Council adds indoor residential tennis courts to work plan

||| BY STEVE BERNHEIM, theORCASONIAN REPORTER |||

Planning Staff Priorities

At its Tuesday meeting, September 28, the San Juan County Council agreed that the County’s planning staff should add draft rules allowing private indoor tennis courts in the “Rural Farm Forest” zone to its list of priorities. Former County Councilperson Rick Hughes submitted the application for the zoning change on behalf of the 40 families of the private Orcas Tennis Club. In its application, former Councilperson Hughes writes “This is not a huge change to the existing land use. All that is being asked is that the OTC be allowed to build a covered court.”

Resisting the assignment, Councilperson Wolf (Orcas) said she was “concerned that an alteration to land use like that is going to require staff time to explore what kind of unintended consequences there might be and what kind of parameters need to be set on allowing a new use and so I think I am not for any further action.” Councilperson Minney (San Juan Island) supported planning staff doing the study, pointing out that outdoor courts are already permitted in the rural residential zone: “Outdoor tennis courts are allowed in rural farm forest. Obviously, they have one, … It’s the building that makes the difference.”

In addition to the indoor tennis courts on Rural Farm Forest lands, the Council committed the planning staff to further study of stormwater control, tree protection, commercial composting and Eastsound development. The Council voted against assigning staff a “build-out analysis” of all county parcels agreeing that the County’s Comprehensive Plan could be fatally internally inconsistent if a build-out analysis concluded that the number of people who would be permitted to live here if all available lots were filled was substantially different from the State’s official population projections for the County. The State projects that 19,423 residents will live in the County in 2036, up from the 16,314 who lived here in 2016, an increase of about 3,000 over 20 years.

According to Planning staff, this growth number is “one of the key assumptions about growth that our plan is required to use.” According to US Census data, the county population estimate on July 1, 2019 was 17,582, an increase in only three years of about 1/3 of the expected 20-year growth.

In-Person Comprehensive Plan Outreach

The Council approved a previously unbudgeted $22,000 consultant contract to administer four-hour “popups” at each of the major grocery stores on Orcas, Lopez and San Juan Islands followed by 2-hour open houses to educate residents about Comprehensive Plan proposals. The consultant will administer the events and prepare a final report, a policy framework tool, and a reference guide by the end of November.

In-person popups are part of the comprehensive plan outreach where members of the public, usually in five- to ten-minute engagements with county staff members, can find out about the open houses to be held that evening and about the comprehensive plan update, what’s going on, and how they can get involved in the process. Because the planning staff goes out and engages directly with the community for the popups, additional voices not normally showing up at planning meetings or knowing what the development staff are up to are heard. The in-person open houses have different stations for different elements of the plan, with more information about the proposed updates.

After Councilperson Wolf asked whether there would be any remote access to accommodate anyone who could not safely be in a public crowd, she heard that planning staff at the popups will be engaging folks as they come and go, typically only two or three at a time and outside; for the open houses, there will be social distancing, and limits on the number of masked public allowed inside at any one time. Wolf cautioned against increases in contract costs since COVID compliance requirements for the face-to-face encounters are not mentioned anywhere in the contract.

County Campus Improvements

The Council heard from a consultant retained to advise on the comparative costs of rehabilitating and expanding or building anew for the County’s need for 23,000 square feet of office space. The consultant reported that the Full New Construction Option and the Remodel and Renovate Option both cost about the same: $18,000,000 over two years to renovate; $18,200,000 over 16 months to build new. The consultants did not provide or mention any carbon footprint data in their materials. The Council’s Resolution to Respond and Adapt to Climate Change nowhere mentions the carbon costs of new or rehabilitated County facilities.

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Public Comment

Many residents take time to present their opinions directly to government representatives at remote-access public meetings. Sharon Westin offered this tele-comment at the September 28 Council meeting after another person complained about a neighbor’s application to build an airplane hangar:

As I drove here this morning I was struck once again as I actually am every morning by the fragile nature, really incredibly fragile nature of our magnificent island ecosystem and we all have the good fortune to live here. We’ve lived here since 1996 and we’ve seen a lot of growth but not nearly as much, I mean the growth that we’ve seen in the last year and a half, if you will pandemic-inspired growth, has really outdone everything else.

So I wondered how I can speak for that being as I said retired and no longer as connected to political things as I was, have been, in the past. But I would say that both for megastructures which I’m seeing all over the island, this hangar being a great example of that but all over the island and it’s obviously a product of wealth coming to the island and not necessarily knowing or caring about what our rural values are.

So, as you look at the population build out for this island, I would like to say that how can we hold leadership for a vision for this island? We have rural values which we celebrate and we market, we market to the world as this rural place, can we hold that and really imagine putting more and more and more people on our little narrow roads that are barely big enough to hold the traffic that we have now? If we stop for a minute and imagine the squeeze on our open spaces and neighborhoods and imagine the discrepancy between who we say we are and what we are becoming,

So here is my simple request: I do ask you to hold to the vision of the comp plan and not to fold to the constant and inevitable pressure of individuals who want to violate that vision.

Approve [build-out analysis] for the current comp plan work program. I guess that’s all I really want to say, is that we want to hold, ask you to hold for the will and the vision, as our elected leaders, for this island and its future. Thank you.