Legal response to Jefferson County’s draft SMP.

by Dennis D. Reynolds, Land Use Attorney, Bainbridge Island

I represent The Olympic Stewardship Foundation (“the OSF”). The OSF’s membership includes a broad array of citizens, property owners and business owners in Jefferson County. The OSF is a non-profit organization dedicated to representing the voice of rural landowners. Its members support the shared belief that citizens, particularly those who live on their land, are capable of providing the very best care and management for the environment in which they live. The core of the OSF’s founding members have a demonstrated record of maintaining and improving on-the-ground conservation in Jefferson County.

Report on SMP update process in Jefferson County.

by Michael Gustavson, Director, Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners; Member, Kitsap County Planning Commission

Much can be learned from the experience in our neighboring county, as our SMA review builds steam. Tuesday evening September 8, 2009 six KAPO members attended the Jefferson County Commissioners public hearing on their Shoreline Management Plan update. Several of us spoke. Here are my comments.

It was soon evident, from public testimony, that the community had worked three years to help develop the Planning Commission draft. Department of Ecology reviewed it and, in a letter to the County, rejected it out of hand, before it had come to the Board of County Commissioners. County staff then drafted a shoreline plan that apparently would pass muster with DOE. The Staff plan, with uniform buffers, often of 150 feet, was addressed Tuesday night.

SMP update as drafted by the DOE

by Jim Hagen, Olympic Stewardship Foundation

The proposed Jefferson County Shoreline Master Program (SMP) update, as currently drafted, is a huge expansion of the shoreline regulatory system. Funded by the Department of Ecology (DOE) and heavily influenced by government, tribal, and environmental organization representatives, it unnecessarily limits future construction of single-family homes — a preferred use under the Shoreline Management Act (SMA) — and reduces existing uses to a disfavored status.

If you are a shoreline or riverfront property owner or a taxpayer in Jefferson County you should be very concerned about these proposed changes to shoreline use! Even in the best of times, yet more so during a severe budget crisis, the SMP will have negative economic consequences with no corresponding environmental benefit.

Note: We have published this analysis of the proposed Jefferson County SMP update because the draft document on which it was based was provided to the county by the DOE. We expect ours to be very similar in form and content. The deadline for submission of the Jefferson County update is September of this year. Bainbridge Island, and all jurisdictions within Kitsap County, must submit SMP updates by December 31, 2011.

Jefferson County assessor says shoreline plan will raise taxes.

All cities and counties in Western Washington seem to be struggling with Shoreline Master Program updates. The discussion in Port Townsend is heating up. The following is from an article by Erik Hidle, Peninsula Daily News, Feb 05, 2009…

A state-required shoreline master program update — which increases residential building setbacks from marine waterways and river and stream buffers — will affect all landowners in the county regardless of their distance from the water.

Jefferson County Assessor Jack Westerman III said on Wednesday that the shoreline regulations, if approved as drafted, will have an effect on taxes for everyone in the county. “It’s a sure thing that for some waterfront homeowners, it would have a dramatic impact on the value of their property,” Westerman said. “But even if the value of their land goes down, the county will still get the same amount of taxes.”

Jefferson County’s rural land grab overturned.

In a major victory against uncompensated government seizure of private property in Washington State, Pacific Legal Foundation has announced that the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board has struck down a Jefferson County policy that illegally put a “freeze” on the use of thousands of acres of private property near rivers and streams in Jefferson County.

Responding to a challenge brought by PLF attorneys, the Hearings Board found the County’s “channel migration zone” (CMZ) regulations in violation of the Growth Management Act. Adopted in March, 2008, these regulations essentially “roped off” large areas of land on either side of local rivers and streams, prohibiting landowners from using or developing the property, and ordering that it be set aside as “natural vegetation.”