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Regime change inn Island County is now nearly 1.5 years old. So how are we doing environmentally under the nouveau regime?
We’ll start in Clinton with the South Whidbey Port District. The current board is made up of Geoff Tapert, engineer for developers; Chris Jerome, medical researcher; and Curt Gordon, owner of Island Asphalt. Previous commissioners were very aware of the Port’s mandate for economic development, but they interpreted that to include maintaining and improving the island’s amenities to attract more tourists. Thus they acquired shoreline access, not only for commerce, but for recreation as well. Among their acquisitions was a large tract at Possession Point, which became a much loved park (and incidentally, as a park, was not developed to homesites which would have destabilized the steep ridge which separates Possession Point from Sandy Hook).
The current commissioners are far more mercenary. In their quest for economic development they are giving serious consideration to a proposal from AT&T to build a cell tower right on that unstable ridge, right on the Dorothy Cleveland trail. AT&T has offered a measly $750.00/month for the privilege of obliterating a section of the trail and putting what is essentially an industrial use right at the top of park. Needless to say, neighbors and park users are less than thrilled.
The Port District is claiming that even though they received money from the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office to buy that land, its ok to lease part of it out for a very incompatible use. And now they’re suggesting that if people don’t want them to lease it to AT&T, they should buy it. Huh? Should we also buy back our other parks? How many times must we re-purchase what we already own?
In Langley, there’s a Parks and Open Space commission (Nancy Rowan, chair; Cary Peterson, Gail Fleming, Tucker Stevens, and one empty seat), whose business it is to inventory the city’s parks and open spaces and determine how to maintain and improve them. They’re doing good work in spite of a 0 budget.
There’s the Planning Advisory Baord (Jim Sundberg, chair; Julie Buktenika; Roger Gage; Melanie Shafaat; and Fred Geisler) which worked for several years to revise and update the city’s comprehensive plan and has been working most recently on revising and updating the zoning ordinance to reflect the new comp plan. You may remember that the city imposed a moratorium on new subdivisions in much of the city. That moratorium was supposed to remain in place until the new zoning ordinance was adopted. Of course it didn’t happen that way.
The PAB submitted its finished product to the city council early this year. The council, which hadn’t been keeping track of what the PAB was doing, had a lot of trouble figuring out this new ordinance and how it would work. Hard to blame them. It is not your standard ordinance. It is very nuanced, with lots of options. The more options, the more complications. The more complications, the harder to understand and the more work to administer. Council has been working to comprehend the proposed new zoning ordinance ever since.
Certain elements of the public, meanwhile, have taken this opportunity to come out of the woodwork and scream about the imposition on their property rights. They were nowhere in sight during the years of work the PAB put in, and they have not necessarily read the new ordinance, but they don’t like it.
One hard to understand part of the new ordinance is that it does not prescribe the standard 1 house per 1/4 acre, or 1/6 acre, or whatever. Instead, it prescribes the number of square feet of living space which may be built per acre in a particular zone. Its up to the owner to decide whether he wants to build a single giant house and use up all the allowance, or build a whole row of cottages. That’s the flexibility part. Then the ordinance goes on to say that in the conservancy zone the majority of the land must remain in native open space. The owner still gets to develop. They just have to cluster the development on one part of the land. The math shows that this actually costs a developer less, because there are less roads, less mileage of utility lines, etc. Nevertheless, some people are still hollering that their land is being taken from them. Never mind that they get to develop more than under the current code. One landowner was very succinct: “I don’t want to have to learn a new way of developing.”
The City Council (chaired by Mayor Paul Samuelson; Robert Gilman; Rene Neff; Russell Sparkman; Bob Waterman; and newly appointed Fran Abel) lifted the development moratorium in March/April. This leaves a huge vulnerability while they consider, contemplate, and study the new ordinance. Part of their rationale for lifting the moratorium was that living dangerously would give them impetus to move along and adopt the new ordinance.
