§ 18.05.030. Purposes.

This title is adopted for the following purposes:

1.

To protect and provide for the public health, safety, and general welfare of the city.

2.

To guide the future growth and development of the municipality in accordance with the city's comprehensive plan.

3.

To provide for adequate light, air, and privacy, to secure safety from fire, flood, and other danger, to protect the city's watershed and to prevent overcrowding of the land and undue congestion of population.

4.

To protect the character and the social, cultural and economic stability of all parts of the city and to encourage the orderly and beneficial development of the community through appropriate growth management techniques assuring the timing and sequencing of development, promotion of infill development in existing neighborhoods and nonresidential areas with adequate public facilities, to assure proper municipal form and open space separation of municipal areas, to protect environmentally critical areas and areas premature for municipal development.

5.

To protect and conserve the value of land throughout the city and the value of buildings and improvement upon the land, and to minimize the conflicts among the uses of land and buildings.

6.

To guide public and private policy and action in order to provide adequate and efficient transportation, water, sewage, the delivery of electric, phone, cable and internet service, schools, parks, playgrounds, recreation, and other public requirements and facilities.

7.

To provide the most beneficial relationship between the uses of land and buildings and the circulation of traffic throughout the city, having particular regard to the avoidance of congestion in the streets and the pedestrian traffic movements appropriate to the various uses of land and buildings, and to provide for the proper location and width of streets and building lines.

8.

To establish reasonable standards of design and procedures for subdivisions and resubdivisions in order to further the orderly layout and use of land and to ensure proper legal descriptions and monumenting of subdivided land.

9.

To ensure that public facilities and services are available concurrent with development and will have a sufficient capacity to serve the proposed subdivision and that the community will be required to bear no more than its fair share of the cost of providing the facilities and services through requiring the developer to pay fees, furnish land or establish mitigation measures to ensure that the development provides its fair share of capital facilities needs generated by the development.

10.

To prevent the pollution of air, streams, watersheds, lakes and ponds; to assure the adequacy of drainage facilities; to safeguard the water table, and to encourage the wise use and management of natural resources throughout the area in order to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community and the value of the land.

11.

To preserve the natural beauty and topography of the city and to ensure appropriate development with regard to these natural features.

12.

To provide for open spaces through the most efficient design and layout of the land, including the use of average density in providing the minimum width and area of lots, while preserving the density of development as established in the zoning ordinances and comprehensive plan of the city wherever and whenever it is possible to do so without causing undue hardship and it is in keeping with the historical and cultural nature of the property.

13.

To ensure that land is subdivided when subdivision is appropriate to provide for uses of land for which market demands may exist and which are in the public interest.

14.

To remedy the problems associated with inappropriately subdivided lands, including premature subdivision, excess subdivision, partial or incomplete subdivision, scattered and low-grade subdivision wherever and whenever it is possible to do so without causing undue hardship and it is in keeping with the historical and cultural nature of the property.

(Ord. No. 10-03, § 3(Exh. A), 1-21-2010)