Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the 03/03/2026 meeting of the Kitsap County Planning Commission. Thank you for your participation. Before we begin this evening's proceedings, I'd like to remind everyone that this is an official meeting of the Kitsap County Planning Commission conducted in accordance with the Washington State Open Public Meetings Act and Robert's rules of order. We ask that all attendees remain respectful throughout the proceedings. Please refrain from cheering, clapping, calling out, displaying signs, or any behavior that may make it difficult for others to hear or follow the discussion.

Such behavior can also be intimidating to those who may wish to express differing opinions. These proceedings are intended to provide a fair and orderly opportunity for all voices to be heard on the record. If disruptions occur, any planning commissioner may call for order and the chair may ask for a break. Disruptive individuals may be asked to leave the meeting room. Thank you for helping us maintain a courteous, respectful, and professional environment. The first item on our agenda is introductions.

Great. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I am Adrian Hampton representing Central Kitsap.

Ryan Wixon, Central Kitsap.

Cain Fenner, Central Kitsap.

Kathy Meisenberg, North Kitsap. Tammy

Bowen, North Kitsap. Danielle Douthat, South Kitsap.

The next item on the agenda Oh, I'm sorry. David?

Oh, and David Fleet, North Kitsap.

The first item on the agenda The next item on the agenda is meeting protocol. Please silence all electronic devices during the meeting. If you are attending in person, please refrain from having conversations with other attendees or staff outside the meeting. If you wish to provide comments, please wait until the general public comment period or the public hearing comment period. We offer four methods for public comment.

In person attendees, please raise your hand if you wish to speak and you will be called upon. Please approach the podium and speak clearly into the microphone. Virtual attendees, use the raise hand button at the bottom of the Zoom window at the appropriate time. Your name will be called and your microphone will be unmuted. Call in attendees, press 9 on your phone keypad to signal that you wish to comment.

The last four digits of your phone number will be announced and you will be connected. You may need to press 6 to unmute your line. Written comments and testimony. Written comments may be submitted to the staff or emailed to cjewel@kidsapp.gov by 2PM on the day prior to the meeting. Please include the meeting date, your name, and the agenda item or subject you're addressing.

Submitted comments will be entered into the record at the appropriate time. For all speakers, please state your name and the general area in which you live. Comments are normally limited to two minutes for general public comment and three minutes for public hearing comments. These time limits may be adjusted by the chair when appropriate. The next item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. Do I hear a motion to adopt the agenda?

I move to adopt the 03/03/2026 meeting agenda. Second. Are

there any corrections or additions to the agenda? Okay, motion passed.

Yeah. Do we have a vote for that?

All those in favor approving the agenda as presented, please raise your hand. Motion passes. The next item on the agenda is the adoption of the previous meeting minutes. Do I hear a motion to adopt the meeting minutes from the 02/17/2026 meeting?

I motion to adopt the meeting minutes from the 2026 meeting. Do I hear a second? Second.

Okay.

Are all in favor of the meeting minutes from February 17? Say aye. Aye. Motion passes. We will now move to the first general public comment period.

I want to remind the public that this is not a q and a session. The planning commissioners and the staff are unable to answer your questions at this time. Additionally, I would also like to remind the public that if you wish to provide comments for inclusion in the official public hearing record, please wait until the public hearing has formally begun. Comments made during this portion of the meeting will not be entered into the official record. Once there are no additional attendees wishing to speak, if there are no additional speakers, I will close the first general public comment period.

Yes. You wanna ask, is there anyone wishing to provide general public comment at this time?

Say it's in yeah. Is there anyone who wants to provide?

I'm sorry to interrupt you. If you press the

button, like, funnel turn on.

I see. I'll start over. Richard a Brown. I'm in real estate business, have been for the last fifty seven years in Port Orchard. I'm concerned that the Planning Commission is more interested in what the staff has to say than the general public. You've now cut the minutes down from what it used to be down to two and three minutes. I don't think that's right. You're representing the citizens of Kitsap County and the landowners. You should be giving them the same amount of time as the plan the planners have, when they're making their presentation. That would mean that each speaker tonight would get eighteen minutes, not two or three. Thank you. Thank

Thank you, Mr. Brown. Is there anybody else? Clara, is there anybody online? Anybody online? Oh, excuse me. Sorry.

