BOARD OF ISLAND COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
MINUTES OF MEETING
Public
Workshop – Annual Joint meeting with the Board of County Commissioners and
Hearing Examiner
The Board of Island County
Commissioners met in Special
Session on Monday, February 28, 2005 after the regularly scheduled Board of
County Commissioners meeting adjourned. The special session
was held at 3:00 p.m. in the Commissioners’ Hearing Room, Island
County Annex Building, located at 1 N. E. 6th Street, Coupeville,
Wa., scheduled for the Board of
Island County Commissioners to meet in the annual joint session with the Island County Planning Commission and the Island County Hearing
Examiner.
County
Commissioners: Mike Shelton, Chairman, Wm. L.
McDowell, Member
William F. Byrd Member,
Hearing
Examiner: Michael Bobbink
Planning
Commission: Mike Joselyn Ray
Gabelein
Bill Massey
Sheilah Crider
David Baumchen Scott
Yonkman Wayne
Havens
County
Consultant: Keith Dearborn,
Attorney
Planning
Staff: Phil Bakke, Planning Director, Jeff
Tate, Assistant Planning Director
Mr. Bakke presented the 2005 Work Plan (GMA Record # 7752), and then provided background on the Annual Review Amendments from 1999 through 2004 and the resulting ordinances. The presentation included a graph and a map depicting building permit activity for new single family residences from 1999 to 2004.. A chart showed land use permit activities from 1999 to 2004.
[2005 Work Plan entered as
GMA #7752, with copy on file with the
Clerk of the Board]
Mr. Tate displayed a slide from the 2005 Work Plan to show a breakdown numerically of single family residences and subdivisions for 1999-2004. As indicated in the slide, the six years the County has been operating under the current ordinance, the primary form of land division is through the short plat process; encouraging that new lots are not being created at the same pace as new single family construction which means that a lot of our new development is occurring in the form of infill. Another slide gave a separate breakdown for Camano and Whidbey, and Island County as a whole. There has been a fairly significant percentage of new residential development taking place in the RAIDs, especially on Camano Island. The RAID designation takes up about 6.8% of the total land area of Island County.
Mr. Bakke noted that this year’s
projects
include:
Ø
Critical Areas
Update
Ø
Continue Working on Permit
Tracking Systems
Ø
Complete Building Process
Overhaul
Ø
Enhance the GMA Record
Data-Base, Scan Records and make them available to the public via the
Internet
Ø
Non-Residential Guide Book
The critical areas update will be the focus of attention in long range planning this year. Planning staff is currently working with Central Services to put together a new permit tracking system that can handle large amounts of information and data, interconnect with other County departments and be available to the public through the Internet. Staff continues working on different methods to help streamline the building permit process. Permit teams were established in February, and the four customer service specialists at the front counter have been teamed up with plans examiners. One objective in the near future is to revise building permit applications and have applications available on the County’s web page. The GMA record data base was instituted prior to adoption of the 1998 Comprehensive Plan. Improvements were made last year to accommodate document searches, and during the last three to four months needs for searching for documents and in the last 3 or 4 months staff has been working with Central Services to enhance the data base program. Proposed are two terminals in the lobby available to the public to search the data base and print out records; the records will be tied to a scanned document, and the plan is to have the data base program available on the County’s website.
With regard to the
Non-Residential guide book, staff has had a number of communications with
several planning firms that do that kind of work and hope to have a contract
before the Board within the next few months in order to begin that project.
Progress
of the Freeland Sub Area Plan:
January 1999 – May 2004, 78 public hearings conducted on the plan by
volunteer
citizen advisory group
May 2004, advisory group forwarded draft
plan recommending Freeland
become an NMUGA
September 2004, Staff SEPA scoping and EIS drafting
October 2004 – comments received on the scoping and waiting to complete
storm water study.
Under GMA, when
designating an area as a NMUGA it
need not track with the annual
review time frames. The Sub-Area Plan will come before the
Planning Commission for public hearings; the Commission will make a
recommendation and forward it to the Board who for final decision. Most of the items in the
Seven Year Review process are completed, with the exception of finalizing the population
allocation and the UGA discussion with the cities and town.
2005 ANNUAL REVIEW DOCKET
-Critical Areas Update
-WEAN Critical Areas Requests
-PRD Ordinance follow up
-Building size limitations for commercial RAIDS
-Industrial Development Siting Provisions
-Master Planned Resorts
-Public Road Right of Way Segregations
-Population Projections and Allocations [carry forward from
2004]
-UGAs [carry forward from 2004]
-Shoreline Amendment [carry forward from 2004 for inventory &
assessment]
The Commission reviewed the
PRD ordinance in 2003 and determined that steps should be taken to work with the
development community to find out why the PRD program was not being utilized.
Efforts were made to obtain more information from the community and
this item has been brought back to the Commission to let them know what has been
happening and have some discussion about what can be done to encourage that type
of development.
All of the commercial RAIDs,
with the exception of Clinton and Freeland, have a maximum size limit
of 50,000 square feet. In
Freeland the maximum size limit is 27,000 square feet and in Clinton it is
14,000 square feet. There are some practical difficulties to bring forward with
how that size limitation is being applied and ability of services to be provided
for the community. Looking also at
some standards in the code to deal
specifically with contractor related activities. In applying the zoning ordinance staff often deals
with enforcement cases, and often
those relate back to the small contractor. Staff needs to examine the standards
carefully and come up with desirable areas in the County where those activities
can take place.
