Clark County’s three councilors voted unanimously last week to move forward with all four alternatives of the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan update, including the much debated Alternative 4.
All four alternatives will now be sent to a Seattle-based environmental analysis group for environmental review. After that review, which is expected to take several months, the councilors – Tom Mielke, David Madore and Jeanne Stewart – will then have to approve a preferred alternative.
The councilors have the ability to approve any one of the four alternatives, or create a combination, including elements from more than one of the alternatives. For a quick review, here’s the four alternatives:
• Alternative 1 – Make no change.
• Alternative 2 – Make changes to long-range planning for some rural and urban areas.
• Alternative 3 – Urban Growth Boundary changes for smaller cities.
• Alternative 4 – Identifies 1,500 existing parcels that were rezoned to resource lands in 1994, placing those parcels not currently in compliance back into compliance.
I shared some thoughts with you about this issue three weeks ago (April 1, 2015). You know me by now, I’m all about protecting an individual’s rights, and a large part of that ideology is defending the rights of a property owner.
It’s simplistic, I know, but I’d like to believe in a perfect world each of us should be able to do about anything we want with our property as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of our neighbors. (I realize that leaves a wide interpretation of what could potentially be an infringement.)
Specifically, I am very sympathetic to landowners who have viewed their property as an investment, a bit of a retirement plan if you will, with the idea that one day they might develop their property to profit from the smaller parcels created. If they owned their property prior to 1994 when the Growth Management Plan was first introduced, they should be entitled. If they purchased after 1994, I realize the argument could be made that they knew what they were signing up for, but nonetheless, my ideology remains consistent.
What if I owned 20 acres of rural land in Clark County and I was blessed with three adult children? I might be fortunate enough to subdivide my property so I could stand on my deck and gaze out over the landscape and see the homesteads that my land provided for my children and their families, comforted by their close proximity to me. I would be fighting mad if I was prevented from realizing that dream.
But, I realize there is a balance between property rights vs. responsibilities. The mayors of Battle Ground (Shane Bowman), La Center (Jim Irish) and Ridgefield (Ron Onslow) all spoke at last week’s public hearing, urging the councilors not to landlock their cities from the potential development of urban industry that could add jobs and revenue to the respective tax base of each city.
I’m sympathetic to that. It was pointed out to me that a recent analysis identified just 13 parcels in Clark County of 20 acres or more that could potentially be targeted for urban industry (jobs) and developed within an 18-month period. That’s a precious few amount if it’s an accurate assessment. And when those are gone, by virtue of residential development, they are gone for good.
So, what is needed here is balance. I encourage the councilors to protect the individual rights of as many rural landowners as possible. But, it’s obviously vital that they protect our county’s ability to create jobs.
The county has until June 30, 2016 to have its plan approved by the state Department of Commerce, or else they could be found in non-compliance and be held in violation of planning laws. I’m told that’s not as scary of a position to be in as it may sound. It might actually buy the county more time to get their work done.
The task of achieving the type of balance that I’m suggesting is a bit of a Herculean task, one that I don’t see how will be completed in the next 14 months. That said, here’s wishing the Wisdom of Solomon to all involved in a hope that lofty goal is achieved.
Ken Vance
Editor