Just wanna make sure that this is on. Hello. My name is Josiah Kibberberg, and I'm here to talk about the boundary line adjustment, ordinance that's going into this discussion. Some of the main things that I wanna bring up are this has already been brought up to the commissioners three times and five times and turned turned down. I did a little bit of research on how many times these boundary line adjustments have been brought up in the last twenty five years.

I could be wrong on some of these, but these were public requests. They've been done. Boundary line adjustment is done 6,700 times already. And majority of those those 4,500 have been single family.

This is a public comment regarding the boundary line adjustment.

Yes.

That's going to be later during this meeting during the public hearing.

Okay. I didn't I just didn't know when it was.

So if you can abstain from the the the comment, then we can hold that off till the public hearing?

Yeah. We can do

that. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Claire, is there anyone else wishing to provide comments during the general public comment period at this time? I don't see anyone online either.

If there are no additional speakers, I will close the first general public comment period. The next item on the agenda is an informational training on the Open Public Meetings Act presented by Lisa Nickel, Kitsap County prosecuting attorney.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Lisa Nickel. I'm with the Kitsap County prosecutor's office, and I don't think I've met any one of you. So welcome to the Planning Commission. And I'm giving this little it's about a fifteen minute training just to give some background and general information on the OPMA.

If you have questions, the process is just to hold off the questions until afterwards, if you don't mind. So I just wanna give a little bit of background on the planning commission before we jump into the OPMA. So the planning commission was originally established in 1961, but then it was disbanded and reestablished most recently in 2010. And so that resolution is on the Planning Commission website. There are two types of Planning Commissions established by the legislature under 3670, which is Planning Enabling Act.

There's thirty and forty. And this particular planning commission established under 40, which means it serves underneath the DCD as the planning agency and helps them carry out their functions, which then transmits to the Board of County Commissioners for their adoption on land use planning. The Planning Commission does have a relevant section in Kitsap County code. It's at 256030. And under there, in subsection 10, it requires the Planning Commission to comply with a variety of options, a variety of codes, including the code of ethics, the Public Meetings Act that we're going to discuss here, appearance of fairness doctrine when it does apply, which doesn't apply very often anymore for the Planning Commission, and then other public participation policies.

For example, the Growth Management Act, which has enhanced public participation requirements. So what does planning complying with the OPMA really mean? Essentially, like we talked about before, both the statute and the Kitsap County Code specifically refer to the Planning Commission as being subject to the OPMA. And this means basically all rule all meetings are supposed to be up to the public. That's your basic rule.

There are some exceptions, one we'll get to in a moment. The meetings kind of a circular definition, but a meeting is anything where action is taken. Action is this official transaction of your business, which on the left right side is the receipt of public testimony, all deliberations, considerations, reviews, evaluations, and then also final action. So anything that leads up to your final action is considered part of your business. In order to transact your business, you have to

have a

quorum. Kitsap County code defines quorum for your board as five members, and it's this business that must be done in public. There was a question I know from DCD. There's questions about social meeting or social settings. If you're gathering four or more or four or less in a social setting, that's obviously not a quorum.

And so you're fine to discuss. Even if you have five or more gathered together in a social setting, as long as you do not discuss planning commission business, that's not a violation of the OPMA. It's a little bit gray area just because converse conversations can continue and, transform into something that may be presented to you. So it's always a good idea to stay away from those. But it's technically not a violation if you're in social settings talking about non business items.

So when does a meeting occur? They can be in person, like you guys are here, hybrid, which there's online as well. So that's a meeting. You can have meetings by phone if there's five or more people, by email, which is the trickiest one, or any other meeting, texting or instant messaging. And chain meetings can be a meeting in violation of OPMA.

Chain meeting can occur when person A talks to person B, then talks to person C. You go down the line until you have five more people. That could be a meeting if you're talking about planning commission business. Chain meetings can also be person A talking to person B, person A talking to person c, and then b and c discuss. So there's a myriad of ways that a chain meeting could occur.

So it's always wise to be on watch out for those. One question that has come up in the past is the sending of information via emails. State law says that it's okay to send information to the group without replies, and that's not a meeting. Best practices, though, is to have the clerk send all information out and also include the Planning Commission as a blind carbon copy, which prevents prevents the commissioners from from accidentally replying all or replying to one person than having a meeting. But just the receipt of information, even from one planning commission to another, is not technically a violation of the OPMA.

