Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 06/18/2002 COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES June 18, 2002 COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: President Tim Clark, Connie Epperly, Leona Orr, Julie Peterson, Bruce White, Judy Woods, Rico Yingling STAFF PRESENT: Mike Martin, Fred Satterstrom, Gloria Gould-Wessen, Charlene Anderson, Kim Marousek, Leonard Olive, Jackie Bicknell PUBLIC PRESENT: Ronald Harmon, Linda Hayes, Albert Dreisow, Glenn Gray, Jere Thornton, Elaine Spencer, Patty Logan,Alexis Koester, Bob Tidball, R. Jerry Rosso, Gene Rosso, Gary Young, Mark Logan The workshop began at 5:04 p.m. Aericultural Lands Amendment Chief Administrative Officer Mike Martin-In overview what we would like to do today is present a very high level very, very,bleak presentation and kind of lay out the landscape. I think everybody is very familiar with this subject. Fred is going to walk you through the options. He's going to tell you all options are defensible. It's really a policy question that's up to you. There will be no action taken at this committee. This is merely just a device to give you an opportunity to discuss this among yourselves. This will be brought to city council unless we're directed to do otherwise. Just as a FYI, we have two employees that have come off vacation to attend this very meeting. Community Development Director Fred Satterstrom -Undoubtedly they came to listen to the city council discuss this issue. They certainly didn't come off vacation to listen to me. I thought I would try to do something, which is awfully difficult to do when you're talking about agriculture, and that's try to make it simple and try to make it short. Because I found that when you sit down to talk to almost anybody about the agricultural land use issue, it's long, emotional, and not simple at all. Agriculture is a very difficult policy issue, and I think it's because reasonable minds will differ on this. It's not real clear. Quite honestly I think the little presentation I'm going to go through here isn't going to make it any clearer for you nor is it going to lead to an inescapable conclusion or alternative or option. What I'm hoping to do is to define some simple terminology but some terminology that's important to a discussion on agriculture and try to get you to focus on one policy issue if that's possible. And that is,keep asking yourself, do we have agricultural lands of long term commercial significance? These are some terms that we kind of need to go over in order to have this discussion. The first one is agricultural land and it is defined in the Growth Management Act. The definition simply says, it means land primarily devoted to the commercial production of horticultural, vidicultural, floricultural, etc., livestock that has long term commercial significance for agricultural production. All cities who plan under Growth Management have to analyze their land use pattern, the land that they have, and decide whether or not they've got AG lands. Now that's pretty easy for Bellevue, Seattle, Tukwila to do and just about everybody. Auburn had to hash this one over. They came to the conclusion that they did not have agricultural lands of long-term commercial • significance. We need to do that. Council Workshop, 6l18102 2 What is long tern commercial significance? It's another term that's defined in Growth Management. • It includes the growing capacity, productivity, and soil composition of the land for long-term commercial production in consideration with the land's proximity to population areas and the possibility of more intense uses of the land. So, basically what they're saying is that long-term commercial significance is not only related to the kind of soil we have but you take into consideration market pressure, population pressure, the possibility of more intense uses, and as case law is defined since GMA was passed, there are some other variables. Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) is where the development rights to property are purchased with funds. A covenant goes on the land limiting the land to a very low intense use. I think King County when they bought the agricultural rights limited the use of land to one unit for every 10 and 20 acres. Transfer of Development Rights (TDR)Money doesn't change hands but development rights do. You create a program of transferring development rights from sending areas to receiving areas. In other words, from areas where you want to send development rights (areas you want to preserve), you send those development rights to a receiving area that's designated and transfer density to that area. Asking whether the City has agricultural land of long-term commercial significance is kind of a tough one to answer and this is why: Growing capacity. If you ask yourself should I designate resource lands, agricultural resource lands of long-term commercial significance just based on the soil's capacity, the answer I think is pretty clear. You're going to designate the lands for agricultural use. They are prime soils, class 2 —some of the best soils in the world. Yeah, they've had their limitations, wetlands and so forth and they need to be managed, but I think finer soils are really hard to find in this state or anywhere else. AG lands with long term commercial significance are called resource lands. Capability for agricultural practices. In other words is the density of development on the existing AG lands already at a level that suggests that it would be difficult to farm? Are there a lot of