land availability numbers for Sequim recently, Frank Needham shook his head in disbelief.
Needham, Sequim’s capital projects planner, said the state’s numbers fail to reflect “what is really happening in our community.”
Using the state Office of Financial Management’s 2007 report, Clallam County senior planner Carol Creasey recently wrote a report that included population trends and a count of buildable acres across the county.
In the last year, Sequim grew by a mere 300 people to a population of 5,330, according to Creasey and the OFM.
The city, meanwhile, does its own count: “Over 6,670 individuals . . . partake of our utilities, drive our roads and send their children to local schools,” Needham wrote in a lengthy memo to the Clallam County Board of Commissioners.
The OFM counts only residents with a permanent home address, so it excludes people in assisted living and congregate care homes, trailers and boats, Needham said.
“That’s 18 to 22 percent of [Sequim’s] population,” he said.
Needham also disputed the assertion in the county report that Sequim has some 1,300 acres available for development.
“While the land appears vacant, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been platted or approved for development. There are more than 16 approved residential projects that have not broken ground, and they represent more than 2,135 dwelling units,” he wrote.
In an interview Friday, Needham added that Sequim has issued 365 building permits in the first six months of 2007.
Needham also said the needs are growing for infrastructure and public services within Sequim.
“We’re building . . . not based on the [state population numbers] but on what’s reality,” he said.
“Every new development that brings in population must provide infrastructure,” and developers, not the city, pay for new traffic signals and installation of sewer and water lines.
They pay also for such things as the new traffic signal to be put in at Fifth Avenue and Hendrickson Road next month.
There will come a day, Needham predicts, when the city will ask Clallam County to expand the urban growth area to accommodate residential development.
Another wave of retiring baby boomers from Seattle, California and beyond is due here soon. And if Sequim is going to offer jobs to its non-retired residents, it needs more commercial development.
