Lifting the Urban Holding designation
At the request of the Board of County Commissioners, Long Range planning prepared a staff report on the impacts of lifting the Urban Holding (UH) designation.
In exchange for BoCC support to pursue the matter, can we assume an agreement was struck with the petitioners who filed numerous lawsuits over the UH designation?
In exchange for withdrawing their lawsuits, can we assume the developers were reasonably certain they would gain a satisfactory outcome from the county?
The staff report analyzed the responses from service providers and concluded that only 1 of 13 areas was ready to come out of Urban Holding.
Unhappy with the staff report, the BoCC removed three members of their Long Range planning department from their work on the comp plan.
Is this, as described in The Columbian (and many believe), a simple case of "Shoot the messenger?"
Frankly, we don't know yet. We will scrutinize the public record and compare it to the rejected staff report and the BoCC approved staff report when it is available.
We'll also look at how some concerns will be addressed.
1) If a service provider outside the jurisdiction of the county (i.e. schools) can not provide the necessary infrastructure concurrent with a project, will the UH designation be lifted anyway so development can be approved?
2) If a county department can not provide required services (roads, sheriff's deputies) concurrent with a project, will the UH designation be lifted anyway so development can be approved?
3) What happens to city plan policies? Will the specific criteria for improvements and conditions that the cities and the county have agreed to remain in effect? As in the past, will annexation precede urban development?
Urban Holding Public Hearings
As of this writing, the release of the staff report and the scheduled Planning Commission and BoCC public hearings in June have been postponed. We will alert all our e-mail contacts when they are rescheduled.
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