Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This regular Planning Commission meeting for May 21st at 6 p.m. Let's start with the flag salute. Hi, my name is Dan Burke. I am the current Planning Commission Chair. I'll start with my right and allow the commissioners to introduce themselves. Michael Widmer.

Tim Allen. In my left. Dorena Guido.

Brent Atkinson. Andrew Owens. And then if staff could, because I will just butcher names up.

No, you're good. I'm kidding.

Jeff Lerbach, Planning Manager. Reese Carson, Senior Planner.

All right. There is a sign-in sheet in the back, as long as the agenda is in the back. Please, if you'd like to speak tonight, we'd like you to sign that. The first item is our approval of minutes from November 20. It's been a while since we've met. So I hope everyone had a chance to read those.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting.

I'll second. OK, been moved and seconded. Any other discussion? None being heard, all in favor? Aye. Okay, passes unanimously. Okay, public hearings. We're going to start with a quasi-judicial hearing for Snassmark Green LLC requesting zone change on 1.37 acre portion of a 2.6 acre portion of land from C2 to commercial to C3, general commercial, planning department file number 26-04. 14. Excuse me. Any conflict of interest, ex parte contacts or site visits regarding this from any of the commissioners? No. Okay. None being heard. Qualified parties. Do we have a qualified party list on this one, Jeff?

We didn't have anybody that responded. I didn't prepare one in this instance with the lack of interest, I guess you could say.

Okay. Okay. Is there any individuals here that would like to speak to this?

Briefly. Are you sure? It'll be really short.

Okay. Okay, I think we're ready for the staff report.

All right. Thank you, Chair Burke, fellow commissioners. At this time, I'll submit staff exhibits one through SNASMART LLC is requesting a zone change of a 1.37 plus or minus acre portion of a 2.68 acre unit of land from C2 Community Commercial to C3 General Commercial. The property is located at the intersection of of Carnes Road and Industrial Drive, which is about 600 feet north of the intersection of Carnes Road and Highway 42, within the green urban unincorporated area. This zone change will allow for the applicant slash property owners to construct a commercial building and house commercial businesses that would be permitted under the C3 zoning as set out in the Land Use and Development Ordinance. The zone change criteria that we're looking at this evening is contained within Article 38, Section 3.38.100 of the Land Use and Development Ordinance. These criteria are A, the rezoning will conform with the applicable sections of the comprehensive plan. B, the site is suitable to the proposed zone, and C, C, there has been a conscious consideration of the public health, safety, and welfare in applying the specific zoning regulations. Planning staff recommends approval of the requested zone change from C2 to C3 for the 1.37 West Hermione of Article 38 of the Douglas County Land Use and Development Ordinance. This concludes my staff report.

Thank you, Jeff. So I believe we have an applicant's representative here. If you'd like to come forward, state your name, and give us your testimony.

Chair Burke, commissioners, my name is Mark Garrett, and my address is 12975 Taylor Trail Highway in Gaze Creek, Oregon, representing Stasmark Green LLC. We don't really have much to add to the staff report. This is just a rezone that acknowledges the underlying comprehensive plan designation we were talking about. I'm not sure why they zoned at C2 to begin with, because C2 has a specific plan designation, but it allows an upzone. Rezone the remainder of this property Previously so this it'll just left a portion of that lot of record zone c2 for the time and now it's become necessary to to rezone in order to accommodate use or uses that the applicant is anticipating So that's what I have to say and we'd ask that you approve it as submitted happy to ask answer any questions that you might have I

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Anyone else here in favor or opposed? No reason for a rebuttal, so I'm going to close the public portion so we can deliberate to a decision. Are we cut and dry?

I think so. Looking for a motion? I make a motion to approve the staff's recommendations.

Okay, I have a motion to a second. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Any other discussion?

Made the second because it sounded like there was a race.

I don't care. They both did.

Can we co-second?

Co-second.

They're not strong enough to do it by themselves. Oh, boy. You missed me, haven't you?

One question, Jeff. Did the Roseburg-Douglas Planning Advisory Committee, are they meeting on this stuff, or is that still kind of...

No, and later in the meeting we can come back to and I can kind of give a little bit of update on the CCI and PAC program.

Okay, perfect. Okay, we have a motion and a second. No other discussion. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, passes unanimously.

To this, I did prepare findings of fact for your review. And I'll pass those out here. WELCOME.

