The Okanogan County Board of Commissioners met in regular session on August 2, 2010, with Chairman, Commissioner Andrew Lampe, Mary Lou Peterson, Commissioner Don Hover and Brenda Crowell, Clerk of the Board present.

Update – Planning
Ben Rough, Chris Branch

Chris Branch explained an annexation into the City of Oroville. City water and sewer is to the annexation area. A portion of Bob Neil Road will also be annexed. The annexation consists of four parcels and three sides of the area are contiguous to the city limits. Sixty percent of landowners are represented. The area would also be zoned heavy industrial.

Ben reported that Perry’s written comments on the Kittitas County hearing on exempt wells was included in the Yakima Herald.

Perry’s request to DOE for the Draft of 173-548A is still being looked for by Tom Tebb.

Discussion – Letter of Support for Federal Funding – Grand Coulee Dam School Dist.
Dennis Carlson, Superintendent, would like to work on getting new facilities for the Grand Coulee Dam School District. He didn’t realize how many different districts and entities that he would be dealing with. The district serves students from five different counties. State and Local support usually supports school funding but because of all the different agencies not very many of them actually pay taxes. Last year Senator Parlette was able to get some funding for an aging transformer and enabled them to go ahead with architectural planning for a new school. The estimate for doing a K-12 including renovations amounting to approximately 40 million. Senator Parlette did line item 17 million dollars to be used for this project and has contacted Senator Patty Murray to urge her to work on additional federal funding. He is visiting each county requesting a letter of support for federal monies. The commissioners would like to sign on a letter consisting of all five counties. Mr. Carlson noted that Okanogan County is the last to provide the letter of support. The Tribe has waved the TERO requirements for the project.

Public Comment
Ken Sletten, Mazama

Ken Sletten referred to his 8 page comment on the Comprehensive Plan regarding the geographic specific area. He suggested that the Black Canyon issue be put on an advisory ballot and August 10^th is the deadline. He also questioned whether we should have specific geographic areas. Another key issue is to take the "all" out of ? section of the proposed comprehensive plan.

Work Session – Comprehensive Plan
Ben Rough standing in for Perry Huston.

Ben noted that at present the commissioners have opted to leave the Methow area alone.

Ben will be talking about the land designations today and how they came about. He addressed changes to the plan since the Planning Commission handover to the Commissioners.

The amount of resource land designation was reduced and replaced with a rural designation. The reasoning is that Okanogan County only needs a certain amount of resource land in order to sustain a certain amount of industry. Commissioner Hover suggested that some of the larger ranches that are in conservation should be considered as part of the resource lands.

Ben said that they have begun a buildable lands analysis that would include public owned land, critical areas, etc. He thinks it dropped buildable lands down to about 18% of the county. The Planning staff is trying to come up with an accurate amount that is defensible.

Eliminated rural medium density and designated only rural high and rural low. Zoning would remain the same but make the plan simpler. Anything under Rural-5 would be considered rural low.

Changed the urban growth area to future development areas and are designated as rural high.

Some of the permitted uses were transferred to rural areas so as to not prohibit economic benefits to the landowners. Some of these uses would require a conditional use permit. There is also an overlay of the mineral lands.

Ben explained that Planning has requested the cities future expansion areas. Many of the cities have responded but there are a few who have not at this time.

Growth Summits

Three growth summits were held to inform the public on the process. Commissioner Peterson would like to know how many people attended and what they did at those summits. Commissioner Peterson noted that it is almost 3 years to date since the inception of the Comprehensive Plan process.

Neighborhood Groups

There were nine neighborhood groups formed that were located and representative of different areas of the county. The upper Methow group is looking to develop a different process and would be designated as a study area. Different goals were set up for each group. Minutes and signup sheets were completed for each group. Commissioner Hover asked if there was a good cross section of the people in the areas. Ben in some cases you would see 25 people attend and other times only 5 and in his opinion the groups were diverse. Each neighborhood group created a vision statement and record. They were part of the first draft of the comprehensive plan that was submitted to the Planning Commission.

