ISLAND COUNTY COMMISSIONERS – MINUTES OF MEETING
SPECIAL SESSION – MARCH 14, 2000
The Board of Island County Commissioners met in
Special Session on March 14, 2000, at
9:30 a.m., in the Island County Courthouse Annex, Hearing
Room, Coupeville, Wa., for the purpose
of conducting a Joint Meeting of the
Island County Planning Commission,
Board of County Commissioners and the Hearing Examiner, on the
following topics:
·
Planning
Department Year 2000 Work Plan
·
Planning
Commission 2000 Work Schedule
·
Hearing
Examiner Year End Report 1999
·
Public
Works/Community Development Division – Amendments to Capital Facilities Plan
and Concurrency Ordinance to include Highways of Statewide Significance as Required by RCW 36.70A
Attendance: Board of County
Commissioners: Wm. L. McDowell,.
Chairman, William F. Thorn, Member; and Mike Shelton, Member.
Planning Commission: Anne Pringle; Mike Joselyn; George Crampton;
Sheilah Crider; E.T. Silvers; Lyn Moses;
Pat Churchill; and John Edison .
Hearing Examiner: Michael Bobbink
Staff:
Larry Kwarsick, Public Works Director;
Phil Bakke, Planning Director
Handouts: Year 2000 Work Plan;
Summary Compliance Status
Mr. Bakke
summarized the Year 2000 Work
Plan. The Planning Department is
currently involved in the Clinton and Freeland NMUGA study and will
present a recommendation to the Planning Commission through the Annual Review
Amendment Process. The Department is negotiating for a Phase II study to provide
cost estimates for dealing with storm water, sewage disposal and transportation
in Freeland and Clinton. The Freeland
and Clinton Sub-Area Committees are in the process of designating land use classifications.
Planning staff are
developing a Freeland/Clinton Geographic Information System (GIS) using
Arc-View and Auto-CAD that eventually will be expanded to include all of Island
County. Also the Department is
working with an outside consultant to
help relate the GIS to the Public Works Community Development and Assessor’s
database.
Work
is being done to implement a program to update the critical areas mapping and
provide mapping support to Public Works.
The Department is currently involved in negotiations with the Department
of Ecology on the Shoreline Master Program update. Mr. Bake provided an
update, along with an index of the issues, on the County’s compliance status.
Mr.
Bobbink acknowledged 1999 was
not a busy year for the Hearing Examiner’s office; the first long subdivision under the new zoning
ordinance will be heard this Thursday.
He has seen no evidence of
problems with the new Zoning Ordinance to date, but did not know whether that
was because applications have not been processed or whether the Ordinance has
been well written. He commended
Public Works staff for the staff report on the long subdivision noting that it
was very detailed and carefully reviewed.
Chairman McDowell inquired as to which areas of
review received more scrutiny than
under the old ordinance.
Mr. Bobbink
indicated that one example would be that the
vegetation plan is outlined
ahead of time. Given that the long subdivision application was a
bluff development, much more care
was taken on
the drainage issues then he has seen in the past.
PUBLIC
WORKS – AMENDMENTS TO THE CAPITAL FACILITIES PLAN AND CONCURRENCY ORDINANCE TO
INCLUDE HIGHWAYS OF STATEWIDE
SIGNIFICANCE
AS REQUIRED BY RCW 36.70A.
Handout: Travel Delay Methodology: Evaluating Transportation System
Performance
Mr. Kwarsick
commented that both the Capital Facilities Plan (CFP) and the
Transportation Plan were required
elements under GMA. The County’s CFP
and Transportation Plan were completed prior to the land use element because
many of the funding sources associated with the infrastructure development were
tied to complying with GMA. Simultaneously with the development of the
land use plan and final elements of the County’s Comprehensive Plan, the CFP and Transportation Plan were updated to
reflect the land use elements goals and objectives. When the County
originally did the CFP and Transportation Plan there was no mandate to include state facilities; however,
the County believed from the very beginning those facilities were extremely important and included the ferry system and state
highway system as a part of the
original transportation planning efforts. Capacity and LOS standards were evaluated and a recommendation
made to the Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO) who adopted
those LOS standards for the ferry system and state highway system in Island
County.
