A modeling plan designed to take into account how much land is available for development received some tweaks by Clark County Council, though some are worried about the process and believe the development industry is too heavily involved.
During their June 29 meeting, the council voted 3-2 to provide direction to a project team preparing a vacant buildable lands model for the county. The council considered potential recommendations from the private development community to bring past work on developing the model into line with what those in the community say they are seeing.
Clark County planner Jose Alvarez said in 2018 the Washington State Department of Commerce made new guidelines on how counties should go about planning buildable lands within urban growth areas of the county. Since then, the county has been working on updating its model, relying on a team of county staff and outside consultants for research, as well as a 14-member advisory committee for input.
This year, the committee and the project team presented their findings for council consideration. Following a request from council for more information, they received recommendations from a coalition of private development officials, a number of whom were members of the advisory committee.
Those changes, as a whole, would decrease the amount of buildable residential acres in urban areas in the county model, in comparison to the number provided prior to the update and the suggestion brought from the advisory committee as a whole. Proponents stressed the changes are more reflective of the development market than what the project team had come up with.
Those supporting the changes from developers took issue with the project team’s findings, which showed there are more buildable acres available than there previously was under the past guidelines.
“That’s the opposite of what’s being observed in the field,” said Eric Golemo, who is a member of the advisory committee and is one of the signatories on the building industry coalition correspondence to the county. “That’s telling me that something’s not right.”
Golemo supported changes to “market factors” in the model council ultimately approved, which increased from prior levels. Those factors are deductions from the model’s available buildable lands based on expectations not all vacant or underutilized lands would be on the market in a 20-year timeframe, limiting supply.
Golemo also explained the amount of land deducted from the total amount due to infrastructure improvements needed for development should increase, noting specifically the need for greater stormwater facilities due to differing soil types in northern areas of Clark County.
Jamie Howsley, another building industry coalition and advisory committee member, said prior modeling was based on “bad, faulty assumptions that weren’t playing out on the ground.” He brought up recent reports showing there was only a fifth of a month of inventory for houses between $350,000 and $500,000 in the county, and that a median home price increased $20,000 from April to May.
A handful who testified at both hearing times — one on June 15 and one continuation of the hearing on June 29 — took issue both with the methodology used by those in the building industry coalition, and also how they had interacted with the county during the past few months.
“These behind-the-scenes communication and email exchanges, especially between staff and the development community, are disturbing, and in direct contravention to the public participation resolution,” Sue Marshall, a member of Friends of Clark County, said.
Another suggestion approved by council was to add deductions for parks and school district land. David McDonald, another Friends of Clark County member who also served on the advisory committee, said there weren’t any estimates on what land was needed by either kind of district to go by.
“The bill that was passed was not geared toward showing a lack of inventory and capacity, but rather it was to get to ground truth and get to what the actual data on the ground is,” McDonald said. “The building industry just doesn’t want to believe it.”
Should subsequent planning by the county undertaken regularly through the state Growth Management Act show a lack of available acreage, it could lead to increasing urban growth areas in the county, Bryan Snodgrass, another advisory committee member said, which could lead to urban sprawl.
Councilors had their chance to discuss the potential changes during the hearing continuation on June 29, with two out of five at odds with the process the county went through to come up with the changes under consideration.
Councilor Temple Lentz pointed out that staff involved with putting together the model were absent at that meeting. Clark County Manager Kathleen Otto said it was possible those staff members thought the work would be done by then and had already planned vacations ahead of time.
Councilor Julie Olson wanted to go over the list featuring nearly two-dozen items listing changes in a more piecemeal fashion, though fellow councilor Karen Bowerman moved to make all the accepted changes — 15 in total — all at once. Both Olson and Lentz were “no” votes on the resolution.
Lentz echoed concerns by those who were against making the changes brought on by the building industry coalition.
“A majority of council has been driving to this direction for quite some time, working closely behind closed doors with the building industry and it’s unfortunate that this is going to be the result,” Lentz said.
Councilor Gary Medvigy, Bowerman, and council chair Eileen Quiring O’Brien voted in favor of the resolution.
“The false narrative is that somehow we’ve prejudged this … (stepped) outside the public process. None of that is true,” Medvigy said.
The changes will be used to adjust prior work on the model which will come back to council for a vote before it is submitted to the Department of Commerce, Clark County Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako said at the first day of the hearing.
