Clark County Citizens United is appealing Clark County’s 20-year growth plan, alleging it violates the state Growth Management Act on a dozen points.
CCCU, a rural citizens group that vocally supported smaller lot limits throughout the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan update process, filed the challenge with the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board on Thursday, according to its website.
Clark County adopted its growth plan update in June after about three years of work on the plan. The process was marred by controversy, much of which surrounded Clark County Councilor David Madore’s authoring of Alternative 4. The Republican councilor’s plan would have allowed for smaller lot sizes, at the urging of CCCU.
The group’s complaint states that the county’s “assertion of GMA compliance rings false.”
“There are fundamentally different views to the approach of the development process, and the resulting comprehensive plan,” CCCU President Susan Rasmussen said Friday afternoon.
Among the organization’s allegations are:
• That the Clark County council began work on its Comprehensive Growth Management Plan update in 2013, prior to adopted a public participation process in January 2014.
• That the county violated public process requirements of the Growth Management Act by “routinely and systematically excluding rural and resource landowners.”
• That by accepting the state Office of Financial Management population projection, which estimates the population will be 562,207 by 2035, the county failed to acknowledge the “substantial growth” it faces by being next to the “booming Portland, Oregon.”
• That the county “covertly used” a faulty vacant buildable lands model for rural areas, which put unlawful limits on the amount of rural development.
The Clark County Prosecutor’s Office, which received the complaint Friday, declined to comment.
CCCU’s appeal is the second to be filed. Environmental groups Friends of Clark County, and Seattle-based Futurewise last month also alleged the county committed 12 Growth Management Act violations in its comprehensive plan, but in opposite ways.
Those organizations’ complaints included that expanding the urban growth areas of several cities was not needed to accommodate future population growth, that shrinking the minimum lot size of agriculture and forest lots fails to “conserve farm and forest land” and that the county knowingly adopted a transportation plan with a $158 million deficit.
Comprehensive plans typically face a series of appeals. Appeals to the 2007 plan weren’t fully resolved until 2014, Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako said earlier this summer.
Filing the appeal kicks a six-month clock into effect. The Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board will issue a notice of hearing in 10 days, and must issue a final decision in 180 days.
