PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend City Council and the city’s Planning Commission discussed land use updates being considered for the city’s comprehensive plan.
The council and the Planning Commission were joined by Long Range Planner Adrian Smith, who led the group in editing a 32-page land use element draft during a joint meeting on Monday.
Based on discussion, Smith edited a section header titled “Challenges, Issues, & Opportunities” through a few iterations in real time before settling on “Challenges & Opportunities.”
“Port Townsend faces a unique set of land use challenges in its comprehensive planning, primarily driven by the need to balance growth with its distinct character and environmental sensitivities,” the draft reads. “A significant hurdle is affordable housing, which demands increased housing options while confronting limited available land and a strong desire to preserve the city’s historic form and natural beauty.”
These tensions often lead to difficult conversations about density and infill development, the draft continues.
“Expanding housing supply can clash with community concerns about neighborhood scale, preserving open space, and infrastructure capacity,” it said.
Viki Sonntag, a member of the Planning Commission, argued for the importance of highlighting displacement as a key focus in the city’s land use plan.
A subsection titled “Housing Affordability and Availability” was replaced with a section titled “Housing Affordability, Availability, and Displacement” in a section of land use challenges faced by the city.
The section received initial edits from Smith which further noted the need for the city to consider how housing policies would address displacement, precarity, economic inequality, gentrification and sprawl.
“There is an issue that comes up repeatedly when we’ve been doing our qualitative housing needs assessment, which is that, with the insecurity in housing, all of the burden of that makes people’s lives a lot more fragile across domains,” Sonntag said. “It’s an outcome that increases economic inequality. I find it very distressing because we hear people making the choices between healthcare and living in a house. It’s very complicated. Food is another one.”
Sonntag also suggested the need to place more focus on the increasingly older population of Port Townsend and the particular accompanying challenges.
“I think we need to reference the high concentration of seniors as one of the significant challenges,” Sonntag said.
Smith added a header for demographic challenges,referring to the high population of seniors, presumably to be drafted at a later time.
Also, the document introduces a distinct future land use map (FLUM). In the past, Smith said, the city’s zoning map and FLUM have been the same document.
Having a single map for zoning and future land use can be overly complicated to read, Smith said.
The inclusion of the FLUM consolidates the number of residential land use designations from four to two, lower intensity and higher intensity, according to the document. In addition to simplifying the map, it allows for more flexibility when updating zoning or approving projects.
Bly Windstorm said in a public comment that he appreciated attention paid to bringing agricultural language into the corresponding section, but he did not think the plan put adequate emphasis on the importance of utilizing the city and not just the county for food growth.
“We have seen with housing what can happen when we do not anticipate the future and do not adequately prepare,” Windstorm said. “The paragraphs seem more focused on the county’s contribution than on describing the assets and opportunities that exist within our city to contribute to the food systems’ infrastructure future residents may have to depend upon.”
Port Townsend sits above a ground aquifer, which could supply water to farms through lengthy droughts, Windstorm said.
The comprehensive plan, required of cities and counties under the state’s Growth Management Act, is the central document used to guide Port Townsend’s long-term land use, housing, infrastructure and environmental planning. It covers a 20-year planning horizon and it is updated every 10 years.
The previous comprehensive plan update was completed in 2016 and the current update must be completed by the end of the year.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