WE'RE LOOKING FOR A MOTION TO ACCEPT FINDING THE FACTS ON PLANNING CART NUMBER 26-014.

I MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE FINDING OF THE FACTS.

MOVED. DO I HAVE A SECOND? I'LL SECOND. ANY OTHER DISCUSSION? NONE BEING HEARD. ALL IN FAVOR?

AYE.

All right, next item, we'll go to our legislative hearing portion. Okay, this legislative hearing has to deal with the first draft of the proposed amendments to the LUDO include number one, amendments to enhance effectiveness of the LUDO to include chapters one, three, and four. So at this point, I will hand this over to Jeff for the staff report.

Yeah, I'll hand out a brief staff report here. The current round of legislative amendments to the land use and development ordinance are predominantly housekeeping amendments, and they are amendments the Ludo regarding chapters 1, 3, and 4, primarily chapter 3, but we'll talk about that more later. As of the writing of the staff report, which was May 13th, no written responses have been received in response to the notice regarding the legislative amendment. The next day, we did receive comments from friends of Douglas County, and the comments were regarding an item that was for the conditional use permits and the rules regarding the invalidation of conditional use permits, and it was recognized that The points that were made in the letter received were valid points, and there was some, I guess, I called it, I believe, tunnel vision in looking at a different aspect. So that particular part of the amendments was removed. So just for the record, that all kind of happened after this staff report. So getting back to the staff report, we kind of touched on legal notice. And legal notice, in accordance with all applicable state and local requirements, was provided for these spring legislative amendments, which includes notice to DLCD for their 35-day notice, which was completed on April 16, 2026, in advance of today's hearing on these amendments. and legal notice of the legislative hearing this evening was provided to the News Review and published May 1st, 2026, 21 days prior to the hearing. Planning Department staff finds the proposed amendments are in keeping with the comprehensive plan, providing clarification consistency, and new use opportunities in several of the zoning designations, which we can go into some more detail on shortly. Planning staff recommends the Planning Commission forward the proposed spring legislative amendments of this spring. Sorry, I said that already. To the Board of Commissioners with the recommendation for approval. So that concludes the staff report. And jump in and discuss them. As I mentioned before, there was also another revision that occurred from your original draft that you received that had to do with also friends of Douglas Kennedy helping out in that I was jumping the gun on a bill and that bill wasn't ready yet because it did not have a date that said it's in effect yet and therefore it doesn't go into effect until January. And I think because I was on autopilot and most of the time I'm doing amendments in the fall, and that those then become effective after January 1st of the following year, that was recognized that that was not ripe yet and that was removed. And then as mentioned in the staff report, we removed the language that was changing the invalidation language regarding the conditional use permit because that wasn't really broken. So what that leaves then is I'm going to kind of hit some highlights here. RVs, so Chapter 1, the First Amendment is Chapter 1, length of time an RV may remain temporarily for residential use. This was just some housekeeping when if and when a property was in violation, this property owner was over the 30 and or 90 day length of stay, that it was trying to make it less vulnerable for legal challenges if we got to court citations and then an injunction where the county council was then dealing with somebody. It partly relates to the fact that someone could be 90 days in one calendar year, 2026, and then say, now it's 2027, I get 90 more days. And that might hold true if someone's not on the naughty list, but if they were in violation because they were already over the 90 or 30 days in the one calendar year, they don't get to be reset. that and next section number two word was some amendments for consistency regarding the resource management covenants and the use of the actual covenants and carrying that out just ended up striking the language. The document itself that we've been using and people have been recording, that speaks to and recognizes that the approval of a dwelling and, in some cases, other limited uses that have kind of residential use in nature that the resource management saying you can't complain about normal farm and forest activities on adjacent properties so kind of struck a language that mentioned and nearby so that was the consistency with the actual covenant that we've been using to carry that out so Moving to page four, the bottom of page four, item number three. This is an amendment to chapter three, specifically to the C2 community commercial zone. It's in two parts. One was to add, and ironically, we just had the zone change item before you. could also be utilized as a permitted use in the C2 zone, not just limited to C3. And that was based on kind of auditing and looking at the scope and the size of the use. I looked at traffic impacts and some other things to make that determination that that was a use that bank or a drugstore, they have maybe as much traffic, if not more, because they've added drive-up windows and things over time. So we felt that was in keeping with