Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor | Purdy should be removed from Gig Harbor’s UGA

To the Gig Harbor City Council and Pierce County Council:

My name is Kit Kuhn and I have had a business for 35 years in Gig Harbor and am a past Mayor of Gig Harbor.

I am appreciative of your continued support to remove the Purdy area and Canterwood area out of our UGA.

Mostly, it is developers that are encouraging you to keep these areas in the UGA. Mike Wilson and his buddy own large tracts of land surrounding Canterwood that want sewer hookup to make tens of millions of dollars for themselves with Gig Harbor and its citizens suffering from it.

Mike Wilson pushed when I was Mayor, trying to represent Canterwood while the Canterwood council wrote to me specifically that they were not supportive of annexation, and he had no right to represent them. Rush Construction company has pushed on similar development in Purdy to make tens of millions while others suffer the consequences.

The Gig Harbor council and I worked with the county in 2018 with both supportive to remove the East Bay from our UGA which we did.

We had many reasons to remove the East Bay but also it was never financially sound to leave in. Similar concerns are present for Purdy area, the city cannot afford to incorporate Purdy.
As we all know the state cannot even figure out how to deal with the Purdy bridge and traffic and has ignored a solution for over 40 years, with that said it would bankrupt the city of Gig Harbor to try to solve what the state cannot.

The City of Gig Harbor has more than enough development capacity within its current boundaries to meet the 20-year projected growth.

The City of Gig Harbor has been attempting to work with Pierce County on UGA planning since 2018.

The City of Gig Harbor has carefully analyzed the UGA prior to the Comp Plan cycle and shared that document with the County.

While Mayor of Gig Harbor we had to meet with Bruce Dammeier, Pierce County planners and the Department of Ecology to force Pierce County to start following SEPA in our UGA as they had not been flowing SEPA for the past 8-10 years.

The Department of Ecology was there to agree that Pierce County had not been following their own environmental rules. They agreed to start following the rules. My point is Gig Harbor will be the city to suffer if Pierce County does not follow SEPA and the laws that affect our community.

When a developer builds in our UGA and requests sewer hookup they can now build twice the density than allowed in our county UGA. As that developer builds they are then following county codes which are not as strict as our city. Later when the area is annexed their building will now not conform with our city codes and Gig Harbor will have a patchwork of non-compliant areas which is not complementary for our city.

I would also add that many developers do short plats because then they are usually allowed to clear cut the whole parcel instead of leaving a percentage of natural vegetation. State laws allow developers to then piggyback each short plat parcels which allows them to keep doing this again and again right next to each parcel with the effect of being able to clear cut all the developed land. State law allows cities to not allow the piggyback law, which Gig Harbor adopted in 2018. Rural Pierce County I believe allows the piggyback option, again affecting Gig Harbor with a city of patchwork not consistent with our codes.

For these reasons and more I hope you will continue to work towards the removal of Purdy and Canterwood areas from Gig Harbor’s UGA.

Thank-you again for your continued support in this matter.

Kit Kuhn

Gig Harbor

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