County Councilors Jeanne Stewart and David Madore discuss the preferred alternative options during a hearing Tuesday.
The Board of Clark County Councilors voted 2-1 Tuesday to adopt modified planning assumptions and a preferred alternative to the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan which includes a revised version of the controversial Alternative 4.
“I believe we would be negligent if we did not fix what is so broken,” Councilor David Madore said of the current comp plan, which would remain in effect under the plan recommended by the Clark County Planning Commission.
The planning commission voted twice to recommend the "no action" Alternative 1, along with certain changes requested by cities, and to reject all parts of both the original and amended versions of Alternative 4.
“In my opinion, it's premature to approve anything,” said Councilor Jeanne Stewart, who cast the lone dissenting vote. “So much of what has been offered has been offered by one councilor and offered within the last two or three weeks.”
The final vote happened near the end of the 6.5 hour meeting after hours of deliberation and fiery testimony from multiple Clark County residents, including an anti-David Madore poem.
The decision defied pleas from the cities of Battle Ground, Camas, La Center, Ridgefield, Washougal, Vancouver and Woodland and numerous citizens across the county who asked the Board to reject Alt 4. Opponents fear land deregulation by Alt 4 could lead to development of urban sprawl which would overload local infrastructure – or that it could spark expensive lawsuits from opponents who believe the plan does not comply with Washington's Growth Management Act.
“One thing that we've heard … is 'you can't do this because we're gonna get sued and we're gonna lose and it's gonna be really bad,'” Madore mock-quoted. “I believe that, whatever we do, every plan that's ever been adopted by this county, someone's sued. Multiple people sued. There will always be lawsuits; I'm taking that for granted.”
Opponents also worried that changing planning assumptions – the basis for the formulation of the alternative plans – so late in the update process may require a complete reboot of the environmental review process. Several residents criticized the Board for moving too quickly from revising Alt 4 and proposing new planning assumptions to adopting the policy before it could be properly studied.
Stewart said she agreed with some parts of the policy but questioned the process by which it was created.
“One of the things we're trying to do is … correct the inaction and negligence of other boards of county commissioners who … should have been looking at natural progression of some rural land development,” she said. “That should have been done incrementally each year. I think it's too ambitious to try to fix that in one plan in our current year.”
Madore disagreed. “One of the things that I feel like we cannot continue to do is to fault previous boards for inaction when we ourselves would end up just kicking the can down the road,” he countered.
As a next step, the Board will send the preferred alternative to be studied in a Final Supplemental Impact Statement. Councilors will discuss the FSEIS issue at 6:00 p.m. Tue, Dec. 1 during its regular Board meeting.
A copy of the policy adopted Tuesday is available at here.
