County connects cities to move sustainability initiatives forward.
It's a common story that resonates with many local governments: plunging building permits, shrinking budgets, hiring freezes and overworked staffers who are charged with driving sustainability initiatives — such as encouraging green building — with little support. The story is no different in King County, Wash., the state's most-populous county and home to Seattle and 38 other cities. But King County's green building program, GreenTools, has helped its cities overcome those obstacles through encouraging collaboration across jurisdictions.
Four years ago, GreenTools launched its Sustainable Cities program to help cities maintain and enhance their green building efforts, especially those with limited resources. The program's backbone includes guidance and green building program templates that are offered through an online roadmap and toolkit, free on-site technical assistance, city staff training and project grants. It is in part through those efforts that green building activity in the county has more than tripled since 2007.
Gathering at the roundtable
Sustainable Cities' peer-to-peer networking forum — the Sustainable Cities Roundtable — is proving to be one of its most catalyzing efforts. The informal monthly gatherings, which started in 2009, bring together the people who are charged with creating and implementing sustainability initiatives to learn from one another, receive free training from experts and share ideas and resources.
The program's mantra is that climate change is not constrained by jurisdictional boundaries, so why should the great ideas, experiences and strategies to combat climate change be confined to those boundaries? "Having neighboring jurisdictions in one room and talking about the same issues helps our staff see how our work can benefit others, best practices implemented by others that can be adapted, and possibilities for collaborating with cities focused on similar goals," says Alex Pietsch, department of community and economic development administrator for Renton (population 92,590) and a Roundtable participant.
For many city staff persons who are working alone or with small teams on green building and climate change-related issues, the roundtable helps them work more effectively by leveraging a large knowledge pool. "The roundtable is like having a clone or several clones, really," says Cathy Beam, an environmental planner with Redmond (population 54,000), who is charged with leading implementation of her city's Climate Action Plan. "We are all trying to do similar work, and when you hear others talk and pose questions, it validates that you are on the right track or it spurs new ideas."
Although the core roundtable group is made up of city planners, the meetings also attract building officials, public works engineers and elected officials, depending on the topic. Topics have included climate change mitigation strategies, green remodeling, and the International Green Construction Code. Roundtable cities are all sizes and in various stages of implementing sustainability initiatives. Some are just starting to inventory their greenhouse gas emissions and do not have a green building program, others have set reduction targets and started programs that are not fully developed, and a handful are implementing policies and code amendments to push sustainable development even further.
Preparing for growth
Kirkland falls into the last category. It established a formal green building program in 2008 and used the roundtable and technical assistance from King County to grow its program as it simultaneously prepared for an annexation that doubled its population to 81,000.
"What is invaluable about the roundtable is that our four-person green building team does not stay stagnant. We are always learning," says David Barnes, Kirkland city planner. "It's free training that is better than what you would pay for on the open market, and we are bringing back ideas that ultimately save our city time and money."
Kirkland started its green building program by providing an incentive for developers to build green: an expedited permit review process (15 days instead of seven weeks) for single-family homes that pursued certification from the local Master Builders Association's Built Green program or the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system. At the request of local developers, Kirkland then expanded the incentive to non-residential projects and began offering developers free, pre-permit advice on how to build more sustainably and prepare building sites for low-impact development. "Because of these actions, we've seen an increase in green development here," Barnes says. "And the uptick is not just low-level green projects but in high-level projects, too."
One of its high-level projects is a new Kirkland LEED Platinum-certified home, which recycles and cleans rainwater on site for all the home's indoor and outdoor uses. In the past, a structure not using public water was unusual. But, roundtable discussions led King County GreenTools to advocate for a new directive from Washington State to allow homeowners and developers to use collected rainwater on site for domestic use. Once that barrier was removed, Kirkland's LEED Platinum home sailed through permitting and is serving as a model for other local developers.
"King County GreenTools has provided us with all the research and documentation we need to do a green building ordinance, so that is another benefit of being tied into the Sustainability Roundtables," Barnes says. "We don't have to re-create the wheel, which is great because as planners when we have to take our initiatives through city council, it can take a lot of time to produce all the documentation to support what we are trying to do."
After Kirkland started its expedited permit review process for green development, neighboring city Redmond used that information to create its own approach. As a result, Redmond implemented a green development incentive program in less than six months. Through Redmond's incentive program, developers can earn points for including green features in their projects, such as green roofs or rain gardens. The points earned give developers benefits such as more density or larger lot coverage, and with fewer hoops to jump through.
Earlier this year, while exploring green code initiatives, Redmond's planning commission wanted to know what it could do to encourage city developers to build green. Redmond planner Cathy Beam discovered other roundtable cities also wanted this information and together the group created a survey for all communities. "As a result, the survey was more impactful and far reaching, and we didn't bombard developers by having multiple cities contacting them at different times," Beam says. "Had I not been at that roundtable, I wouldn't have known that Shoreline was planning a survey. Other cities also needed this information but didn't necessarily have the time or resources to do it on their own."
Not all area cities have focused their green communities program on green building. For example, Snoqualmie, with only 10,000 people is not ready to make green building a top priority given that the majority of its building stock meets current codes. However, about three years ago, a group of university students developed 76-point sustainability strategy for the city, and one of the students, Nicole Sanders, was hired to implement it. "It's difficult to track the various green initiatives. There's a lot to learn, and sometimes you feel like you're working in a vacuum," Sanders says. "But when you attend the roundtables and talk with other cities, you get such a thorough breakdown of what their sustainability programs entail."
Sanders used her roundtable relationships to develop a climate pledge for Snoqualmie residents and to create an implementation plan for a rain garden at the city's new community center. She tapped the experience of cities like Redmond and Seattle to push through an agenda bill that will allow for the installation of five electric vehicle-charging stations around the city. And, as she prepares to inventory Snoqualmie's greenhouse gas emissions, Sanders also is learning from other roundtable cities like Bellevue that have already been through the process.
Addressing climate change
This year, six roundtable cities formed the King County Cities Climate Collaboration to enhance a range of regional sustainability efforts and eventually to set county-wide greenhouse gas emission goals. The King County executive and the mayors of each city have signed a pledge agreeing to work together on climate change outreach, coordination of standards, strategies and goals, climate mitigation solutions, and contribute funding for shared resources.
"Like many cities, we are taking climate change mitigation actions, but they're being done without a larger strategy that connects all the work the different departments and divisions are doing," says Renton Associate Planner Kris Sorensen. "We are now working on what that larger strategy will look like, and participating in the roundtable and Climate Collaboration is part of this strategy."
King County's Sustainable Cities Roundtable and the Cities Climate Collaboration that was born from it are based on the notion that collaboration is an effective motivator for change. It increases commitment, catalyzes action and strengthens local governments' ability to attract sustainable development investments from the private sector and grantor agencies.
"What I love is that there is already a sense of trust and mutual interest in the room," Sanders says. "It increases your exposure to other programs. And, it actually does build a sense of camaraderie, that I am one city among many cities, and we are all working together toward common goals. That, in and of itself, is invaluable."
Patti Southard is King County GreenTools program manager.
