San Juan County Councilmember Rick Hughes will host a Town Hall meeting at the Eastsound Fire Hall from 5-7 pm on Thursday, December 3, 2015 to present and discuss changes to the proposed Eastsound Subarea Plan.
“The Subarea Plan is a really important document that I have been working on since 2011, first as a member of the Eastsound Planning and Review Committee, and now as a Councilmember,” said Hughes. “I thought it was important to host a forum during non-working hours so that a greater number of folks could attend to learn about the Plan.” Staff from the Dept. of Community Development will be in attendance to help answer questions and take written comment.
A copy of the proposed Plan can be found on the County’s website at: https://www.sanjuanco.com/cdp/ESAP/ESAP_Home.aspx
In addition to the Town Hall meeting [on Dec. 3], the San Juan County Council will travel to Orcas Island on Tuesday, December 8, 2015 to hold a public hearing at 10:15 a.m. at the Eastsound Fire Station on the proposed Eastsound Subarea Plan.
[The Dec. 3 Town Hall will follow the meeting of the Eastsound Planning Review Committee,from 3 to 5 p.m. at the same location.]
Thank you, Rick.
Thank you for your efforts, Rick; I fear it’s too little, too late. Please don’t take this as a personal affront – but I would love for once to see a Town Hall meeting put on by a citizen who’s not a politician or someone with an agenda or a position of power.
I want to see town halls called by citizens with questions and concerns about the directions we are heading, and willingness to come together, put aside our differences, and solve the many complex problems we are facing. We won’t solve them by taking irreversible directions that throw out environmental protections so we can continue building McMansions that sit empty most of the year, or further endanger our ecosystems on which we depend – for tourism, and for quality of life here.
I mean no offense to Rick or anyone else. But when is the last time we had a real Citizen’s town Hall? Or has everyone become so apathetic, overloaded, or too burned-out and battle weary to show up anymore, or do something more egalatarian and non hierarchical in our community discussions?
This rewrite of our SubArea Plan is scheduled to be adopted, along with the Shoreline Management Plan (rewritten to exclude most of the environmental protections and to allow things such as oil pipelines in County waters!) around December 15. Does anyone else question the timing or efficacy of this – right in the beginning of Holiday season?
The Eastsound SubArea Plan (ESAP) was rewritten, even though that was not the directive. The original directive was simply to put the SubArea Plan into the UDC by the end of 2015. And then the County was supposed to dialogue with We the Public about what would happen with it next. What’s the rush to adopt something when people don’t really know or understand what the changes mean, in terms of both zoning and regulation? What will be allowable? What protections of Critical Areas such as Eastsound Swale will further disappear or be ignored? Most importantly, how could this really affect us – stormwater, runoff, silt intrusion, pollution of Fishing Bay, etc? It’s not easy to imagine when it’s on paper. When the lot upslope from you is clearcut and you inherit their erosion runoff, it becomes much more real.
Open houses to ask us what we want to see in the Eastsound UGA, with nice papers full of impossible contradictions – are well intended and totally meaningless. What would have been helpful to us, would have been to explain, in laymen’s terms, exactly what these changes will do, and will mean; not expect people to read two 50 page documents and try to compare what is different, with no strikethrough/underline or help in any way until it was too late. You couldn’t even find the proposed ESAP link on the County website, though some of us asked for this for over a year – until too late in the game for it to have real effect on educating and informing the Public.
If we had more time, this Town Hall meeting would have more meaning. As it stands, I think it’s too little too late. But, I fervently hope that those who attend will voice their concerns, because I think that Council thinks the above-mentioned process is transparent. I think it’s not, and that we who live in the UGA and take the brunt of the onslaughts deserve better. We deserve facts, not fantasies of how it could be – unless we deliver by protecting what we have that is precious and rare.
The Planning Commission Hearing this fall on the SubArea Plan was eye-opening. There were so many changes written into in the ESAP that even the members of the PC were flummoxed, but nobody on the PC had the time it took, to begin to try to understand all the un-asked for changes – without real Public involvement – and the Planning Commission was given a ridiculous deadline of just a week – so they punted the ball to Council without really addressing it.
Now it seems that Council will adopt a document that we never really had proper explanation as to what these changes will really mean in Real Life, Anyone against relaxing environmental protections, or for enforcement for repeat violators, were dismissed – unwelcome at EPRC meetings – until none of us wanted to attend them anymore. This was not handled in a way that could inform the regulations and continuing/accelerating assaults on environmental protections.
