PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners today will try to meet a Growth Management Act board’s decision — at least part way.
Following nearly two months of work sessions and public hearings by them and the county planning commission, they will pass a resolution and ordinance they hope will satisfy the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board.
The board last April declared noncompliant and invalid several sections of the county’s comprehensive land-use plan, ruling that some urban areas had zones that were too rural.
Furthermore, some rural areas had zones that were too urban, the board said, and the entire Carlsborg Urban Growth Area and Blyn Rural Center were out of whack.
The board also invalidated 20 of the county’s 46 Limited Areas of More Intensive Rural Development, pockets of higher density housing and commerce in areas otherwise given to forestry or farming.
Five broad issues
The county’s solution includes these broad answers:
âñ R2/RW2 zones: Interim downzoning of 22,000 acres across the county, but mostly clustered around Sequim, will be downzoned from allowing a home for every 2.4 acres to permitting a house every 4.8 acres.
However, the county will ask for an extension past Thursday’s deadline to study many of the areas individually in a survey of rural lands.
âñ Carlsborg Urban Growth Area: The county will seek a one-year extension while it prepares a financial plan for a sewer system for the village, which the board requires, plus increased police service.
âñ Sequim Urban Growth Area: Areas outside the Sequim city limit that are judged too rural because they allow only one home unit per acre will be changed to zoning that allows two to five houses.
âñ Blyn: Invalidated as a rural center, it will be made a Limited Areas of More Intensive Rural Development, or LAMIRD, by limiting commercial areas to north of U.S. Highway 101 plus an area south of the highway, southeast of Sequim Bay.
âñ LAMIRDs: Most of these will be shrunk, although some areas will be changed to commercial forest or tourist commercial zones.
Individual LAMIRD alterations can be found on the county Web site, www.clallam.net.
Besides the extensions, the county is appealing some of the growth board’s rulings to Clallam County Superior Court.
The growth board will convene, probably in Port Angeles, on Dec. 15 to hear the county’s case.
The Superior Court will address the county’s appeals in April, almost a year after the growth board’s ruling.
In addition to passing the GMA issues, commissioners today also will approve a $67 per inmate per day agreement with the city of Sequim to jail defendants its officers have arrested.
Included in the settlement is forgiving $75,000 the county says is owed it by Sequim, including $48,000 in medical costs run up by Nathan Hipsher.
Hipsher, who eventually pleaded guilty to murdering Angela Bulus-Steed in 2004, was taken regularly to Seattle for cancer treatments while he remained in the Clallam County jail.
He died last summer in the Monroe Reformatory.
Henceforth, inmates’ medical costs will be pooled and apportioned appropriately.
A similar agreement on housing inmates arrested by Port Angeles police is pending.
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@ peninsuladailynews.com