Under the OPMA, there are two types of meetings, regular meetings, which this is one, or special meetings. Regular meetings are typically set at advance in the first part of the year. You've got your whole calendar set out. The agenda for regular meetings are flexible. You can add, like you did tonight. You can vote to add items to your agenda, or the agenda can be changed right before a meeting, even after been posted. And you can talk about things that aren't on the agenda. There is no violation for the OPMA for that. For special meetings, however, the rule is different. Because that meeting is not on your regular schedule.

You have to have twenty four hour notice. The clerk does all that kind of notice, and publishes the agenda in that notice. And so you cannot, discuss anything in a special meeting that's not already on the agenda. There is some gray area where some people have interpreted the language to say you cannot take final action at a on an item that isn't on the agenda as opposed to just discussing something that's not on the agenda. So that's a gray area to watch out for.

It's not settled right now. The next topic is what does it mean to be public? So all persons are permitted to attend. That means it's public. There's exceptions that we'll get into in a moment.

You cannot condition attendance on providing information. You can condition comments based on being on topic or within the limited time frame. But attendance, anybody should be able to attend without conditions. Open to the public means you cannot vote or discuss anything by instant message or email, where you're on the dais or otherwise. And the old rule is secret ballot.

People don't usually use papers anymore, but that was a subject of one case law. And then you don't have to have Zoom or any other online options under the OPMA. It's encouraged, but not required. So then what are the exceptions to being open to the meeting? The first one is interruptions.

It's probably one that would most likely apply in these settings rather than executive sessions, which is the other situation. To have an interruption sufficient to eliminate the public openness of a meeting is it has to be a disruption that prevents the orderly conduct of a meeting. And in chapter three zero two of Kitsap County Code, the Board of Commissioners recently adopted a code of conduct for the building of administrative Building, but also meetings that occur here in the Administration Building. And that provides it's not an exact application, but it's helpful to see what kind of situations are prohibited under that code. Some of those wouldn't cause a disruption that you couldn't conduct an orderly meeting, helpful to refer to that section.

It starts out by saying speaking without being recognized or continuing to speak when you've been told not to, that those are prohibited may not be a disruption. But when you get down to throwing objects or refusing to stop talking, or disobeying a lawful order of the chair, or breaking the law, such as assault, those types of things can be a disruption that would prevent you from carrying out an orderly meeting. So your options when you encounter this are to pause the meeting. Hopefully, that will allow take a five, ten minute break. That will allow things to calm down.

If that still doesn't fix the situation, you can clear the room and then continue your meeting. But that means you can only discuss items that are on the agenda that are left to discuss. Alternatively, you can leave people here in the room and then adjourn to another location. And again, you can only discuss things that are on the agenda. The last option, which is probably the most frequently used when it does occur, is to adjourn the meeting entirely, unless there's a time sensitive issue.

That's the simplest, because it just allows everyone to go home, and then you can come back either at a regular meeting or at a special meeting that's been properly noticed. So what happens if these things are not complied with, that there's an OPMA violation? Case law says there is personal liability for every member who attends a meeting knowing that there's a violation. It's a $500 fine, civil fine, for the first violation and up to $1,000 for any subsequent violations. The other piece of it is the action that you that any action has been taken during a meeting that's in violation of the OPMA, those actions will be null and void.

And you'll have to go back and do it again properly in compliance with the OPMA. The last slide I have here is just a series of resources that you can go to look for more information about Open Public Meeting Act. I provided these to Clara, and she's going to put them on the website and also provide them to you as well afterwards. So with that, that's the end of the presentation. Is there any questions that you have?

Thank you, Lisa.

You're welcome.

Don't. Do any planning commissioners have any questions, comments at this time for Lisa?

Quick one. Yeah. Yeah. If we wanna reach out to you with a question, what's your email? Or can you provide that to us after the meeting?

To get

to Clara.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I was just gonna jump in and say thank you for the information in treating Nicole.

Yeah. Not a problem. You're welcome.

I'm gonna turn that off.

So alright. Thank you very much.

The next item on the agenda is a work study on the equestrian facility assessment presented by Heather Cleveland, DCD Long Range Planner. Planning commissioners, it's recommended to please refrain from asking questions until after the presentation.

Just getting situated. Thank you commissioners, for having me this evening. I'm here tonight, for a work study on the the Equation Facility Assessment project. And Garrett Ballou will also be presenting with me. And my name is Heather Cleveland.

