There was good news and bad news for shoreline homeowners in last week’s City Council study session.
On the upside, Council Member Bonkowski presented a logical process for reviewing the draft Shoreline Master Program (SMP) update prepared by staff, rubber stamped by a carefully selected majority of citizen task force members, and tweaked a bit by the City’s planning commission.
The Council agreed to start with a review of the process to date followed by meetings focused on each of the BIG ISSUES that have come up during the process to date. These include: conforming vs. non-conforming status for existing, lawfully built homes; native vegetation zones (buffers); environmental designations, (e.g. Shoreline Residential Conservancy); over water structures (docks and floats); and shoreline armoring (bulkheads).
The bad news starts 9 minutes into the video below. Council Member Hytopolous expressed a concern that the Council may not be able to get the SMP Update approved in time to meet an end-of-year deadline. Therefore, she wants to start off the Council’s review by endorsing the validity of the draft and the process to date. Those of us who represented this organization in the task force process have expressed our views in a minority report, and would not favor such an endorsement.
Fortunately, Ms. Hytopolous agrees that the BIG ISSUES must be addressed by the Council. Apparently, the rest of the Council agreed with the process outline as presented below.
Here’s the content of the handout included in the meeting packet… our notes are in italics.
SMP REVIEW PROCESS WITH CITY COUNCIL
First Meeting — Review overall process to date with statistics
- Overview of the State Shoreline Management Act (SMA)
- Summary of City’s existing SMP
- Summary of SMP development process as described in SMP Public Participation Plan
- Hrs of staff time
- Hrs of community meeting time
- Make up of committees: Various Stake holders
- Hrs of planning commission time
- Hrs of public comment at planning commission
- Number of Planning Commission changes from first draft
- Specify Big Issues and take public comment on other potential Big Issues
Review Big Issues Individually at separate meetings
- Conforming vs Non Conforming
- Vegetation Zones (aka buffers)
- (Environmental) Designations and Over water structures
- Shoreline armoring (bulkheads)
- Other-identified by staff and planning commission
Review material Format:
- The Big Issue
- DOE specific language
- 1996 SMP language
- Proposed Language
- Planning Commission Rationale
- Minority Rationale
- Submitted Public comments
- Text of paragraphs impacted by Big decision(as background material, notto be reviewed in meeting)
Review process 3 Hr per topic
- Presentation by Staff or Planning Commission with dialog with City Council: 1 Hr
- Public comment: 1/2 Hr
- City council discussion 1 1/2 Hr with support from staff
- City Council motion and vote
Schedule: TBD
0 Responses to “COBI Council discusses next steps for the SMP update.”