If you want meaningful dialogue with us, please postpone the adoption of the SubArea Plan, and the hearing on December 8. It gives the general Public and those affected in the UGA and surround, way too little time to add informed comment. Change by change, go over the changes with us. Allow us to give input, even if it disagrees with what the County or EPRC wants to do. Then consider carefully before proceeding with a SubArea Plan and SMP that mainly make maximum development possible and gut environmental protections, and the teeth to enact them when people repeatedly violate our laws because they know they won’t even get a fine. Sorry, but I won’t be there. Too little, too late.
I hope people send written comment to Council on both of these very important Plans. The hearing on the SMP is November 30 – 4 days from now, after a long holiday weekend.
the email is: council@sanjuanco.com (that gets to all Council members plus staff)
please cc your comments to:
Bob Fritzen, Dept of ecology – bfri461@ecy.wa.gov
Colin Maycock – colinm@sanjuanco.com
Sadie,
I believe you are misrepresenting the Planning Commission part of the process, and the level of understanding and attention to detail the PC members put into the Subarea plan.
We were not “flummoxed”, we’d been seeing the plan for well over a year, and if you recall had public workshops on it a year before).
We *were* indeed presented with an overly-short time period to hold a proper hearing on the final version, and if you noticed, we refused to follow Planning’s initial schedule, and held multiple hearings to allow us to go through the tables and text in detail, while still getting the project done in time for this year’s docket process.
Brian, I respectfully disagree. I was surprised by how surprised the PC was that Colin had rewritten so much of the SubArea Plan. I was also disheartened that at the hearings you mention, it was only to discuss the changes and not further take Public comment (hence, I did not spend another day at the hearing the following Monday.
My unanswered question remains: If the only required thing for 2015 docket was to put the SubArea Plan into the UDC, why’d you pass the rewrite? I see that as punting the ball. I know some of the PC members were quite alarmed and concerned by these changes – not – we all thought – mandated by Council. So… Why did you not advise Council to wait until 2016 to revisit the rewritten SubAreaPlan? I was so disappointed in the PC’s position on this – although understandably, it would have taken real time and effort to fully discuss every change. I’m not accusing. I really want to know the answer. Because I’ll bet there were some who were uncomfortable in doing this – and for good reason.
I only know of one PC hearing the monday after the hearing I attended. If there were others, I should have been informed since I was on that email list. There were meetings, yes – but hearings? When? what dates?
Sadie Bailey expresses the frustration that many community members experience when there are changes proposed to the “rules and plans” that govern us. Those recommendations for change do not, however, occur overnight nor in a vacuum. Discussions of the subarea plan have been a topic for discussion at the EPRC meetings for what seems like an interminable period. We all have the opportunity to participate in the process.
That having been said, most folks have long “lists” of responsibilities and commitments such that attendance at “one more meeting” is often a cerebral overload.
Sadie’s underlying point is that there is no timeline to rush the Plan to conclusion. My greatest frustration with government in general is the lack of regular communication with the electorate. I don’t see any disadvantage to having a series of presentations during the next several months so that concerned citizens can ask meaningful questions, get answers from the planners, allow for final tweaking of the proposal, and then, perhaps by late Spring bring the vetted Plan to fruition and Council approval.
This process has been in the works for years. What is the rush to conclude it without having the neighbors most impacted by the Eastsound Plan an opportunity to “buy into it”, that is, to have ownership of the document that will impact those of us who live here?
Thank you, Ed. What seems to be missing is line-for-line explanation of what the changes mean and what the existing regs mean. These documents are long and complex. County often makes existing Plans so hard to find; why not just link it on the home page? Instead, what I see are fluffy open houses where everyone discusses what they’d like to see in Eastsound, when people have little to no understanding of the what or why of regulations. When you separate goals and policies from regulations, with no stated reference on where in the Comp Plan one can look up the “why” of a regulation, you can’t expect most people to make that leap. This is how it’s been in my 34 years of living here. People don’t go to meetings because these things aren’t discussed – not the nuts and bolts things that would educate the people. And the idea of tables! Argh. Arduous, confusing (especially with no corresponding references to the existing SubAreaPlan numbers and regs – it can come off as disingenuous and so confusing to the public, that is seems as if the members of the EPRC who worked on this really DON’T want Public involvement or education. I’m heartened that there are members who seemed to appreciate our input – but there were others that made some of us seem so unwelcome for asking the hard questions, that most people just give up going to the meetings.