I'm a long range planner with Department of Community Development at Kitsap County. I'm not gonna read all of this, but these these are the topics that I'll be touching on and covering in the presentation tonight. The purpose of this project, which some of this I've shared with you before, you know, the overall idea of the project, that sort of thing, we're just going in deeper on some of the pieces of it and then also what's next. But the purpose is to assess regulatory needs for future commercial equestrian facilities considering rural impacts, economic viability, and the role of equestrian facilities in maintaining rural character. And this was refined and confirmed through the comprehensive plan process and the Rural and Resource Lands chapter that was adopted last year.

Some background on this. This topic arose from the Year of the Rural Project last year, which came out of the 2024 Comprehensive Plan Periodic Update. It was identified a question facility specifically, but then was put under the umbrella of land use compatibility was made a priority by by the board of county commissioners. With that, we had we worked with an agriculture working group steering committee to talk about land use compatibility, animal densities, other things. But the specific topic at hand was equestrian facility.

With that, a code was proposed and a draft was shared in September 2025. And after significant feedback from the community, through the public process, it was decided by the Board of County Commissioners that it would be postponed to 2026. And so with that, this year, we've shifted back from calling it code to an assessment. So what you'll see here tonight are the variety of ways that we're continuing to assess different aspects of equestrian facility code historically, what's happening in other jurisdictions, what's the topic at hand with respect to this assessment. This is a list of objectives that was created, you know, when you start a project you put a charter together.

So I would say the majority of these I'm working to address through different deliverables. So these still hold true and we're still working on them and weaving them in to the work that we're doing. Key partners in this project stakeholders include an equestrian facility working group. That includes three representatives from each district along with an adjacent property owner to an equestrian facility, and then also representation from Kitsap Conservation District. That group has met since September, but I would say more formally came together last year and then has met January, February, and then will meet again in March.

Commercial Equestrian Facility Operators and Equestrian Associations along with rural property owners, near equestrian facilities, and then the general community continues to be our stakeholders as part of this project. Research and implementation, so DCD staff, I have these as key partners because we've reached out to, for example, co compliance, what is their role in this? We've reached out to our colleagues in current planning, for example, about the permitting process and how would that work. And then also ourselves in long range in doing the research. And then finally, officials.

So as far as us keeping you up to date on this process and where it goes, currently you're simply receiving our information and asking good questions. But should something move forward, you will play a role in what should move forward. But nothing's moving forward at this time. This is still an assessment. This is the scope of work that was also prepared with the charter.

Community engagement, a big part of it, with the community engagement plan. And then the majority of the tasks are under the research and assessment part of this. What we're looking for with this assessment is direction and narrowing the scope of what happens next. And based on that, that's when it would go to task nine and task 10, which would be a public process and implementation, but we're not in that phase yet. Something that we were asked early in this project was to use a particular case, co compliance case, as a case study.

And I will acknowledge that in 2025 it was uncertain how to speak about that particular case because it was a co compliance case. With this in 2026, we lifted up that we were looking at this as a case study along with others that my colleague will also touch on, but we're continuing to look at this because we were asked to use this as a case study as an example of impacts, and what code exists and what code could exist and all that sort of thing. So for Roundup Lane case study, in 2018 there were new property owners. They established an equestrian facility business was established. I'm noting here that we do not have we do define equestrian facility in our code currently, but not commercial as a threshold.

So there is no difference in equestrian facility currently in our code of what sort of impacts could change. I will also note that equestrian activities weren't new to the facility with that change in ownership, but our understanding that perhaps the impact or the activity changed or increased. There were several code compliance cases, one in 2018, one in 2023, and one in 2025, which we're continuing to look into and assess. And there's a variety of topics within each of those that we're breaking down and to assess what are those impacts, what code currently exists that can be addressed, or is there a lack of clarity in code that could be part of the solution. So that's how we're using this as a case study to address those impacts and concerns.

Another part of the work that we're doing is looking at historical unclassified use permits. These are available on the project webpage. And another thing that was added recently was what we did is take those conditions that were applied. So with this was in the early 90s and if something isn't on a land use table it could go through a process of a conditional use permit and it's called an unclassified or unclassified use permit and the process is very similar to a conditional use permit in that there is neighbor notification and a hearing examiner process. In that, what we looked into is what conditions were assigned in those situations and what code currently exists.