the uses that are there. So we added that alphabetically as item number four, the permitted uses. The second part of this is that there has always I can say always 30 years of experience for me, but the code has had a manufactured dwelling park listed as a permitted use in the zone when actually it refers to the provisions of Article 51, and Article 51, if you go to that, says that you have to go and notice requirements and decision are per Chapter 2, which means it's a... administrative decision. So it, it was very much misleading to say it was a permitted use in the zone when you actually had to go through this whole process have noticed neighbors and a decision and appeal period and everything. So the housekeeping there was to remove that. So the amendments there captured that renumbered them as the permitted uses goes, and then moved the manufactured dwelling park to the proper category of use permit standards. Item number four. was some housekeeping. We have provisions in the C3 zone that say you can do uses similar. And then we also had this very clunky, very poorly written, very cryptic, if you will, reference that says that you could do other uses permitted in the C2 and the CT tourist commercial zone And rather than playing that game of having to look up and do this comparison back and forth, I just reworded that to say, you can do other uses permitted by the C2 zone and the CT zone, except boat charter and rental and condominiums. So simplified something that has forever been just a head scratcher. We've made it much harder than it needs to be. So next item is number five. This is also another interesting one where an RV park was listed as used permit of standards in the rural service center zone. And when you then would read it, it says it was subject to a conditional use permit. It's like, well, then it needs to be under the conditional use list. So that zone just didn't have that category. I added that category so that it is now in its proper classification of being a building and uses permitted conditionally and added a new 3.19A.175 to them being keeping number. category number six was a amendment it is for the CRS zone I'm sorry wait no yes that was okay so we had sorry we had the problem in the in the CRS zone in 19a and then Yeah, we just squared that away, sorry It also is in the CRC zone, so that's that's what was throwing me I knew We did it in the CRS new category this time to the CRC zone there was already the category of building the uses permitted conditionally and it had to do with the now very much defunct medical marijuana grow sites but that's in the code and so then I just added the RV park to that category apologies there got lost with all the commercial zones okay item number seven An amendment to the CRC Rural Community Commercial Zone, this is a new opportunity, new use, is to allow motor vehicle sales lot subject to a limit of 10 vehicles as a permitted use and requiring a conditional use permit for over 10 vehicles, both being subject to a limitation of no outside storage of inoperable vehicles. So this then provides an opportunity. We felt that 10 vehicles was a good line in the sand, that if somebody really had enough land and wanted more than 10, then the conditional use permit review would be appropriate to then address compatibility. There could then, as part of that compatibility review, be some additional requirements like screening. some things along those lines. So that is item number seven. Item number eight, also within the rural community commercial zone, was to add a vehicle washing facility. This kind of came to us because we had a property owner that had a vision for doing an automated vehicle washing facility. so that they could take advantage of those people wanting to clean their vehicles. Makes sense. So that use was added. We just kind of piggybacked and added it to item number six. So it reads automobile service station and repair garages. Providing grease an entire repair and perform completely within an enclosed building and then added the and vehicle washing facilities Number nine It's another use where someone was looking to provide some opportunities for more sports facilities. I think basketball was sort of the driving factor, but Reese actually... appropriate that you're here tonight, did a lot of research. We found that other jurisdictions were, in fact, allowing these in their industrial zones, light industrial. And it does make sense because sometimes those buildings are just built in that same style with a big metal building. Get it up cheap and make it big because you're going to have a lot of people and need a lot of area for whatever sports you're going to have. going on in there. So that was a new use added to the M1 light industrial zone. The way we worded that is indoor recreational facility for sports including but not limited to basketball, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, racquetball, skating, soccer, swimming, and tennis. These facilities may be used for instruction, practice, and competitions. We got pickleball in there. We should really think about that. We should. That's the fastest. We've already just talked about that. Sorry. It's similar to racquetball. No. And tennis. And tennis. Right? I know. It's its own fastest growing probably in the world. Did you hear that four-letter word come out of his mouth? I did. Because I play them both. They're not the same. They're not. So yes, we will. Hey, if you want to amend it at the end, we could do that. OK, moving on to number 10. This one's kind of in keeping with and recognizing that in the rural community, you also could have somebody