residents? Are there already AG lands or lands already in agricultural production already being farmed? How much of it is? 46% of the AG lands out there are being farmed in some way, intensively or extensively(based on less than half). It might lead you to not designate if you just looked at the way the land was being used now. Public facilities or infrastructure and services. Generally speaking there is a real lack of infrastructure in terms of utilities, water, sewer. There really isn't a sewer line unless you look at the one that crosses the river that goes to Kentview, but it's not clearly black and white here because there are some utilities at the perimeters. And so it's not a black or white situation but you probably lean a little bit more to designating it because of the general lack of public facility in the agricultural. Parcel size. The parcel size is relatively small. The average size is 7 acres and ranges from 5 to 30. I think the literature says that you need 7 acres minimum to do direct marketing and sustain a profit. Producing agricultural products for wholesale requires larger lot sizes. We don't have a lot of them, so based on the relatively small parcel size, there's a general inability to make a living on parcels that size. Context. Context is the market pressures and the environment around the agricultural land. We've got urban development basically nipping at the heels of the agricultural areas. It's generally across the river or it's across a major road, but there are market pressures beginning to build on • converting. Councilmember Bruce White—If this land is designated, it takes the market totally out of the picture because we're talking about this designation in perpetuity. So, as the market ebbs and flow, what Council Workshop, 6/18/02 3 we're saying is that's tough. It doesn't matter that you can't now make a go of it, we decided "X" years ago that you can. And the fact that you can't is of no consequence now. Council President Tim Clark—AG land cannot go in reverse. Once you have developed on it you can't decide next year you'd like to have more AG land and designate it AG land. The designation is lost forever. Councilmember Julie Peterson—The element of choice is inherent in that if you designate it as always agricultural land for perpetuity there is no personal choice as to not farming your particular property. If it's a different zoning where you have the personal choice to farm or not to farm then I think that brings in an element. With the market going up or down depending on the time of year or time of the century, the element of personal choice about what you're going to do with that market is key. Fred Satterstrom—Depending on what decision you make whether you feel that there are agricultural lands of long-tern significance or whether you don't, here is what the City's responsibilities are: If you decide to designate agricultural lands of long-term significance, then the Growth Management Act says very clearly that you've got to do two things. You either have to create a Purchase of Development Rights Program and a Transfer of Development Rights Program or a combination of both. In other words, if you believe there are agricultural lands in an urban area(the AG lands in Kent are in a designated urban growth area), a city or county must develop either a Purchase or Transfer of Development Rights Program. So either you purchase the rights or you transfer the rights. Staff made a recommendation to the Land Use and Planning Board without explaining it was recommending a Transfer of Development Rights Program. They went to the Land Use and Planning • Board, and actually came up with this latter one which was a combination of Purchase of Development Rights and TDR because in our minds we thought some of the lands were resource lands. But as I've shown on this previous one, reasonable minds can differ on this. Its okay. Now, if you decide these are not lands of long-term commercial significance, you don't think they meet those criteria handily enough to actually Purchase or Transfer Development Rights, you don't have to do those if you find that. But you're going to have to do something other than designating them agriculture because it's an inconsistency that probably wouldn't look good if the matter was appealed to the Growth Hearing Board. And there may be grounds for that if you didn't do a PDR/TDR Program but decided to retain those agriculture. One of the alternatives examined was a low density residential. There was even an alternate that was examined by the Land Use and Planning Board combination of low density residential and there was some neighborhood commercial off of 2121h Street. Probably kind of in the southeast corner is as close to a no action alternative as I can think if you decided not to designate agricultural lands of long-term significance and thought of retaining the existing zoning. I think we would recommend that you not retain agricultural zoning but change it to a low density single family with some minor code comp plan and zoning code changes to accommodate that. I kind of label them as a preserve and develop alternative because that's really a decision in the long-term. The Land Use and Planning Board and staff broke the area of consideration up into three different areas, the Northern, Central, and Southern study areas. You could apply that same decision making question to the three areas. You might come to a different conclusion depending on the area—the Land Use and Planning Board didn't. The Land Use and Planning Board decided