From City of Chewelah
Special Meeting Minutes: December 7, 2006
By Gaylea Nolander
Dec 28, 2006, 10:12
· Call to Order/Roll Call – The special meeting of the Chewelah Planning Commission was called to order by Chairman Tom Bristol on December 7, 2006 at 6:35 P.M. The following planning commission members were present: Chairman Tom Bristol, Jon Lind, Irv Schick, Bill Davies, Kevin Herda (arrived at 6:38 P.M.), Alice Crowley, and Doug Sassman. Excused absence: Daniel Voltz. Also present: Chaz Bates, Planner; Curt Kelling, City Administrator; and Gaylea Nolander, Executive Secretary.
· Announcements
Kadya Hugus submitted her resignation from the planning commission on December 1, 2006.
Mayor Bauman appointed Jon Lind to the fill the unexpired term on the planning commission vacated by Kadya Hugus. City Council confirmed the appointment on December 6, 2006.
· Agenda Additions, Deletions, and/or Changes – None.
· Minutes – Doug Sassman moved with a second from Bill Davies to approve the November 16, 2006 minutes. All in favor.
· Public Comments – None.
· Communications and Announcements – None.
· Reports from Members – None.
· Reports from City Administrator and Staff – None.
· OLD BUSINESS
Workshop – Draft Shoreline Master Program Including Public Comment
Notice – Gaylea Nolander advised Notice of the Workshop was posted at City Hall, Chewelah Library, AmericanWest Bank, Chewelah Post Office, and Chewelah Website. Notice was published in the Chewelah Independent. Notice was mailed to: Robert Harrison, Charles Burnett, Chad Burnett, Joseph Zollman, Gary Plotts, Barbara Nelson, Roseanna Nielsen, and Mr. and Mrs. Dale Abbott. Notice was emailed to Bob Playfair.
Chaz Bates, Planner – The purpose of the workshop is to give an update on the revision to the Shoreline Master Program in regard to removing Thomason and Paye Creeks from the Shoreline Master Program. Memo dated December 7, 2006 setting forth the proposed revisions marked as Exhibit 1 and attached hereto, incorporated herein and made a part of these minutes as though fully set forth. (Kevin Herda arrived at 6:38 P.M.) Chaz reviewed the memo, which also included some minor changes to some of the review procedures.
Bill Davies – Unless Thomason and Paye Creeks are put into the Critical Zone at the same time this goes through, I am going to vote against it…Bill quoted from Exhibit 1, Memo, Page 1, “Unfortunately, it appears that Ecology is not likely to approve Chewelah’s SMP with Thomason and Paye Creeks included in the body of the SMP.” He stated it says it appears and it is not likely which are two ambiguous statements. Bill contends that the State gave us the authority to do as we pleased with Thomason and Paye Creeks. He wants Thomason and Paye Creeks included in the SMP.
Planning Commission Members stated at the last planning commission meeting upon the recommendation of Department of Ecology, Attorney General, Thomason and Paye Creeks be removed from the SMP. Planning Commission concurred that is still the direction they want to go.
Chairman Bristol – We are in a position to request that the information that we are removing from the SMP be developed in the Critical Areas Ordinance concurrently with the SMP.
Chaz Bates stated that he is hesitant as staff to do it concurrently because there are not policies in the comprehensive plan to support the types of regulations that are identified for Thomason and Paye Creeks, which require a comprehensive plan update. We require everybody in the City to have a proposal that is consistent with the comprehensive plan development regulations, and we have to abide by those same rules. I am not saying that we lose these things ever, I have been saying the whole time that we take these out and put them into the Critical Areas Ordinance.
Chairman Bristol stated he thinks it is a fair request to see how that information that has been removed from the Shoreline Master Program will be incorporated into the Critical Areas Ordinance, knowing that it won’t be completed until the comp plan updates happen.
Chaz Bates – That was the other side of this document (Exhibit 1) showing deletions, these have been separated out…I have not begun to amend the Critical Areas Ordinance, instead I have been focusing on getting the draft SMP done, but I can show you the sections that I would imagine that they would go into.
Throughout the meeting Bill Davies adamantly requested that the draft SMP and the Critical Areas Ordinance as to Paye and Thomason Creeks be developed and adopted concurrently.
Planning Commission expressed concern about the work and science completed on Paye and Thomason Creeks being lost.
