As Clatsop County overhauls its comprehensive plan, a citizen advisory committee tasked with updating its own community plan around Arch Cape has turned in a document that may violate state statute, according to county staff.

The county’s comprehensive plan, which hasn’t been revamped since 1980, will shape the direction of development — from natural resource management to housing to transportation — in the county’s unincorporated areas for the next two decades.

The plan is composed of statewide land use goals, as well as community plans for six regions: Northeast, Clatsop Plains, Lewis & Clark Olney-Wallooskee, Elsie-Jewell, Seaside Rural and Southwest Coastal. Citizen advisory committees were formed to update each plan.

Last April, the county Board of Commissioners chose to press pause on the update process. They were concerned about the pace of the advisory committees’ work and with some of the policy proposals emerging from them.

The update resumed in August. In December, the committees submitted the results.

As drafted, the community plans contain aspirational goals — a number mention ways to mitigate the local impact of climate change, a goal some county commissioners have expressed misgivings about.

But the Southwest Coastal plan, which covers the wealthy enclaves around Arch Cape, presents distinct problems and may run afoul of Oregon law.

The new committee plan may curtail the rights of property owners and constrain how their land may be developed.

The plan would expand vegetated buffer zones from 25 to 50 feet from stream banks. Areas identified as tsunami inundation zones may be closed to development. The plan recommends vacating old undeveloped plats, essentially dissolving owners’ property lines, drawn up before communities were sensitive to the natural topography.

In addition, the plan includes a section for handling vacation rentals, appearing to get ahead of a process already underway at the county level for regulating the controversial enterprises in unincorporated areas. As the North Coast becomes a popular tourist destination, certain areas have felt the pressures of parking, noise and other nuisances more than others.

In its proposed plan, the Southwest Coastal committee recommends that short-term rentals be defined as commercial ventures that should be confined to commercial zones. They also recommend that the county adopt a plan to phase out short-term rentals in Coastal Residential zones by not allowing property owners to renew or transfer their licenses, and to consider rewarding with tax credits those property owners who end their licenses early.

Narrative

Charles Dice, the chairman of the Southwest Coastal citizen advisory committee, who lives in Cove Beach, said the short-term rental language was included because the expedited deadline to submit the updated plan happened to fall before the county’s short-term rental discussion ended.

“If we were going to say anything on what our recommendations were, we needed to get them into the report,” Dice said. “We didn’t have the option of waiting.”

A county staff memo also pointed to “bias displayed in the narrative.”

For example, a section that seeks to resurrect a quasi-judicial Arch Cape design review committee that the county Board of Commissioners dissolved in 2017 notes that the vote was taken “over strong support from the community for continuing” the committee.

This design panel evolved out of the last Southwest Coastal advisory committee that worked on the previous comprehensive plan, and took a heavy hand in the area’s land use. The new proposal recommends something similar with the current advisory committee:

“It is the desire of the current CAC that this committee be made a standing committee to represent the region in land use planning and other development matters, and to facilitate the flow of information between community members and county government,” the plan reads.

Dice said the board’s desire in bringing back the design review committee was to adhere to the first of the state’s 19 planning goals: citizen involvement.

“We felt really strongly that, to adhere to goal one, it was really essential to have a better mechanism for local involvement, such as the design review board,” Dice said.

County staff told the Southwest Coastal committee that some of the recommendations may not be legal.

“They had told us it would go through a legal review in any event,” Dice said. “So we figured we’d make our recommendations and let it go through the legal review.”

‘It’s ignored’

At a Board of Commissioners work session last month, the board unanimously disapproved of the document.

County Commissioner Lianne Thompson, whose district encompasses Southwest Coastal, asked, “How much more public money — taxpayer dollars — and volunteer time and staff time and commissioner time do we expend for a group that doesn’t want to play by the rules?”

A land use attorney will review the community plans.

Dice said committee members were “surprised and disappointed” by the board’s reaction. He said the plan they submitted was not intended as a statement.

“We only had one thing in mind, and that was to make sure that our recommendations … reflected the current state of affairs in the community — and a number of things clearly have changed in our area over the last 40 years — and to indicate what the people are very interested in,” he said.

A Planning Commission review of the Southwest Coastal plan has not been scheduled. The Board of Commissioners is looking to adopt the updated comprehensive plan this summer.

County Commissioner Courtney Bangs said the Southwest Coastal plan highlights a reason for last year’s pause.

“Even when staff is giving guidance, and it’s giving valuable guidance, it’s ignored,” Bangs said.