ELLENSBURG — Kittitas County commissioners on Wednesday approved an ordinance encompassing changes to the county’s land-use plan in hopes to comply with a state growth board order to fix it.

Commissioners adopted the changes to the county’s 2006 comprehensive plan as a result of public hearings and work by three citizen committees.

Commissioner Chairman Mark McClain said the county will submit documents today to the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board declaring what it has done to comply with the board’s Aug. 20, 2007, adverse ruling against the county’s plan.

The ruling found the county out of compliance with the state’s Growth Management Act, or GMA, and ordered the county to make changes to the plan, including dealing with three-acre zoning provisions that the state board believes allows lots that are too small for rural areas.

McClain said commissioners agreed to make no changes on issues raised in the ruling that have been appealed in court action by county government, building trade groups, developers and landowners.

“The courts have placed a stay on the enforcement of these issues because they are under appeal,” McClain said. “To really deal with them we need the appeals to run their course and obtain a court decision.”

Areas of the ruling under legal challenge include the county’s use of three-acre zoning and related cluster subdivisions and planned unit developments.

Commissioners also agreed to take no action on addressing reclassifying urban growth nodes at at Snoqualmie Pass, Easton, Ronald, Thorp and Vantage because they believe they are linked to the outcome of the legal appeals.     

He said commissioners adopted recommendations from an agricultural committee that created new standards for identifying farm areas for extra protection from development by designating them as agricultural lands of long-term significance.

The committee, in addition, outlined criteria to be met when taking the protective designating off agricultural lands.

A forest committee also developed new criteria  for identifying and removing the designation of long-term commercial significance from forest lands.

McClain said the action on Wednesday reversed the commissioners’ previous decision to allow a number of agricultural and forest lands of long-term commercial significance to be reclassified as rural.

He said the new designation criteria, created by the committees, could be utilized by the farm and forest landowners to seek reclassification again later this year.

McClain said commissioners, in essence, tabled recommendations from a citizens Land-Use Committee that called for five new rural land designations and accompanying zoning.

He said once the courts have decided on the other issues, the recommendations will become the foundation of changes to the county land-use plan.

One of the three groups that prompted the Aug. 20 state growth board ruling — Futurewise — will likely contest some of the county’s actions to comply. Tim Trohimovich, Futurewise planning director and attorney, said dealing with urban growth nodes is not part of a court appeal.

“There are many areas where the county has failed to act in regard to the growth board’s order,” Trohimovich said Thursday.

Futurewise and other parties to the state board’s order will soon submit documents stating whether they believe the county has adequately complied with the state board’s order.

Darryl Piercy, the county’s director of Community Development Services, said the process before the growth board in finalizing the issues could take two or three months.