Will Vancouver, Ridgefield, Camas and other cities in Clark County need more land to meet the demand for housing, jobs, and commercial and retail development? How much should their urban growth area boundaries be allowed to grow? Will agricultural or forest lands have to be sacrificed to meet that demand?
Those are some of the questions the Clark County Council will wrestle with over the next several months as it works to complete the state-mandated update to the county growth plan due by Dec. 31.
In January, the council approved studying three land-use alternatives for the required draft environmental review. The three alternatives include taking no action and leaving existing urban growth boundaries as they are, approving some or all of the urban growth boundary changes requested by the cities and the county, and approving some or all of the site-specific zoning requests submitted after September 2022.
Each of the cities is seeking slightly different changes to its urban growth area.
“The first thing that I would be looking at is whether it’s in compliance with the Growth Management Act or not,” Councilor Glen Yung said Tuesday. “I’m not going to approve anything that’s not defensible.”
Compliance with the state act has been of increasing importance to the council after it learned more than $6 million in grants and loans were withheld by the state Department of Ecology because the county is already not in compliance.
The issue stems from a March 2023 ruling by the Growth Management Hearings Board over the council’s approval of surface mining zoning in the Chelatchie Bluff Mineral Lands. The county has filed suit against the board and Friends of Clark County, appealing the ruling. The case has not yet been scheduled for review.
Camas, La Center, Ridgefield and Vancouver each submitted two options for consideration by the county council. While the changes requested are wide ranging, the cities say they will be needed to build enough housing and create enough jobs to meet demand.
For example, Battle Ground is looking to add 764 acres to its urban growth area, nearly all of it currently zoned for rural residential use. Among the changes requested, the city wants to extend its urban growth area boundary west along Main Street to the Dollars Corner area, which would be zoned for employment use.
The first of the two options submitted by Camas would add about 80 acres of airport-zoned land near Grove Field to its growth area for industrial use. The option would also increase housing density in some areas. The second option would add 297 acres, which includes the Grove Field lands and 161 acres of agricultural lands and 57 acres of forest lands.
Both options submitted by Ridgefield would increase its urban growth boundary by 413 acres, all of which is zoned for agricultural use. Ridgefield had the next-largest land increase after Battle Ground, followed by Vancouver with 349 acres.
Clark County also received 108 site-specific zoning requests. Some of the requests were submitted by property owners. Others, like 20 surface mining zone requests in the rural areas, were submitted by companies that own other rights, such as mineral or timber use.
Allowing lands to be rezoned may be under the county council’s purview, but there are restrictions.
“Some jurisdictions would subsume resource lands into their (urban growth areas). The law says you can’t de-designate resource lands, and adding to the urban growth areas would automatically de-designate lands. The county has to do a resource lands study,” Friends of Clark County attorney David McDonald said.
County attorney Chris Cook said the same during a Feb. 5 council meeting. Cook said a resource study “is a necessity for the de-designation or redesignation of resource lands.”
Without a completed resource study, the council likely would not be able to change the zoning on agricultural, forest or mineral lands included in urban growth area expansions.
In late January, the council approved spending $300,000 on a resource study. Unlike prior studies, which have taken two to three years to complete and focused on a sole resource type (agricultural, forest or mineral), this study will have to be completed in a few months and will cover all three resource types.
“There is simply not the time to adequately do a comprehensive resource land evaluation given the history of how we have planned for growth in this county,” McDonald said. “Each and every time has required a minimum of two to three years.”
The council will review any proposals the county receives for the resource study during an upcoming meeting, likely before the end of February or in early March.
With either a full or partially complete resource study, the council will still have to decide on which boundary changes to approve.
“I give latitude to the jurisdictions themselves,” Yung said. “I live in Vancouver, and while I may not completely agree with the direction that they’re headed, I give that latitude to them because they have gone through a public process with the community.”
As long as the cities have the data and community input to back up their requests, he said, the same holds true for the other jurisdictions.
“As somebody that does not live in Battle Ground or Camas or La Center, I don’t know the ins and outs of their city … and how they stand to be impacted,” Yung said. “Unless there’s something really crazy and as long as it is legally defensible with the Growth Management Act, I give the latitude to the cities themselves.”