The biggest issue facing Island County is applying
concurrency requirements to the ferry system and highways of statewide
significance which include the ferry system, Highway 20 and Highway 525. Highway 532 on Camano Island is not planned to be designated as a
highway of statewide significance.
This year the County is required to update the CFP, Transportation Plan
and concurrency ordinance to embrace and implement the issue of concurrency for
highways of state-wide significance. Unlike
the County’s first effort there will be no recommendations made for the LOS
standards on those facilities. WSDOT and Washington State Transportation
Commission will designate the LOS standards and try to make those standards uniform throughout the State.
The State is currently looking at a new methodology
for evaluating transportation system performance “Travel Delay Methodology”.
Traditionally local, state and federal governments have used the Highway
Capacity Manual as a means of looking at LOS standards. The delay technology
uses the Annual Capacity Ration (ACR) concept to describe system
performance. Island County has been working with WSDOT exploring this new methodology in terms of what it means for Island County. The handout provides a spreadsheet, using
ACR values of 8 for rural and 11 for urban. The rural segment of SR 20 from
Ault Field Road to Deception Pass
Bridge has a value of 10.86, indicating a failed roadway segment. Moving out five years to 2003 the urban
segment of SR 20 from Swantown Road to Ault Field Road shows a value of 9.52,
indicating that it would not fail.
Clinton to Fish Road shows a value of 8.53, indicating failure, and SR 532 from East Camano Drive all the
way to I-5 indicates a failure. The
RTPO has had meetings with the State and provided a number of comments about the new methodology and
ACR values, and looked at redefining
the roadway segments to see what changes could be made.
One of the big issues the County will have to face
is the undefined term of development under the statute. The term is not defined except in the
section of the GMA that deals with impact fees which defines it as anything
from a single family building permit on up.
In Island County under the current concurrency code, single family homes and all other permitted
uses are exempt except for those in the commercial zone. It is not known what threshold is appropriate when dealing with the state highway system
because a lot of the traffic experienced here has little to do with growth and development in Island
County, and is a Puget Sound-Washington State driven
phenomenon.
In terms of concurrency applications, in 1998 the
County had one Camano application and four on Whidbey. In 1999 there were 67 on Camano and 116 on
Whidbey. There have been no failures
with the concurrency process to date and Mr. Kwarsick did not anticipate any.
RCW 36.701A.103 requires State agencies to comply
with local comprehensive plans. When
a land use plan is developed, for
example, the County cannot provide the
infrastructure roads at an appropriate LOS standard there are things that can
be done: the County can change the land use plan, find more money or change the
LOS standards. Some balancing can go on between those three component parts;
however, that same balance does not
apply to the state highway system. As
the County puts forward some
Comprehensive Plan amendments and regulations, the issue of state compliance with the County’s
Comprehensive Plan will rise to the
surface and be a major issue.
Chairman
McDowell asked about who would make the
decision to chop the roadway segments into smaller corridors as opposed
to using the entire length of the Island.
Mr. Kwarsick explained that the Washington State Transportation Commission
and WSDOT would make that
decision, with input from the
County and the RTPO.
Commissioner Thorn
questioned about the
relevance to Highway 532 not
being designated as a highway of statewide significance. Mr.
Kwarsick pointed out that Goal #12 of the GMA states, “Ensure that those
public facilities and services necessary to support development shall be
adequate to serve the development at the time the development is available for
occupancy and use without decreasing
current service levels below locally established minimum standards.” The
Hearings Board has taken a close look at the issue of adequacy as it
relates to other public facilities outside of the concurrency mandate of
arterials and highways of statewide significance. He believed that adequacy was
going to be a big issue on Camano Island with RCW 58.17, Subdivision, requiring
a finding of adequacy from the short plat level of development all the way
through large subdivisions and PRDs.