that there were some resource lands in the north . area, some in the central area,but not any in the southern area. Bruce White—The Land Use and Planning Board recommended AG for the southern area. How does that fit into the options that you were saying that there could not be any agricultural Council Workshop, 6/18/02 4 designations? Is AG considered under the Growth Management Act an agricultural designation? Fred Satterstrom—The AG zone historically has had for 20 years a lot of agricultural support types of uses rather than farming itself. If you had a canning/packing cannery plant or something you could locate that in AG. Bruce White—But how does that fit into the Growth Management designation? Does AG fit outside of those two columns? Fred Satterstrom —It's probably kind of a no action alternative down here. Bruce White— So we couldn't keep it an AG designation? Fred Satterstrom— I think you can keep it an AG because AG is not an agricultural resource designation. Julie Peterson—I have a question about the Southern Area. There were two properties that I know the owners were really concerned about in terns of the zoning. The Smith Brothers and then Carpinito's so what has happened with that? Fred Satterstrom—This is the Land Use and Planning Board's recommended option to the council. Down in here the AG zoning from here to here presently exists and they are retaining that and extending it to the Smith Brothers Farm here at the corner which used to be A-1, well it still is, but they are recommending AG be extended to that and there's some code amendments that they are recommending also that Gloria has explained in a previous meeting that talk about increasing the range of uses in the new AG zone were you to adopt the recommendations. I think there was a question that's been asked and that is if you are in the APD and have not had your development rights purchased, is the county legally bound to purchase them? And I assume that over time they probably are. It's just that there are two things, the lack of money competes against that, the $50 million dollar bond issue that was passed didn't buy all of them. Secondly, it is a voluntary program and not everybody offered their property for the TDR Program. Just because the county had • a program didn't mean that everybody joined it. Some of these are not in the program by choice,not because of lack of money. Councilmember Leona Orr—Do we have any way of tracking whether the county will be pursuing any of the federal funds that might be available for PDR or preservation with the farm bill? Fred Satterstrom—I know Gloria knows more about this than I do but from what I hear, yes, there's a million or so dollars that will come to the State of Washington, and King County probably has one of the more prominent PDR Programs. I would imagine they would compete very well for those funds. Planner Gloria Gould-Wesson - They have$ 3.5 million that can match whatever the Feds come up with so they have money to work with. Fred Satterstrom—The county actually owns Torrance. I don't think that they have sold the agricultural rights to anyone and they're leasing that. I don't know how they do these auctions more or less but they open it up for people to bid on leasing the land and they actually have more bidders for leasing the land than they lease land for. So there does appear to be if you have decent agricultural lands and they are not all under the water there does seem to be a market for this. Bruce White—Lets also if there's a full disclosure say that the reason that people were bidding for that property was because the lease rate was $150 per acre per year. Fred Satterstrom—Right. I don't know what the lease rates are. I would imagine given the kind of farming that they're gonna have that it was a very friendly lease rate. Councilmember Rico Yingling— I disagree with Fred that the market is considered in criteria. I don't think the future market potential has been considered in criteria. I think the existing current market has been represented in some forms there but even that isn't well represented in the criteria and I think that's a big missing point on the criteria. I think it should be there and in my mind after talking with the land owners and the farmers there are some areas, especially in the southern area, that have some agricultural opportunities that are not so much the farming of the land as the ability to process food materials on the land, and in the northern area, the land owners and the farmers are saying there Council Workshop,6/18/02 5 is very little long term market for the goods that they can grow on those small parcels. In a sense you could also look at the seven acre land there and as kind of the point that Fred's criteria used as being commercially viable or not commercially viable you might get some future market potential by changing that number and I think then that would change the color of the dots. When you look at the market potential, especially the future market potential, and what the current farmers are saying about the viability of the Northern Study Area—there is none or there's very little—and if that criteria were on there that black dot would be in the"do not designate"part and I think that weighs in my mind just in my opinion that weighs more heavily in favor of not designating agricultural resource land in the Northern Study Area. But the criteria isn't on there so I don't know what legal standing my argument has but personally I think that's what pushes me in that direction. Leona Orr— And I think that's