Agriculture and forestry advocates said the Skagit County planning department wasn’t up front about what it had called miscellaneous changes to the development code — changes those groups say will harm their industries.

Planning staff had characterized some of the 119 proposed code changes as “housekeeping” that included the correction of typographical errors.
“Planning staff call the changes housecleaning,” Agricultural Advisory Board member Randy Good said at a public hearing before the county Planning Commission on Tuesday. “I call the changes a breakdown of our democratic process.”

Good’s group, along with the Forest Advisory Board and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, requested and received an extension on the comment period for the code changes. Members of the two advisory boards said they learned about the proposed changes on Friday, the original comment deadline.

The new comment deadline is 4:30 p.m. on July 21. Comments may be mailed to Skagit County Planning and Development Services, 1800 Continental Place, Mount Vernon, WA 98273.

The Agricultural Advisory Board and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland are concerned about a proposal that would allow a city to make a separate request to expand its urban growth area to accommodate a school site. An urban growth area is land immediately outside city limits set aside for future urban growth.

The new code would limit cities to one urban-growth-area expansion request every seven years, but a separate request could be made in the seven-year period for a school.

The language creating an exception for schools was written into county policy in 2007 at the request of the city of Burlington. The Burlington-Edison School District owns 29 acres it would like to see included in Burlington’s urban growth area so the district can build a school there.

“That on its face should be pulled out of miscellaneous and put on its own agenda, and see the light of day,” Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland Executive Director Allen Rozema said at the public hearing.

The code change that offended the Forest Advisory Board would forbid subdivisions on lands in certain forest and rural zones if they were not part of a fire protection district by July 26, 2005.

Forest Advisory Board member Paul Kriegel said the change would violate personal property rights.

“That in our opinion is a taking, and it’s a rather significant devaluing of our property,” Kriegel said.

Good’s group, along with the Forest Advisory Board and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, requested and received an extension to July 21 of the comment period for the code changes.

The Planning Commission will revisit the issue at its next meeting July 28.