Commissioner Thorn asked how ACR values would apply to the adequacy
determination. Mr. Kwarsick felt the ACR designations would be used as a
means of determining adequacy, whether they are highways of statewide significance
or just part of the transportation system.
Commissioner Shelton pointed out that the State put
into place and required local
jurisdictions’ planning under GMA to develop transportation plans that
support land use plans; however
they did not include the
State. Now that they have been included
and the problems coming to the surface,
it would seem that rather than
acknowledging the problem the State will change the rules. This special legislation applies only to counties made up of islands that have
roads of statewide significance.
Commissioner Thorn believed in theory the ACR designations were a good idea because it related more to the experience of the driver on a
particular road segment, but the
application of the ACR flawed because
it reduced the impact of traffic
currently in effect (the same as
lowering LOS standards because
it is based on the Average Annual 24 hour daily traffic which means that the
periods of night time which are 8 –10 hours a day are averaged in with your
congested loads at the peak periods of travel and then that is averaged over
the annual period, which includes holidays and weekends).
Chairman McDowell
felt the whole concept did not
pass the common sense test. The road
segment between Ault Field Road and
Deception Pass Bridge is not at a sufficient level to stop building permits
on the north end of Whidbey Island.
Commissioner Shelton commented that after driving
I-5 on a Friday afternoon and waiting 3
hours in the ferry line, to say that
the stretch of road from the ferry dock to Fish Road has failed, he thought
ridiculous.
Commissioner Thorn travels Highway 532 three or four
times a week during peak rush hours and is aware that there is perhaps one day
in two where there is a delay, and to show it failing to this degree, did not match up with what he experiences.
E. T. Silvers
drives the stretch of roadway
between Ault Field Road and Deception Pass Bridge frequently and never
experiences any significant delay.
If that segment of the roadway
has a deficient ACR of 10.86, he thought
there must be highways in the state that have ACRs of 50 or 100.
The Chairman believed the difference between other highways in the state and Island
County was in not having the same
concurrency requirements as the County.
Mr. Kwarsick noted that the County is challenging
the State in terms of some of their
information because the County does not feel it reflects reality. He noted that Mike Morton, Island County
Transportation Planner, is meeting with the State to work though some of the
issues. The State is sill trying to reconcile all the comments received from the RTPO, County Commissioners
and staff. The whole idea of trying to develop a new
methodology is fine; the difficulty
comes in applying it in a regulatory framework against development. To start on a completely new untested
program at the same time the concurrency comes along does not make a whole lot
of sense. The end result may be that the State aborts the concept for this
year, but they do believe that they have a legislative mandate to deal with
congestion relief on a statewide basis and they feel this methodology is the
best way to do that.
Commissioner Shelton recalled that when the law was passed, Representative
Dave Anderson was very public about the
fact that he was assured by the Council for the Democratic Caucus in the
House that it only applied to “large
development”. Commissioner Shelton
expressed to Representative Anderson
that it should not be all that difficult to define it so it does not include
short plats, building permits and other minor development.
Dave Osterberg felt there was a general sort of
indication that ACR is in effect a dilution
of the LOS standard. Mr. Kwarsick
had concerns about it but did not know enough about the ACR methodology
versus the old LOS to really come out and make that statement.
Mrs. Crider
noted that at the latest WSDOT meeting in Oak Harbor when they were questioned
about their modeling and how they came to these numbers, indicated
they sent out evaluation surveys and the data was created from the 2000
they received back, a portion being tourist traffic. She felt that this new designation had hastened them to failure versus what is really on the ground.
Meeting adjourned at 11:00 a.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
ISLAND COUNTY, WASHINGTON
______________________________
Wm. L. McDowell, Chairman
_______________________________
William F. Thorn, Member
_____________________________
Mike Shelton, Member
ATTEST: _______________________
Margaret Rosenkranz, Clerk of the Board