CA Kelling – Cautioned planning commission about being arbitrary and capricious and making too strong of statements on the front end until this actually goes through the process…unless you have the policies in place and they have went through the policy process to be adopted, recognized by the city council, and reviewed by the attorneys, that opinion is arbitrary and capricious of your own and will never hold up if you actually try to restrict somebody from building in that area. This does have to be a process…those things literally have to tie together to make that decision to tell somebody they can’t use that portion of their private property for the use they decided they want to use it for because of this regulation. That decision is not going to stand up without all of those pieces all coming together. In answer to Bill’s suggestion to leave Paye and Thomason Creek in the SMP and see if the state rejects it, CA Kelling answered: You have a legal review by the Attorney General that works for the Department of Ecology, that says that is exactly what they are going to do…They are going to look at the document and say nice try folks, we don’t agree with this under state law…when it got reviewed by the attorneys, they said no. I am not an attorney so I am not going to give you a legal opinion, if you would like a legal opinion I would be happy to go get it for you.
Bill Davies – We have to do something to protect the creek areas the same way it was protected before in the Shoreline Management Act. It was protected then, we have to protect it again.
CA Kelling – …The only protection you had for those creeks is the language in your Critical Areas Ordinance as it currently exists. You are not changing any of that…technically and legally the protection that you have in place today is the current language that has been adopted in your Critical Areas Ordinance. The SMP has never been formally adopted…The information is not going to get lost. There may be a critical timing path there where this may have to be put in place first...If you are asking that we have draft language available to review through this process that may be good, but we have to be careful in the adoption process to make sure that we meet all of the legal requirements.
CA Kelling stated he will review the process with the attorneys the City uses for planning issues.
Irv Schick – I would like to see the Shoreline Master Plan completed, adopted by city council, and get it shipped off for final review…then get this other process started.
CA Kelling – We certainly can start bringing draft language for it. I just want to make sure that before we start adopting critical parts of it that all of the steps are in place.
Irv Schick – Nothing is going to get adopted until the comp plan is done anyway.
I am not worried about waiting until the comp plan is finished. I just don’t want to lose the science that we have done for Thomason and Paye Creeks…
Kevin Herda and Irv Schick commented on their concerns about proposed administrative review (Exhibit 1), stating one concern is that there is no opportunity for public review.
Chaz Bates – You still have the Notice of Application and that gets mailed to every adjacent property owner.
Chaz Bates – At the bottom of page 3, Use Compatibility Matrix, (Exhibit 1), what is being proposed right now is to remove all of that information. Thomason and Paye Creeks would still have to go through a site plan review process but they don’t go through it based on the science that was developed for the shoreline master program. I am not suggesting that we remove that site plan review process, but what I would suggest is that Thomason and Paye Creeks site plan review process as presented there would match what is presented on page 6. Where I have taken out the site plan review process for things like parking, landscaping, signs…
Kevin Herda – What was your reasoning on those, I can see the signs.
Chaz Bates – It would still get reviewed under the policies and regulations, it would just be a Type I approval rather than having to go to a public hearing. Right now it requires two months to get through a site plan review process, that is two months for somebody to wait to get their building permit, when something if you meet the setbacks, and you have a riparian buffer, what more needs to be added to that from this body from a public hearing, that is why I removed it.
Planning Commission expressed concern about removing the site plan review process as set forth in the proposal. They also expressed concern over the lack of code enforcement.
Chairman Bristol made the following suggestion: Separate Thomason and Paye Creeks only from the SMP. Don’t change anything…We can discuss proposals at the time of review.
Public Comment
No Audience Comments
Chairman Bristol read into the record in its entirety, a letter received from Jack W. Nielsen and Roseanna Hartill Nielsen, dated December 1, 2006. The Nielsen letter marked as Exhibit 2 and attached hereto, incorporated herein and made a part of these minutes as though fully set forth.
Chaz Bates – What I heard the planning commission say is: Separate the two and don’t change anything, so at the next planning commission meeting or at whatever meeting you are choosing, I will have a draft to you before then…Include Paye and Thomason Creeks in some sort of draft form in the Critical Areas Ordinance. I expect that is going to be the next two things you are going to see, Draft Critical Areas Ordinance for Thomason and Paye Creeks, and separate Chewelah Creek in the draft SMP.
Jon Lind – Which is going to come first, City approval, or Ecology approval?
Chaz Bates – The process is the planning commission will make a recommendation to city council, the city council will have an additional hearing, after it is approved it gets sent to Ecology. They decide whether or not they need to hold another public hearing, at which point it gets accepted or denied and sent back to the City.
Chairman Bristol – I would like it to go on the record that I did email Doug Pineo with Department of Ecology requesting comment on the letter from the Attorney General, since he was more or less instrumental in taking us down this path that sounded like a good idea to all of us with his enthusiasm, and received no comment back. I consider him a friend and I am irritated about that.