Cluster and subdivision ordinance allows for more density that people were afraid was being taken away. Also a one time split option in the Zoning Code and subdivision code. Commissioner Hover asked if that was once per landowner or once period. This needs to be defined. For example if he split off a 5 acre parcel and then the 15 acre portion was inherited by another, would they then be able to split the 15 acre parcel. Ben said that any split would still have to be large enough to meet health requirements.

Commissioner Peterson stated that a decision has to be made regarding the vision statements. She would like to see some kind of history of the areas included. Commissioner Hover asked what the vision statements should look like. He thinks that there would be a different opinion depending on who you ask. Commissioner Hover suggested that those vision statements are reviewed again and make some determination on how to include them or not.

Resource Lands Group

These groups met during the same time period which was after the first growth summit. These groups produced the first map and criteria for resource lands designations. Resource lands are agricultural, timber and mineral lands of long term commercial significance. This is the only area that is required to comply with GMA. Commissioner Peterson asked for some definition of "long term commercial use" and if someone was in a designated resource land would they ever be able to get out of that classification. Ben stated that private land wouldn’t have a resource designation but would have a rural land designation, should the board adopt this.

The buildable lands analysis would allow for future changes if it can be determined that certain lands are no longer needed to meet the limit.

Ben referred to a memo from Perry Huston regarding a needs of the industry analysis. Commissioner Peterson noted a study that said that we would need 13 million more acres in order to sustain the minimum required amount of fruits and vegetables for our country.

Trends that were addressed were:

Updates

The Circulation Element (traffic) has been completed and is under review

Right to Farm and Subdivision ordinance will be updated

Commissioner Lampe asked if anyone had any questions.

Sandy Mackie said that National Park, National Forest and BLM lands need to be separated on the map because all have different mandates. Once you have identified the critical mass you need to preserve unless there are more lands designated then lands can go out of the resource designation. However, you need findings as to how the information was included in the maps. Particularly with the shorelines master plan it is important that there be a shoreline zone. Buildable lands program is a good one. There should be a provision for a hearings examiner for large projects to handle those records that are more scientific and beyond the Board of Adjustments ability to create a record. A caution on PD’s being able to change uses. These are required to go through the same process as a re-zone.

Jon Wiess, Chairman of Property Rights Coalition, asked if the vision statements are included in the plan that is before the commissioners now. Answer is they are not. What percentage of the land has now been put into rural low? Ben stated that the calculations that took place put the buildable lands were somewhere between 16-18%. Jon asked who was the county representative with the lower Methow group. Ben replied that Lora Waters was contracted to facilitate those meetings. Jon stated that there were 23 landowners who objected to the extension to the Black Canyon area. Ben stated that there is a controversy on this issue and it has been hard to present where the appropriate boundary should be. Commissioner Hover asked what information was being presented that convinced the Planning Commission to move that line. Ben said that maybe at the next meeting this matter could be discussed. Commissioner Hover said that he assumed that the information on the map was derived from the neighborhood groups and public comment. The initial group proposed to bring that area all the way to the mouth of the Methow River. Commissioner Lampe asked Ben to have that information ready for the next Work Session.

Jon also requested that the sign-in sheets be brought tomorrow to show how many people were there at the meetings making the comments as well as those who objected. Jon asked if the GMA language has been removed in the current version of the plan as well as under Sub-unit A section. This will be reviewed.

Ken Sletten pointed out under the proposal #4 that the one time land split cannot be used in the Methow.

Resolution 201-2010 – Sole Source Purchase Designation
Commissioner Hover moved to approve Resolution 201-2010, designating Hart as a sole source vendor. Motion was seconded and carried.

Letter – Phil Anderson – Fish & Wildlife
The commissioners signed a letter to Phil Anderson, Director of Washington State Fish & Wildlife.