And I would say half to 75% of the conditions have code that currently exists. So we're continuing to look into that, and assess and form an opinion on that wherever those gaps are. Is it a gap that is a concern or can it be addressed in a different way perhaps through education or best management practices and things like that. But this is an exercise that we went through, and I will say that I know at least one facility still exists, and this was part of their process. I also wanna note, because this is something that was of great concern to the equestrian community, is the cost.

So the cost of this in the nineteen nineties was 5 or $600. Well today, you know, that might be a thousand between 1 and 1 and $2,000 perhaps if you know, convert that. If we were to apply a conditional use permit today that could be closer to $10,000 So just want to acknowledge that the price, you know what it cost somebody to do this back then is not the same as it would cost somebody to go through a similar process today. Another part of our assessment is looking at when commercial stables existed in our code in 1999, And both of these were a variety of things that we assessed when we put together the proposed code last fall. But this is a part of it where it talks about setbacks and those types of things.

But I will also say what I've heard back from the community is that, and we're hearing it, is Kitsap County is not a one size fits all. And so although I understand that clear setbacks might be helpful and predictable, it is not flexible. So this is something that we noted, but wanted to share that this is our code in 1999 and it refers to multiple setbacks. And then some information about our code leading, you know, to now. So in 2016, an agriculture code was proposed and adopted.

Animal density table was initially proposed in that, but it was removed. I think part of that, like I mentioned earlier, is Kitsap County is not a one size fits all. We have a lot of limitations and flexibility. And what was introduced instead was animal densities should be managed by best management practices, and that's how our code reads today. In 2020, that's when a questioning events and a questioning facility was added to the code.

And then in 2024, just this last year, we added more information about best management practices and farm plans. They were essentially further defined. So we have that information now in the Agricultural Code. So this is these are just some highlights of the feedback that we received from the code that was proposed last year. We received feedback about the process, concerned about the lack of representation to what was proposed, concerned about setbacks and screening.

A big concern was that there are lots where in the future, and I will acknowledge the code that was proposed last year was only for new equestrian facilities. However, folks are still really concerned about what does legal nonconforming mean? What if a person complains and suddenly I have to follow this? So I will acknowledge although that was our intent, it was a concern. And then I already mentioned the setbacks, in addition to that, the screening, it was felt that, again, best management practices can help manage this and one size fits, and also the cost that it would be to and then in addition to that, that there wasn't tiers proposed.

So is this all was this all commercial? It was all commercial, but not necessarily tiers for a smaller business. Would they also be required to do this? Small business, so I also mentioned that. Yes, the previous code was labeled commercial and it didn't differentiate small business. So that's something I want to note that it did not and so that we receive feedback this would really negatively impact small businesses. Existing facilities continues in this situation continue to be a concern, so legal non conforming. How will someone know that I already exist? Cost of permitting, I mentioned that earlier. So whether it's an ACUP or a CUP, there's fees involved.

And there's great concern that the return on investment isn't there. This is a passionate community who does this, and it's very hard to have a business. So all of this, from what we heard, would add up to not being able to survive as a business. And then finally, there was concern that there was not enough examples throughout the entire county for a code to be proposed for the entire county, and that the Roundup Lane case study didn't justify proposing a new code. I'm going to turn it over to Garrett to talk about the code compliance data analysis.

Thank you, Heather. So as part of this assessment, we analyzed code compliance data, and this data ranged from 2012 to November 2025. And we pulled this data from our SmartGov database essentially, and we did it by key terms. So there was a handful of key terms that we used to refine that data in our initial search to get our raw database, and those included things like, horse, equestrian, dust, manure. There's a variety of other terms as well, but just to give you an example there.

And that initial raw data from that first search included 679 code compliance requests and 588 cases over 565 unique properties. So taking that initial search of that raw data and refining it further, identifying which of these cases are relevant to this assessment and what maybe isn't. We were able to filter it down further to a point where we had 47 requests and 38 cases over 41 properties. And from there, we could categorize by topic. So we had agricultural structures, horses, manure, commercial feed sales, these types of of categorizations.

And we were, from there, able to really dial in and go into further detail to research the cases that were most relevant to what we were trying to accomplish here. And so we identified eight cases regarding equestrian facilities and or commercial feed sales, and these are what we analyzed in the greatest detail going through each case and looking at all of the documents for those. So the eight cases that we took a deeper dive with included concerns regarding large events, management of manure, commercial equestrian facilities, and the commercial wholesale of ag products. And so from these cases, we pulled out some some takeaways informed by what happened with the case, what were the notes from code compliance, and how did these cases get resolved or are they resolved. And so for the large events portion of this, it was determined that existing code had noise and parking requirements that could apply to aspects of that case.

