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Trees could go as subarea plan joins county codes

County council is slowly taking action to implement the revised Point Roberts subarea plan they approved last December, but with some plot twists.

Rules for new transitional zoning, which covers almost a third of the Point, are up for council approval at their February 26 meeting. Council will also consider an ordinance to officially amend title 20 of the county code to include goals and policies of the subarea plan, but the county planning commission recommendation they are considering would drop all tree retention provisions.

“They’ve approved the plan itself, this is just changing the overlay and implementing transitional zoning,” said county planner Amy Peterson. “The subarea plan provided direction to do certain things and these are the ones we’ve gotten to.”

In their review of title 20 to bring it up to date following the adoption of the new subarea plan, planning commissioners found that “with regard to retention of trees, private property interests on a private lot supersede the needs of the community as a whole.” Based on that finding they recommended deleting the section that requires developers to retain larger trees “to the greatest extent feasible,” despite the fact that one of the goals in the newly revised subarea plan is to “preserve tree cover and natural vegetation.”

“Based on the subarea plan, we had recommended strengthening the tree retention policies a little. Planning commission chose to delete them,” said planning director Sylvia Goodwin.

Rules for transitional zoning being considered are close to what the subarea planning advisory committee discussed – rewarding developers for preserving open space by allowing them more density.

“These are zones where it’s outright allowed to have one house per five acres,” Peterson said. “If you cluster the lots, provide open space and a community sewer system, then you can develop at a density of one house per acre.” Open space requirements would be 30 to 50 percent of the area in the cluster subdivision and lots could be as small as 15,000 square feet.
The lack of a sewer system for the Point won’t stop the clustered subdivisions, Peterson said. Community drainfield and other shared systems within the subdivision would be accepted, she said, with the understanding that they would be ready to connect with a municipal sewer once one is in place.

While staff had initially written the rules for the new zone so they could be applied at other locations in the county in the future, the planning commission, in their recommendation to council, opted to make transitional zoning unique to the Point. “That may or may not stay through council review,” Peterson said.

The new zoning regulations were introduced at the February 12 council meeting and referred to the planning and development committee. The committee will review the planning commission regulations at their February 26 meeting prior to the regular council meeting that evening. If county council opts to accept the planning commission recommendation as is, they could take action that evening. If not, public hearings will be scheduled to get input on proposed council changes.

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