The Department will be
looking at Master Planned Resorts
and how that might play in with Seattle Pacific University. SPU and the County pulled the
application for a Special Review District designation as a result of the Growth
Management Hearings Board decision. A member of the Hearings Board wrote a
concurring decision suggesting that SPU and the County take a look at the
standards for the Master Planned Resorts designation. For public road
right-of-way segregations,
currently the County allows for division of a piece of property bisected
by a public road right-of-way. Questions have been raised
regarding public road right-of-way segregations as defined in the subdivision code and what
the density provisions in the County Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Ordinance
provide for. Staff will provide the
Planning Commission with a more comprehensive description of the issue.
In 2004 the Planning
Commission made a recommendation for a 2025 population projection and staff has
been working with the cities and town to
come up with a way of distributing that allocation between rural
unincorporated Island County and the incorporated portions of the County. Oak
Harbor and Coupeville have provided
figures, and staff has scheduled meetings with Langley. The next step is to make sure that Urban
Growth Area boundaries are sized appropriately to accommodate population projections. A shoreline amendment
carried forward from 2004 deals with bulk-heading in Mariner’s Cove, Lagoon
Point and Sandy Hook.
Critical Area ICC 17.02 Update
Aquifer Recharge (Track
1)
Geologically Hazardous Areas and Frequently Flooded Areas (Track 2)
Fish & Wildlife Conservation Areas and Wetlands (Track 3)
·
Contracted with Keith
Dearborn for legal and consulting services.
·
Contracted with Paul
Adumus for scientific analysis of current standards, evaluation of existing
conditions and recommendations for Best Available Science.
·
Contracted with
Geo-Engineers to evaluate Geo-Hazard areas
·
Working together with
Health, Public Works, WSU, Marine Resource Committee
·
Assigned Joe Burcar,
Senior Planner to help Jeff Tate lead the update
·
Adam Flamiatos & John
Coleman will work on GIS and policy development
·
Pam Dill & Edie
Elerick will jointly coordinate support services.
·
Each of the current
planning staff members will be assigned special projects.
·
Adding graduate students
and summer interns to assist in data collection and GIS development.
State law requires
evaluation of the critical areas and reports will be
generated for each, and
generally
include:
Chapter 1 – Island County history and background
information
Chapter 2 – Synopsis of state laws and Growth Board
decisions
Chapter 3 – Describe current local
ordinances
Chapter 4 – Synopsis of County
implementation
Chapter 5 – Synopsis of Best Available
Science
Chapter 6 – Issues raised by public and
departments/agencies
Chapter 7 – Data analysis
Chapter 8 – Options and
conclusions
Chapter 9 – Recommendations
Milestones – Track
1 |
Target Date: |
|
Planning Department
Reports published, distributed and sent to State
Agencies |
May 2,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Camano Hearing |
May 17,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Whidbey Hearing |
May 24,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Deliberations |
June 7,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Recommendations |
June 14,
2005 |
|
Staff Session with
BICC |
June 15,
2005 |
|
Board of Commissioners
Adoption of Revised Comp Plan language and Implementing
regulations |
June 27,
2005 |
|
Milestones – Track 2 |
Target Date: |
|
|
|
|
Planning Department
Reports published, distributed and sent to State
Agencies |
May 31,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Camano Hearing |
June 21,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Whidbey Hearing |
June 28,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Deliberations |
July 12,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Recommendations |
July 19,
2005 |
|
Staff Session with
BICC |
Aug. 17,
2005 |
|
Milestones – Track 3 |
Target Date: |
|
Planning Department
Reports published, distributed and sent to State
Agencies |
Dec. 1,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Camano Hearing |
Jan. 1,
2005 |
|
Panning Commission
Whidbey Hearing |
Jan. 17,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Deliberations |
Jan. 31,
2005 |
|
Planning Commission
Recommendations |
Feb. 7,
2006 |
|
Staff Session with
BICC |
Feb. 15 & 22,
2006 |
|
Board of Commissioners
Adoption of Revised Comp Plan language and Implementing
regulations |
Feb. 27,
2006 |
Chairman Shelton was under the impression that the timeframe
to complete the critical area update was December 2005. Keith Dearborn pointed out that he came
on board late which caused a late start to the process. Mr. Tate mentioned that one of the big challenges with both
wetlands and fish and wildlife areas is the amount of information, as well as the amount of information
that is internal to the County. It is going to take a lot of staff work and a
great deal of time to sift through all the information and try to identify where
the gaps are, what information is needed, and synthesize the best available science.
Mr. Bakke spoke with the Assistant Director of the Department of
Community Trade and Economic Development about the way the County is approaching
the update and the timeframe and he did not believe that the schedule that the
County has put together is a problem. Annual
review amendments will be handled
separately from the critical area updates. Mr. Dearborn will not be involved in
the annual review amendments.
Michael Bobbink, Island
County Hearing Examiner, noted that his work load in 2004 was up a little bit
from the year before. There have been some complex and contentious matters
sometimes requiring additional hearing dates. Some of the matters have ended up
in Superior Court on appeal. He is looking forward with some trepidation to
handling the Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, Inc. Master Permit
application.
Meeting adjourned at 5:25 p.m. The next regular meeting of the Board of Island County Commissioners will be on March 7, 2005 beginning at 9:30 a.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
ISLAND COUNTY, WASHINGTON
______________________________
Mike Shelton, Chairman
_____________________________
Wm. L. McDowell, Member
_____________________________
William J. Byrd, Member
ATTEST:
_______________________
Elaine Marlow
Clerk of the Board