Last fall, as he brought down the gavel on Clark County’s urban growth plan, Commissioner Steve Stuart made a four-word prediction: “On to rural issues.”

With their plan to expand the county’s urban areas still working through the appeals process, commissioners Wednesday kicked off what they say will be a two-year review of rural land use that could shrink minimum lot sizes, enlarge the county’s seven rural centers and rewrite the rules of local farming.

“My assumption is we’re going to see some significant changes,” Rich ­Lowry, the county’s top land-use ­lawyer, told commissioners. “This is a major undertaking.”

In anticipation of the process, the county has been postponing most requests for rural zoning changes since 2005.

The commissioners are writing their own rules for the coming effort, Stuart said this week, modeling them on the process that led to the urban growth plan.

“We thought, why don’t we do the same thing and deal systematically with rural issues instead of parcel-by-parcel requests?” Stuart said.
Commissioner Marc Boldt, who will coordinate the county’s effort, said he hopes to start by naming a small citizens’ advisory committee.

“This isn’t going to be selling lots or selling development,” Boldt said. “The blue-collar person is going to be in here this time.”
Boldt said the county might try to permit more subdivisions in areas that already have small lots. In general, he said, zoning should become more consistent with the way the land is used today.

Less restrictive than Oregon

In 2004, about 127,000 people lived in the county’s rural area — one in three residents. By 2024, the county expects rural areas to hold 146,000, about a quarter of the county’s future population.

Matt Lewis, a spokesman for Pacific Lifestyle Homes, said Oregon’s tight rules against rural development give Clark County a competitive advantage.

“The ability to buy a home on five acres is for the most part limited to Clark County in this metropolitan area,” he said.

A Pacific Lifestyle subsidiary, Garrette Custom Homes, has built and sold more than 100 homes on Washington acreage in the last three years, Lewis said. He said there might be some demand for smaller one-acre lots, but added that he didn’t want to see every field broken into residential parcels.
That would compromise the county’s rural appeal, he said.

Bill Zimmerman, head of Clark County’s farm bureau, said Oregon’s system seems to lead to more farming.

“You go into Oregon and talk to those farmers, and they’re upbeat,” he said. “They’re looking into expanding or improving their operations.”

Preserving Clark County farming, Zimmerman said, will require more than restoring farmers’ right to subdivide.

Commissioners also say they’re also interested in strengthening the county’s right-to-farm ordinance and improving water rights for farmers.

John Karpinski, a Vancouver environmental lawyer involved in a lawsuit against the county’s urban growth plan, said he’s hoping for a very public debate on rural issues.

“Hopefully it won’t be the debacle the recent growth plan was, where they put out a set of values and principles that basically made all the decisions in a smoke-filled room,” Karpinski said. “This could be the death of farming in the county if they do it wrong.”

Jae Weber, a Ridgefield-area landowner who hopes to finance a new vineyard and winery by subdividing part of her land, said commissioners might need lots of public input just to understand the complexity of rural zoning.

“There are a lot of different situations out there that ought to be addressed,” she said. “We’ve been going through this for two years, and we finally feel like they’re listening.”

Steve Horenstein, an attorney for Miller Nash in Vancouver who often lobbies the county on development issues, said the rural plan would involve many small players, rather than a few big ones, as the urban plan did.

“Once we get into this, you’ll see a crowd,” Horenstein said.

Michael Andersen covers Clark County government: 360-759-8052 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.