So this is where we are taking a look at our existing code to see what we already have that we can be implementing in some of these cases. And and in there were several cases that had issues related to management of manure. A lot of these also, involved critical areas. And so these were addressed, oftentimes by a joint effort with the county and multiple other agencies, including the Kitsap Conservation District, the Health District, and, some cases, the Humane Society stepped in as well with, issues regarding animal density. And then for the commercial equestrian facilities themselves, taking a look at those.

So as Heather had mentioned in the previous slide, CUPs or UUPs as they used to be referred to, were required to operate in in the past, but today, this is no longer in our code. And then for the commercial wholesale of agricultural products, which appeared in in in a couple of cases, Enforcement difficulties stemmed from lack of clarity in our farm stand definition in Title 17. Specifically, there's a distinction between farm stands and moderate home businesses that warrants further examination. Again, there's there's a an idea that we have a lot of existing code that could speak to a lot of the issues that we're we're seeing and related to this, and and this is part of our assessment as well. So on the screen here, we we have several code sections identified that are helpful for us that already exist in our code.

So as previously mentioned, there's the definition of farm stand and moderate home business. There are sections as well in title 17 regarding BMPs for farms, including manure management, and and those relate to the National Resource Conservation Service, which has BMPs, and they host some educational resources there. Noise in hours, as previously mentioned. So in in certain residential areas, there are limitations to how loud essentially neighboring properties can be within certain hours, and those may apply to those larger events that we saw in in some of the cases. And then structure setbacks excuse me, for agricultural structures in title 17, we have provisions for those as well.

And then in title nine, the role of the health district is outlined specifically for stepping in when situations involve impacts to human health and which is the case oftentimes when manure in critical areas are involved and there's waterways there. All right. I'm going to pass it back to Heather, who's going to detail the cross jurisdictional analysis piece.

So this is part of our analysis, and it was part of our analysis in last year as well. And so what we're looking at and I but I will say what has changed with this is rather than looking at all of the districts, we're honing in on zoning that's equivalent or near equivalent to rural residential. So that's our zone which in Rural Kitsap is one dwelling unit per five acres. So we're looking through this to see what are what's the definition. So I will say we're working on this.

It will be published soon, but we're looking to see is there a definition for, you know, for example, Clollam County, their definition for commercial horse facility means a facility greater than 2,000 square feet for the commercial boarding care, training or riding of horses. And then they have two this is just one example they have two zones that are similar, one where it's permitted and then one where it's a conditional use permit. So these are the type of things that we're looking at, yes, to provide better information for us not just is it regulated, but how is it regulated to a similar zone where the co compliance cases that we have are all rural residential and that obviously is the zone with the smallest acres in Kitsap County. Another thing that we're looking at, I mentioned we're looking at the definition of commercial equestrian facility or any other sort of definition that they have. And I will say that's where it gets tricky.

You could even start off, do they include equestrian in their agriculture code? So those are some other things that we're trying to parse out. And then finally we're looking into do they have animal density regulations and where are those and then are equestrian included? So those we're working on an analysis for that and then I have an asterisk next to two of them that were not a part of a part of our initial assessment but we're including this in this next assessment. As Garrett mentioned earlier, best management practice is something that we're taking a close look at.

It's something that manages and guides, for example, our animal densities here in Kitsap County. And it's a great resource, but we're wondering is there additional education that can be provided because it's not always simple to enforce. Also, when it comes to things like, well, example, dust and odors, those are part of are protected by the Right to Farm Act. So it becomes but at the same time, part of that are you still have to consider the impact on the neighbors, but you can see that can be kind of a difficult thing to understand. Noise, So if I was trying to find the third one.

So when things are protected by the Right to Farm Act, it doesn't mean there's no, you know, there is still a concern for health, safety, and welfare. But what that is, is managed by best management practices, and that's where it can get a little bit tricky. And we're looking into, and that's part of the outreach that we did at the workshop, are what are some ways that we can level up our best management practices and how we use that here in Kitsap County. We also sent out a survey. And the survey was intended to do outreach about equestrian facilities in general.

