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Yesterday was a typical day in the life of WEAN’s staff. We began by rushing up to Coupeville to attend the commissioners’ staff session. Among other things, we wanted to see the new planning director, Mr Bob Pederson, in action. He had a long list of items to discuss with the commissioners, but we were primarily interested in two of them. One had to do with how the commissioners intended to deal with WEAN’s having won a decision earlier this year in front of the Growth Management Hearings Board relating to parcels split by public rights of way.
It had been the practice of certain developers to buy property which had a corner across a public road, divide the parcel into two, and then do a boundary line adjustment to make two equal sized parcels. Often both of them were smaller than the minimum size for the zone. WEAN challenged the legality of this practice back in 2007 and won a decision by the Hearings Board. The commissioners repealed the offending ordinance - and then adopted a new ordinance which did exactly the same thing. So WEAN appealed again. Early this year WEAN won the second appeal. The county is now in the process of repealing the offending ordinance. We were at the staff session to make sure it really happens.
The other item of interest at the staff session was the scheduling of an executive session to discuss a proposed rezone in Clinton. An executive session happens when the commissioners want to discuss something in private - usually having to do with legal challenges, personnel matters, or the purchase of land. In this case they seem to think they have a potential lawsuit on their hands.
What’s going on is that a property owner in Clinton wants to rezone his Rural property to include it in the RAID (Rural Area of more Intensive rural Development). The only problem with that is that the Growth Management Hearings Board, in a ruling back in +/- 2000, very specifically named that parcel as NOT belonging in the RAID. And the county’s comprehensive plan says that RAID boundaries are not to be expanded. Bottom line: you can’t get there from here. The property owner does not like this, and may be considering a lawsuit.
After the staff meeting, we went upstairs to the planning dept and reviewed upcoming applications. Comments on two of them were due that day, so we whipped out some handwritten comments on the spot.
One application is really two of them, side by side. Someone has bought two tiny no-perk parcels at Sunlight Beach and now wants to build houses on both of them. The applications are for “reasonable use” of the property. It turns out that various previous owners have tried to get permits to build on these tiny lots, but since they were mostly sopping wet, they couldn’t get any septic permit. The underlying question here is: do people have the right to develop their property if doing so damages the environment and endangers public health and safety?
The second one was also a major issue. PSE wants to whack all trees within a 30’ right of way under their power lines, from Deception Pass to Langley. A lot of those lines cross wetlands, streams, and slopes as steep as 80%. Part of environmental review is looking to see if there are alternatives to the action which would be less damaging.
Back when we were fighting with PSE over what they did to the trees along Coles Road, they dropped the fact that they write incident reports every time the power goes out. They told us that they track what fell on the power line, what kind of tree it was, how big it was, what part of the tree landed on the line, how windy it was, whether it was raining, and much more. So we asked what they did with that information and after hemming and hawing they said that they put it with all the other reports. We asked if they had ever analyzed that information, and they had not. So now we’re asking Island County to require that they do some serious analysis of all those thousands of reports to see if some sort of pattern emerges. What if its only hemlock trees that are causing the damage? What if it only happens when the wind comes from a certain direction? PSE’s program could be tailored to do less than cut every tree which has a potential to grow more than 25’ tall.
We somehow missed the legal notice, so had to review about a foot tall stack of paperwork on the spot and churn out handwritten comments, which we did. Now we’ll go back with the scanner and laptop and scan in the documents so we can read and analyze them at leisure.
By the time we got done with that we had to hotfoot it down to Langley for a meeting of the Tree Ordinance Committee meeting. That was much more positive. Committee member John Lee has been doing a really great job of putting together the various components of an ordinance to protect important trees in Langley. Its great to feel like you’re working on something positive instead of always having to oppose someone.
Finished with the Tree Ordinance Committee, it was time for the Transition Whidbey Potluck With a Purpose. This was our first time, and we were there specifically because the focus was on local foods, a subject near and dear to my heart. The day before, Ashley, our web intern, and I went out and in about 20 minutes found enough food plants to cover a large table with samples. Ashley made great labels and a poster, and there was the display, looking really good. The place was jammed with people and the display was in a corner, so I don’t know how many people really got a chance to see it. I like to think at least a few more people now know huckleberry bushes when they see them, and know to eat a lot of the weeds they pull out of their gardens.
We dragged our sorry carcasses home - and spent several hours on the phone rehashing the day’s meetings and discussing important decisions. Its a good thing not every day is like that. Now we have to deal with all the things we agreed to do, figure out, respond to, etc.