in the rural community industrial zone that would want to do a vehicle washing station or facility. Where we actually currently have it in our code is in the light industrial, but that's an urban designation. So to provide you more flexibility, we're putting it in that rural community industrial zone as well. In this case, we kind of added it to, as a permitted use already, the existed freight and truck yards or terminals. And then we just added the and vehicle washing facilities to that. And then moving on to item number 11. Item number 11 has to do with commercial developments and the provision that's in place right now in the code allows off-street parking where someone has an abutting lot and maybe doesn't have enough parking for their use on their existing lot but has the abutting lot, then the code allows that. parking to spill over. My concern and what the nexus here was for this modification to their amendment is that I think it would be easy enough for somebody down the road or two or three owners down the road not recognizing they have this restriction with this parking being on one other unit of land, and then they sell that, and then there goes their parking. They don't meet their parking requirements anymore. So this is to provide a consolidation covenant. It would be the easiest, but someone could do it more formally through a boundary line adjustment or lot line vacation. The benefit of a consolidation covenant, it basically does the same thing. It's recorded, then it's worked up in the records through the assessor's office. land and if something were to change where a different use were to be put into place on that existing land and it had less parking space because now it had more storage less patron serving area their parking standard dropped they didn't need all the parking on that they can lot they could revoke the covenant sell that after all somebody else can't develop that simply so I think it's just something that helps be in the record, helps when due diligence isn't always carried out by a buyer, and then would be in the title records. Another housekeeping item is number 12. We have in our Article 35 a potential water impoundment overlay, and potential water impoundments were set out in the past that the comprehensive plan designated certain areas where if a creek was dammed up, then you could have a reservoir, possibly a small one for fishing, maybe a bigger one for recreation of different sorts. But what the idea was with that overlay is that if that was in place, property owners could not divide. So it was recognized that that doesn't always make sense if that potential reservoir or water impoundment is on the eastern part of the property and one takes up a small portion of it and they have 400 acres and have division potential, then as long as the newly created units of land are not within that water impoundment overlay, let's let them divide. that was the provision there to provide some more flexibility. The next item number 13 is input from the county surveyor and it was related to land divisions where there's floodplain and basically that's just saying that the gist of it is that under B if a recorded monument is is located within a half mile of the property. It shall be tied by bearing a distance to the property, and no monument will be required on site. So in the land division process, when there's a benchmark with floodplain information, that needs to be tied in. And as long as there's one within a half mile of the property, that is close enough for the county surveyor to be comfortable with. And then that way, there's not a requirement to set a new benchmark. And so it avoids a little bit of the formality of having to do a benchmark. So that concludes the new amendments. for this spring. Some background then. We have prior amendments that are on remand from LUBA. We have separated amendments that were back from spring of 2024. There was an appeal of those, but it was really on one item, which was oversized farm buildings that were accessory to a single-family dwelling. That will come back separately from the Planning Commission because that would, on remand, go before the Board, who is the decision-making body. But we, in separating these, thought we'd just lump them in here and get them back on track. So you guys have seen these in the past. I'll just quickly go through them. Number one was the rural commercial zone CRE to add a storage shed sales as a permitted use generally in the zone. There was item number two to give clarification that the director of planning could have more flexibility on charging fees to other county departments so it gave the director discretion to waive those and then the last one was sign code amendments so numbers This was regarding the advent and the increased use of reader board style signs. And it was recognized that our code being written in the 1980s, or maybe a little sooner, but acknowledged back in 1980, 81, did not anticipate reader board style signs. So to give some flexibility, we added several zones. The opportunity, and it says basically, signs may be illuminated, but shall not be capable of movement, flashing, or blinking, except that electronic reader boards shall be allowed for public schools, government facilities, public agencies, or community centers. proposed reader board shall be reviewed for compatibility with surrounding land use to mitigate adverse impacts to adjacent uses or zones and to minimize distraction to motorists. So that is the rest of the amendments then through page 15 through the several different zones that had that limitation. Any question on the proposed amendments?