Chaz Bates - State law does not support protecting streams of local significance and even though we made it very clear that these were not streams of the state, enough confusion existed at an outsiders view that they needed to be removed.
Comprehensive Land Use Plan Updates - Discussion
Curt Kelling – Chaz and I are still getting organized on putting together the plan for the update…We talked about going to a two meeting a month schedule. What I want to do in January is not implement it yet, go with the regular scheduled meeting date in January, and do it as a joint city council, planning commission workshop. I did talk with the city council last night. I also left a very nice invitation to Mr. Grimes to come join us for that. I will try to give you a little bit more detail, but I think what we want to do is have Chaz and I get a chance to put more of the plan together to do the update and bring it in and kick it off with all of you folks in the room at the same time. January 18th is the regular meeting date…they also wanted to do it at 6:00 P.M. if you are available. It will be our kick-off for the comprehensive plan update. We will be doing some contact with the newspapers and may get some other flyers out…It will give you and the public an opportunity to pull down some ideas that you think are critical and important things to include in the process, but the main things on the front end is hitting the general vision of where the city is going and where you think you want to build it to…population allocation which is a big deal in there, currently you have a number which as far as I can tell was blue skied into your original comp plan and it has been included now in the Stevens County Comprehensive Plan in taking the City of Chewelah by the year 2026 to 5,400 people. I am not sure you really want to go there. I think that is a big discussion…what I will probably be proposing to you folks to consider with the city council is tying the population allocation in this version of the comp plan to the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant so you guarantee yourself to not have to rebuild it or add to it during at least the first ten years of this without coming back and updating the comprehensive plan…actually tie it to what we can do…the third piece of that is transportation…that will be another critical piece…that population number really ties to your land use analysis and ties to what it is that ultimately you are doing with the urban growth area boundaries, whether you leave them where there are at, whether we draw them in, whether we move them out, but we start making sure that those things are actually tied together…Once you hit a population of 5,000 or over we are no longer a small city currently in Washington in all of the funding streams…Once we establish that number under the law, your capital facilities element, then you need to go out there and prove that we can put the infrastructure in place to serve it and that becomes our standard for analyzing everything that comes through here in a land use application process…
Chaz Bates – A word about population projection…when the County asked us what we wanted…analyzing our capacity, our land use capacity, and service capacity, outlandish as that number seemed without going through that analysis and redoing that information, we said we would take it, but it doesn’t mean we can’t change it.
Chairman Bristol – Don’t forget to put Critical Areas Ordinance into that review in January.
Kevin Herda – Is it 6:00 P.M. that we are having the joint workshop and then at 7:00 P.M. we are going to work on shoreline or are we skipping shoreline in January?
Chaz Bates – I would advocate for you to focus that meeting in January on just the (comprehensive plan) workshop.
Curt Kelling – My idea was unless we had something we absolutely needed to schedule for planning commission action that night we would just have the (comprehensive plan) workshop…We are pushing halfway through the year for the comp plan, but realistically if we get it in place by the end of the year we will be doing pretty good. I have to report back to the Growth Management Hearings Board again in January and by then we are going to be giving them the documentation of where we are at and what we have done…
Chairman Bristol – So we are not going to review the SMP until February?
Chaz Bates – Not in a public forum but you can have a draft.
Curt Kelling – Maybe we can just hand it out to you and schedule the next conversation about it the first meeting in February.
Chairman Bristol – Can we set that right now, that meeting in February so we get back and have some strong focus on that.
Curt Kelling – The first meeting in February would be February 1st.
Irv Schick asked to be excused from the February 1, 2006 planning commission meeting.
· NEW BUSINESS
Chaz Bates suggested that at the end of every planning commission meeting we have a spot where you can ask staff questions…
Curt Kelling – In Medical Lake we had a planning commission agenda item after they were done with their general business where they could ask the public works director and me questions about every single thing they had seen going on in town. You could modify the agenda to include that if you would like. It provides general information about what we are doing.
Planning Commission thought it would be a good idea and asked that it be added to the agenda after public comment.
Planning commission expressed concern about lack of code enforcement and they would also like to see a full time building official.
· Public Comments – None.
· Adjournment – Doug Sassman moved with a second from Irv Schick to adjourn the meeting. All in favor. Meeting adjourned at 7:55 P.M.
Respectfully submitted by:
__________________________________ __________________________________
Gaylea Nolander, Executive Secretary Thomas Bristol, Chairman
Exhibits may be reviewed at City Hall, Room 107
© Copyright 2007 by cityofchewelah.com