And we received feedback, it was good feedback from our equestrian working group to not only ask about because we're regulatory, our angle often comes from the regulatory angle. But we receive feedback to work to make it as balanced as possible. So we did ask. And we also receive feedback from different parts of the community. For example, property owners with horses, non commercial, neighbors of an equestrian facility, customers, clients, riders, and rural land owners.

And these are different folks identified in the survey. Primary relationship to a question activities was identified. 51% recreational, 31% resident residential and neighbor. So that shows too that we had folks that are neighbors of it, but also are involved in it. Another feedback that we received is 86%, and there was nearly 400 participants, 86% found it to be beneficial, but then 10% have mixed both beneficial and challenges.

But with the beneficial, I will say, and this has come across in every outreach that we have done, and I think it's important to emphasize how important equestrian facilities are to our community and rural character. For example, sense of community, recreational opportunities, physical and mental health, and revenue to surrounding communities. So these are just some of the examples of things with the significant benefits. And then another thing that we asked, and this is because this is a full assessment, we're still looking at different options. We had a question about at what point does a question operation become commercial?

63% said existing regulations are sufficient. And then but then 16% thought amount of vehicle traffic, and then another 16% said frequency of assembly events. And I will acknowledge too, we do have different parts in our code that talk about these types of impacts. For example, agritourism is something that has different regulations about the frequency of events and the numbers, so there is different parts of code that address this, but not specifically for a questioning facility at this time. We held a workshop last week yes, last week where we honed in on four different topics to gain information.

This is also an opportunity for the community to ask us questions. And we lifted up there could have been a variety of topics that we lifted up, but we wanted to share some that we've been looking into to get some information. And I'll talk I'll speak to the two, and we divided these up into topic stations. And then we also had an opportunity for general comment. These have been compiled and are now posted on the project webpage, and we're going to continue to assess them.

But I'll touch on the two that I those two topic stations that I oversaw. So the farm stand definition, Garrett mentioned that earlier. So the intention of the farm stand, and it was great, we had two folks there who were part of writing the agriculture code. The intent of the farm stand definition were for growers, so for agriculture growers. And in addition to that, the percentages that you see in the farmstand definition were meant to give some flexibility, but also not to allow, for example, imports from Yakima to come in and sell here.

The intent was for folks who grow here with some flexibility to bring in if you wanted to add something to it that maybe wasn't sold here. But where we're struggling is those percentages are not verifiable. So if were to ask for a percentage to see if you qualify under farm stand, and that's the type of information that we were looking for. So some of the feedback that we received about that were guess great confusion about why are we talking about farm stand with respect to your question. And so if that needs to be defined further, that is something we want to that's what we're looking to do.

We don't want to limit it for folks who are perhaps, let's say when it comes to hay sales, if somebody is growing hay, that is the intention. If it's being completely imported, that's not the intention. So that's what we wanted to share with respect to what we're looking into with the farm SAM definition. And then when it comes to agriculture registration program, this is something that other counties do have. It could be used for a variety of ways.

What I will say is I sometimes this happen, this is also happening with the child care code. But when there isn't a permit to give you documentation that you're allowed to do this, you don't have documentation. And so part of this is if a code in the future was to be introduced there was great concern about legal non conforming. And and this is an idea how could an agriculture registration program be helpful? We'd also asked about what incentives, you know, what incentives could help folks to do this.

You know, it could be a reduction in fees, it could be notification to neighbors, some of those were shared. But I will say overall there continues to be concern about any sort of government process or regulation or fees to add to this. So there definitely wasn't let's go or bought into this, but there was some curiosity. We also continue to struggle with the notification aspect for neighbors. But that's also something perhaps that the Agriculture Advisory Council can take up and continue to work on that. But that was those were the two topics that I covered. And not only did I get feedback about these particular topics, but folks had the opportunity to ask questions about where we're at in the process and what's going on. And I'll let Garrett talk about his two topics.

Thank you, Heather. So one of the stations that I manned at that open house was regarding education enforcement of best management practices, or BMPs, as they're often referred to. And this station focused primarily on how those BMPs are used to guide animal density and address impacts such as noise, dust, and odors under the right to farm framework. And we're exploring ways to strengthen education, clarify expectations, improve enforcement tools around these BMPs. And so there were a couple of different questions posed at that station asking folks, about their experience with BMPs, in particular, the education around those BMPs and if there are sufficient resources available.