to go and close the public hearing portion of it. We can discuss any other questions.

I make a motion to forward the proposed spring legislative amendments to the Board of Commissioners with a recommendation for approval.

I second the motion. Seconded. No more discussion. All in favor? It's time to hear. Election of officers. Are you looking for a motion for the chair position?

I make a motion to keep our current officers as is.

I second that.

You should have been here earlier, Dan.

Is there any discussion?

Why mess with something that's working? Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Yeah, that's right.

informal so you may have made the second yeah I'll make the second I think Tim and I both run as well all right those all in favor you had her sweating earlier when she thought she was gonna have to do it today

Yeah, here it comes. So Jeff's got some information update on the community wildfire protection plan, which is a good time of year to get an update and see where we're at with that.

Yeah, I'm going to hand it over to Reese Carson and he can give you a little update. Absolutely.

Good afternoon, commissioners. So this is an information item only. Following this, the 2026 CWPP will be forwarded to the Board of Commissioners for adoption by resolution consistent with how all prior versions of this plan have been adopted. The Community Wildfire Protection Plan, CWPP, is Douglas County's primary planning document for wildfire risk reduction. It is not a regulatory document. It does not change zoning, create new requirements for property owners, or impose mandates on any jurisdiction. He guides where wildfire fuel reduction work gets done, who does it, and how the county and its partner agencies access funding to pay for it. The county is authorized to create a CWPP under the Federal Healthy Forest Restoration Act, HFRA, signed in 2003 and must include three core components. Collaboration with local, tribal, state, and federal partners. identification and prioritization of hazardous fuel reduction areas and recommendations to reduce the ignitability of structures and wildfire prone areas. Douglas County has maintained a CWPP since 2004. The 2026 update is the most comprehensive since 2017, featuring a new format, updated data and maps current through 2025 and three meaningful structural changes. Primary features of this update include, three regions instead of the previous four. The 2023 plan used four regions defined by watershed boundaries, hydraulic hydrologic unit codes adjusted at the margin for fire district lines. The 2026 plan reorganizes these four regions into three regions, coastal, central, and cascades. That aligned with the sub-regions used in the Douglas County Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan, NHMP, reflect epa level 3 ecoregions this improves consistency across county planning documents number two a more specific wui definition the 2023 plan to find the wildland urban interface as any area within one mile of a rural fire district boundary the 2026 plan adopts the oregon department of forestry's administrative administrative rule definition a geographical area where structures and other human development meet or any mingle with wildland or vegetative fuels. Treatment areas are now shaped by fuel loading data and modeled fire behavior rather than a fixed buffer from a fire district line, providing a more accurate picture of risk and stronger basis for project prioritization and funding. Number three, updated action plan with revised fuel reduction priorities and projects established by our partner agencies. The action plan is the section of the CWPP that matters most to most funders, located at the end of Chapter 2. It identifies specific projects at specific locations, which state and federal grant programs increasingly require. For example, the plan includes projects such as Defensible space, treatment along the glide area, wooey corridor, and roadside fuel reduction along evacuation routes in the Cascades region. This level of specificity is what allows our local fire districts to compete successfully for ODF and USDA grant dollars. The CWPP also serves as the foundational document for accessing federal and state wildfire mitigation funding. Under the HFRA, communities with an adopted CWPP receive priority consideration when the U.S. Forest Service and BLM allocate hazardous fuels funding, and federal law requires that at least 50% of HFRA project dollars go toward protecting communities identified in a CWPP. plan is also tied to the Secure Rural Schools Act, which funds both the development of the CWPP itself through Title III and on the ground fuel reduction projects recommended through Resource Advisory Committee's Title II. At the state level, the CWPP supports access to ODF's small forested grant program and USDA grant programs for local fire agencies. The 2026 plan was developed through the steering committee represented by the Bureau of Land Management, Roseburg District, the Confederate Tribes Select Association, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, the Douglas County Planning Department, Douglas County Public Works, the Douglas Forest Protective Association, Glide Revitalization, the Glide, Lookingglass, Kellogg, Riddle, and Tiller Rural Fire Protection Districts, Central Douglas Fire and Rescue, the Oregon State Fire Marshal, OSU Forestry and Natural Resources Extension Office, and the U.S. Forest Service Umpqua National Forest. Public input was gathered through a community survey that was open from December 2025 through February 2026, and a public meeting was held in July. This concludes my update.

Question for you. Did they ever talk about the Firewise program and how that would?

Yeah, that's in the document as well, has all the Firewise communities listed in there. Okay, cool.

For those of you who don't know, it's just a program that's been around for a while. I know that the city of Elkton, we just entered into it in the last couple of years. It's a really good program. Kind of forces the cities to kind of engage and be involved in that. And they allow some funds to come, allowed us to clear a significant amount of brush and undercover next to the community. So it's a worthwhile program. That's good to hear that that's in there.

Yeah. Is that document available, like, online or something, somewhere?

Yeah, it will be. We have a project page on planning's website. It has a little bit of information, but, yeah, once it's adopted, it'll be available on there.

Thank you. Any chance you could blast that out to the commissioners?

Yeah, no, yeah. We could absolutely do that. It is what it is.