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A quick report on the Oak Harbor Urban Growth Area expansion hearing, 10-11-10
Here’s the short and sweet of it: the commissioners voted to revise the Oak Harbor UGA expansion proposal to include only 16 acres along Goldie Road just outside the Navy base which is currently zoned for light industry. In a nutshell, Swan Lake, wildlife, and just plain good planning won.
It took 2.5 hours of testimony and discussion to reach that point. Present were the mayor, city manager, city attorney, and city planning official for Oak Harbor, along with the Fakkema clan, who had asked for the UGA expansion to include, eventually, their entire 377 acre farm. Also present was a whole roomful of people who considered this an unwise proposal.
The tally from my notes: 3 people spoke in favor of the expansion: Oak Harbor’s planning director, the mayor, and Hap Fakkema, who wants to build a city on his land.
By contrast, 10 people spoke against the proposal, and the chair mentioned receiving a large number of letters and emails in opposition.
The next step is for the modified proposal, with a report from the county planning director, to be referred to the Planning Commission for a hearing. That hearing is scheduled for November 9. At the same time the proposal will undergo environmental review.
One of the important lynchpins of this proposal was the city’s claim that they needed to expand to accommodate their projected 2025 population. Our counter was that the city has plenty of undeveloped land and adding more would only contribute to sprawl. GayLynn Beighton, one of WEAN’s board members, is a commercial realtor with extensive background in estimating development capacity. With the help of Jerry and Vera Pitsch, who did an unbelievable amount of gruntwork searching through legal notices, GayLynn produced a Land Capacity Analysis demonstrating that Oak Harbor had severely underestimated its development capacity. GayLynn created a powerpoint presentation showing Oak Harbor’s map of what it considered developable land. She then showed photos of parcels in the downtown area not mapped as developable. All of them were growing trees and grass and “for sale” signs - except for one parcel that was being permitted for a development of 115 units at the same time the City’s map showed it as having a development potential for only 40 residential units. GayLynn asked why these parcels were not included as having development potential. She got no answer. The county planning director accepted GayLynn’s study as valid and used it as one basis for his recommendation to deny the city’s proposal.
But of course its never really over. As we left the hearing we overheard Mayor Slowik tell one of the Fakkema brothers “two more years . . .”
We’ll celebrate, and then we’ll buckle down for the next round, because there is always a next round.