part of the problem, Rico, because the criteria that you set out is the criteria in Growth Management and that has been proven out in legal challenges/cases/whatever. So those are the criteria that the powers that be have said these are your criteria and I think that's what Fred did. Principal Planner Kim Marousek—In one of the cases they did look at the Washington Administrative Code that said look at proximity of market. Rico Yingling—Well in my mind it should be a bigger detail. Proximity again could be miles or it could be years and the proximity to the market is kind of falling away. I'm no fanner. I don't know anything about farming. I'm just listening to the farmers and the property owners and that's what I'm hearing and that's kind of the part from staff that I'm not hearing about. I'm hearing about the land kind of issues but I'm not really hearing about the market issues. So with the information I'm getting and with my great business acumen I'm just saying I agree that there's probably not a long term market for that land as farm land. Your options were all kinds of low density options. Why is that? Why couldn't someone go to high density or condo's? • Fred Satterstrom—I only listed alternatives here that we had reviewed where you wouldn't have to go back to square one and the council could actually take an action without going back to the Land Use and Planning Board and starting the hearings over because that wasn't evaluated back there. Rico Yingling—Right. I'm not talking about to the letter,but if a property owner wanted to try to rezone, you're saying he could. Leona Orr--If we were to designate SR-1 instead of the A-1 in the central and northern areas (every year we do a Comprehensive Plan Update Review and people come in and apply for changes to the property), I am assuming any property owner who wished to have that upgraded or upzoned would have the ability to come annually, whatever year they chose, and apply for a Comprehensive Plan Review and zoning change. Is that correct? So we would not be limiting their ability to do that in the future if they so chose. Fred Satterstrom—You wouldn't have to keep it A-1 if you choose not to designate it for long-term commercial significance. There was a recommendation from the Land Use and Planning Board for some resource land. Leona Orr—If we designated SR-1 does it have to be urban separator? Could we do a combination of urban separator and SR-1, following the Land Use and Planning Board for example, in the central SR-1 urban separator and up north SR-1 is that a possibility? Fred Satterstrom—You mean leave the urban separator designations as urban separators but take this color green and designate it low density? Julie Peterson—And all of the northern area SR-1. Is that what you're saying too? Leona Orr—That's what I'm asking if that was a possibility. Could we do that without creating new hearings. Fred Satterstrom—Yes. Those have been analyzed. . Leona Orr—And if we were to do that and we designate SR-1 is there any use then or any value in creating a TDR or combination TDR/PDR type program to try to preserve some of those lands if someone was interested in a Transfer of Development Rights for example or does the fact that it's no Council Workshop,6/18/02 6 longer designated AG land just eliminate that altogether. Fred Satterstrom—I'm going to chance an • answer to that one and say that if you decided you didn't think there were agricultural lands of long- term significance you wouldn't have to create a TDR Program. I hear you asking could you if you wanted to encourage open space or the openness of the land. I imagine that you could create that program for that purpose. That might be different than kind of preserving agricultural lands though. But I see no reason why you couldn't create a Transfer of Development Rights Program as long as you designated areas where you wanted to achieve certain objectives such as open space or whatever it was and then designated a receiving area where that density was to go. Sounds like a possibility. Kim Marousek—I just wanted to comment on the SR-1. That's a very low density for an urban area. So we would need heightened scrutiny at the Growth Board stage so we would want to make sure we have a good record that will affirm that these are areas that we can justify as SR-1 designation. So you'd be looking at special environmental reasons etc. that would justify the SR-1 designation. Fred Satterstrom—A-1 allows one unit to the acre if you're looking at that for development and SR-1 or urban separator would be the same. Actually might enjoy a benefit that SR-1 wouldn't and that's the fact that they could cluster and SR-1 couldn't. Rico Yingling—If you designate something urban separator can it be zoned up and out of urban separator? Is that one of the limitations of urban separators? Fred Satterstrom—By policy you're only supposed to visit that every 10 years. Julie Peterson—When does the moratorium end? Leona Orr—July 12`h. The council meeting is on the 16`h' so the moratorium ends the week before the council meeting. City Attorney Tom Brubaker— And then the ordinance wouldn't go into affect for 30 days, so you'd have about a 35 day gap. The workshop adjourned. i Council Office aP- 2nd Floor,City Hall 220 4`h Ave. South,Kent, 98032 PLEASE SIGN IN DATE: Z y Name Address Phone Number AV llkreva'pVI1IM �� Lnzl't' Am , WA, WA ash ALAL5,z /2�7Ls/6 04) 67 l �o , �401 sr A wa3z Ejo g� s� 7© 3-�G3 S, � 9rd3 el- o , S3-ems -fo � c7 0�V(VAG5ko pa ox �U 3 qr `5"e Flo Y 06 -763GA /JX-Kt- 5 V2,0'z ZIU Xff 6 h