The County Council voted 5- 2, with council members Sam Crawford and Ward Nelson opposed, to approve a plan that calls for adding 286 acres of rural land, mostly at King and Queen mountains, into the city’s urban growth area. That means those areas could be developed at higher densities.

Several neighbors told the council they opposed development in the natural setting.

Tuesday’s decision culminates half a decade of work by local governments, although members of both the city and county councils have said they expect legal challenges.

On one hand, state antisprawl group Futurewise, which has challenged Whatcom County before, has called for adding no land to the city’s urban growth area. On the other hand, developer Caitac USA has proposed building its major Larrabee Springs mixeduse development, but it can’t because the county didn’t add its land near Smith Road and Guide Meridian to the urban growth area.

“When you’re doing this job, you try to do the best you can, and you just try to be true to what’s best for the county,” County Council member Laurie Caskey-Schreiber said, “and I do feel that we’ve achieved that.”

County Executive Pete Kremen said he supports the council’s plan and won’t veto it.

The county’s decision overruled the city’s original plan to add 2,128 acres to the urban growth area, land the city in 2006 said it needed to accommodate future growth.

But the city doesn’t support its own plan either, after last year’s elections. New Mayor Dan Pike in January gave the City Council a resolution stating the city now agrees with the county’s effort to protect rural lands, and the council, with three new members, approved it.

King and Queen mountain area residents on Tuesday told the County Council it shouldn’t consider urban development there, because it would destroy a natural environment valuable to the entire county while allowing a few developers to profit. Council member Carl Weimer proposed removing those areas from the plan but backed off after only council member Bob Kelly supported the move.

“I don’t know if any of you have spent much time really looking at what those two mountains mean to the community,” neighbor Betty Shaw said. “Why should we grow over one of the biggest property assets that we have?”

Wendy Setter said it seemed King and Queen mountains were slipped into the urban growth area proposal late in the process.

“It’s frustrating to me to even be thinking about bringing more property into the UGAs,” she said. “I don’t think we need it.”

Brothers Ralph and Mike Black, who own Alliance Properties, hope to develop a large residential-commercial project on King Mountain land that they own. The development gives the opportunity for muchneeded north side parkland that will be lost if houses are built on five-acre lots under county zoning, Mike Black said.

Tuesday’s decision gives the city and county control over which lands the Blacks set aside for parks or wilderness as a condition of annexing to the city, Ralph Black said.

“They’re going to hold us accountable to do it right,” Ralph Black said.