By Stan Matthews
County Communications Program Manager
The San Juan County Council adopted 8 proposed changes to the County’s Comprehensive Plan at its meeting Tuesday, April 28. After the final vote on the final amendment was completed, County Administrator Pete Rose urged the Council to take a moment to “reflect and celebrate the amount of items addressed in this docket, the year of preparation, the amount of work by the Council, the Planning Commission and other committees and staff. ” He added, “This docket tackled some long-delayed and neglected work and faced up to some thorny issues.”
The comprehensive plan sets overall county goals and policies and guides development of the County. It can only be amended once each year, so even though debate on many of the proposed changes took place over a period of months, final deliberation and action on all amendments had to be completed during one Council session.
Public testimony on all of the amendments the Council considered had been taken during past meetings. Additional testimony was accepted only on the final and most contentious of the amendments.
The first three Amendments to the Comprehensive Plan were changes in the land use map. The following summarizes of the effect of each of the amendments:
- Established a “Fairgrounds Overlay District” on San Juan Island. In addition to mapping the overlay, it changed the rules to allow a greater variety of year-round activities at the County facilities there.
- Redesignated 28 acres of land on San Juan Island from Forest Resource to Rural Farm Forest, in line with a recommendation from the Planning Commission. The property is located north of West Valley Road between Capron Road and Raven Ridge Road
- Redesignated from Agricultural Resource to Rural industrial slightly more than six acres of land on San Juan Island adjacent to the current County transfer station on Sutton Road. The Ordinance describes the redesignation as “a necessary precursor to the development of a new, safe, sanitary and efficient transfer station.” There had been some public opposition to the change because it represented a loss of Agricultural Resource land, but staff and Council Members argued that the soil, terrain and surrounding land uses make it unsuitable for agriculture.
- Set final boundaries and adopted development regulations for the Country Corner Limited Area of More Intense Rural Development (“LAMIRD”) on Orcas Island. This defined and set development rules for another of the several areas in the County which had been operating under interim rules since the Comprehensive Plan was originally adopted.
- Moved regulations for “Personal Wireless Communications Service Facilities” out of the Comprehensive Plan and into the County Unified Development Code. The move makes modifications to restrictions on the construction of cell phone facilities less time consuming and is a step toward the County’s goal of improving cell phone and emergency communications capabilities in the County.
- Adopted the “Water Element” of the Comprehensive Plan – an optional element provided for in the Growth Management Act that is important in counties which must carefully maintain supplies of potable water. The element sets goals and policies for public water supplies, stormwater management, agriculture, and policies concerning fish, wildlife and native habitat.
- Completed updates to the “Land Use Element” of the Comprehensive Plan that were begun in 2005. This is a mandatory element of the Comprehensive Plan under the Growth Management Act and brings the County one step closer to full compliance. The adopted updates set policies and goals for the preservation of forest, agriculture, critical habitat areas, residential and other uses of land County wide.
- Established procedures for the siting of “Essential Public Facilities” on the County’s shoreline. (“Shoreline EPF”). After extensive public testimony and questioning of staff, the Council adopted the Shoreline EPF amendment by a vote of 5 to 1, with Council Member Rich Peterson dissenting. The ordinance covers facilities that “provide a necessary public service as their primary mission, that are water dependent and that are difficult to site.”
Among the existing facilities enumerated in the Shoreline EPF is the barge landing facility at North Bay on San Juan Island. Residents of the area who oppose the expanded use of that facility were joined by the environmental group Friends of the San Juans in arguing that the County should perform an environmental impact study before listing that facility in the Comprehensive plan.
In the end, the Council adopted the Ordinance after inserting a requirement that an environmental impact study be performed before enlarging or increasing the use of that facility.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the Council adopted, by a 4-2 vote, a resolution to deny an application for amendments modifying land use restrictions in the Orcas Island Airport Overlay District. However, Council Members indicated a willingness to give priority to the concerns expressed by the Eastsound Plan Review Committee and property owners in the area in future deliberations on the County’s Development Code.
Copies of all Amendments and associated staff reports and documents are linked to the April 27th online Council agenda on the County website: https://sanjuanco.com
