County to consider change in road access rules
Published 1:30 am Saturday, September 5, 2026
EVERETT — Snohomish County Council will listen to public comment at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and consider a revision to the county’s road access code that multiple local fire chiefs and emergency management experts say could lead to deadly consequences during disaster evacuations.
The county’s Planning and Development Services Department has proposed numerous changes to the Roads and Access Code, including a provision that would more than double the allowed number of houses developers could build on a dead-end road.
“Putting in roads is very, very expensive. Putting in infrastructure is very, very expensive. That drives up the cost of housing,” said Mike McCrary, the county’s fire marshal since April, and before that, the former director of the county’s planning department.
McCrary is now the executive operations officer in the county’s executive office.
“Somebody proposes something that’s going to reduce that, we’re going to look at it,” he said in April.
Allison Butcher, a senior policy analyst for the Master Builders, said in an email to The Herald in June that the goal of the association’s feedback has been creating “a more predictable and practical framework for housing and ensuring that transportation requirements support rather than unnecessarily constrain housing production.”
While the revision is said to save money, emergency responders and researchers say that in wildfire risk areas, the changes could potentially leave more people trapped during a wildfire.
In March, The Daily Herald reported the Planning and Development Services Department wrote the policy proposal with extensive direct input from the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, an influential lobbying group representing 2,400 developers and contractors. According to emails obtained through public record requests, the lobbyist group provided specific requests for policy changes for two years before the 14-day public comment period was opened.
In June, The Herald wrote that the county’s own Department of Emergency Management wasn’t looped into the code proposal project until after the 14-day public comment period had concluded, and that district fire chiefs were never alerted to the proposed changes, even though they said the proposed changes would increase the pressure on disaster evacuations and firefighting efforts.
In 2025, the county published its first Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The document estimated 15% of Snohomish County — 130,000 residents — live in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas, transition zones between urbanized areas and undeveloped wild vegetation or forests.
The report also states that since 2020, one in five submitted building permits are planned for wildland-urban interface areas, meaning more people are continuing to move to areas at higher risk for wildfire exposure.
“Come talk to the people that have to deal with your codes and rules,” said Eric Andrews, the fire chief for Sky Valley Fire District 26 in Gold Bar, in June. “Then explain to the homeowners or the people why their homes burnt, people died, because we couldn’t get in, they couldn’t get out.”
The policy proposal has raised questions about how development-related codes are suggested and approved.
The Planning Commission is a volunteer advisory board for the county council. It’s made up of 11 citizens appointed by council members who are supposed to review projects and decide if they’re ready for the council’s eyes and votes.
Four current commissioners have ties to the Master Builders Association, including Commissioner Merle Ashe, who was cc’ed on multiple emails between Master Builder associates and county planning staff discussing changes to the code, and Brian Holtzclaw, who is the Master Builders’ general counsel.
The public hearing will be held in the Jackson Board Room on the eighth floor of the Robert J. Drewel Building and is available via Zoom through this link: https://zoom.us/j/94846850772.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com
Eliza also uses the encrypted messaging platform, Signal: @elizaaronson.40
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Investigative Reporting Fund.
