While the Clark County Council on Tuesday continued to wrangle over the accuracy of the buildable lands report staff have been working for months to update, it got a sneak preview of the report’s new mapping tools.
Geographic Information Services Manager Bob Pool explained the new maps to be included in the report, how they can be used, the data used to create them, and what they mean for property owners and developers.
“Our maps online that show what a vacant buildable lands result looks like … it’s very general, this was the best we could do in terms of showing maps and the detail at the time,” Pool said.
He said anyone selecting a property can see if it’s vacant land, but there’s no way to see how that classification was arrived at.
But that will change with the new report. A new mapping tool that includes vacant or underutilized land, built land, and excluded land will be available on the county website.
“Changes to the vacant building lands model really drove a complete rewrite of the model,” he said.
Pool said the goals for the new model were to be transparent on how decisions were made, verify data sources and use best available data, and ensure vacant lands classifications adhere to approved and adopted criteria.
The map lists vacant lands in four categories: residential, commercial, industrial or none. Pool cautioned the maps contain a lot of detail and can be confusing.
“One of the huge stumbling blocks and challenges with this new model is we came up with the concept called redevelopment. … We said redevelopment happens on built lands. It turns out the built land in the (vacant buildable lands model) was a big pile of everything that was not vacant and underutilized. It had excluded land and other issues with why land was excluded,” Pool said.
One example of built land included was tax-exempt properties, such as churches, which he said the county wouldn’t want to include as properties available for redevelopment. Pool said he’s working to resolve those discrepancies.
Pool said the county has also begun looking at excluded land differently.
“You can say lots less than 5,000 square feet are excluded, but if they’re already built they’re not really excluded,” he said.
Pool said Ridgefield, especially, has a lot of these small lots that are not considered buildable.
“We know that’s not really true. One of the things we did in the process is to say those guys are really platted lots, they should be buildable,” he said.
The council last reviewed a draft of the report during its Feb. 15 meeting. In a letter read to the council, Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle noted the city’s concerns over errors in the report’s growth capacity estimates. She said those errors had already been acknowledged by county and city staff but not corrected.
The county council directed staff to discuss the report process with key stakeholders and members of the business community. County Manager Kathleen Otto said staff have done that but were still waiting for feedback before updating the report. The council moved its discussions on the vacant buildable lands report to April 15.
A fond farewell
The county council also bid farewell to Councilor Eileen Quiring O’Brien, who announced in early February she was retiring from the council and would be moving out of state. Her last day on the council was Tuesday.
Quiring O’Brien was awarded with a plaque commemorating her years of service to the council and the community.
David Barnett, chair of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, thanked Quiring O’Brien for helping the tribe work through some difficult years. Chuck Green, chair of the Commission on Aging, thanked her for her support for the commission and work on behalf of Clark County residents.
“I want to thank my colleagues for being able to work with you these years. I want to thank County Manager Kathleen Otto. Kathleen, you are outstanding. The fact that you do not have a deputy actually speaks even more to your competence and your ability to juggle many things,” Quiring O’Brien said.
She also thanked council staff, the entire county staff and the county chaplaincy.
“And I want to thank the great people of Clark County. I take my political positions, elected positions, very seriously. I’ve spent many sleepless nights thinking about policy because it’s important to me. I consider this a calling,” she said. “I fought the good fight. I finished my course, I have kept the faith. Farewell, until we meet again.”