And most folks that I that I spoke with and most of the the notes that were shared voiced that the Kitsap Conservation District is an excellent resource for education on these BMPs and for guidance and assistance with the implementation of these. The Conservation District also has the ability to provide partial funding to help, implement these on sites, if folks, reach out to them. And they provide, links as well to other educational resources. So that's something that we heard quite a bit from from folks at the open house. There were a a few concerns regarding the funding around those BMPs and the implementation of those, specifically in regards to dust and mitigation of dust with with horse arenas and in those types of areas, especially in the drier months in the summer, which those can be difficult is something that we we receive feedback there.

But but overall, I I think that there is a general sense that there's a lot of education out there. It could perhaps be a a little bit more ease easier to access from the county's side of things to provide a resource that has some of that information available in one place, but vast majority of folks did know where to find information on these best management practices. And that the other station was for the tiered structure for commercial equestrian facilities. And this station explored how a tiered approach could distinguish between smaller and larger scale equestrian operations based on their intensity and impact. So, this is something that is not currently being proposed.

There is no code proposed for this. But we're we're gathering input with this station to inform future options if that direction is provided by the board of county commissioners. So again, we are not planning on on a tiered approach at this time. We do not have that direction from the board. But if that is a direction that is received at some point in time, a tiered approach is is something that we have looked into and other counties have implemented.

And so what this does is instead of a one size fits all solution, which is not would not be best for Kitsap County, it would, explore different levels of intensity. And so some other jurisdictions have have used, the amount of horses boarded as a way to distinguish between maybe lower tiers with with fewer animals that do not need to be subject to regulation, and then the it progresses. So the more involved it facility is, the more potential regulations would apply. But, again, this is not something that is currently being proposed by Kitsap County, but we had it at the open house so that folks could see what something like that could look like if direction is provided by the board. So I'll pass it over to Heather again to discuss our equestrian facility working group.

So we've been I mentioned earlier, we've been working with an equestrian facility working group, and I just compiled some of their concerns and wanna wanna share that yeah. What they're of this. They're concerned with the lack of complaints and county wide regulation. Feel that this is a site specific issue. Concern that Roundup Lane, the code violation cases are closed the right to farm, so including growth expansion and associated dust, noise and odor and that those are protected Increased regulation will negatively impact the equestrian community in Kitsap County.

Whose burden is it if the existing code is not enforced? And then the current farm sand code assessment not related to equestrian stakeholders is an outlier. So here are some of the initial impact assessments that we're looking at. When it comes to adjacent properties, we're looking at noise, dust, and odor, acknowledging the Right to Farm Act exists traffic and customers runoff and water pollution emergency evacuation and access and enforcement. So these are this is what we're looking at, you know, and how can this be addressed.

Then on the other side of it, impacts on the equestrian community include increased regulation, land conversion. This was also brought up in just looking at the year of the rural, and rural character, and the concern of land conversion, and also just thinking of working lands and how to preserve those. This concern was also brought up by the tribes of increased regulation will lead to increased land conversion for development. Existing equestrian facilities and impact, so I'd mentioned that earlier. The cost, had mentioned that.

So any sort of an ACUP or a CUP, the cost of that. Economic viability. So part of that too, think something that we continue to work, look at, look into is how does the Right to Farm Act relate to growth, and what if growth is needed to survive as a business? Clear thresholds, so I think that continues to be a concern. How can the thresholds be clear, but also flexible?

Concern with setbacks and animal densities versus best management practices. And then also rural character and community and equestrian being a big part of that. So we're working towards our initial recommendations into three different categories. One is the status quo, so that means carry on. The second set, what we're spending a significant amount of time on, along with working, with research and working with the equestrian facility group are what we're calling in the Board of County Commissioners also acknowledge our simple solutions.

These are some examples. So clarification or update to code for the farm stand, education for best management practices, and then also could there be coordination support, agriculture support for co compliance? There's already written into the Agriculture Advisory Council a code or complaint aspect to that, so how could those work together and provide support? So that's how we're looking to break that down. And I will say something how we're working to categorize that, those impacts that I put above.

We also want to consider the fiscal impact of that, so how much would a simple solution cost? What's the staff capacity for such a solution? Is it feasible? And then what's the potential impact of that positive or negative? And then what we're considering long term projects would be registration for existing agriculture and commercial equestrian facilities. I put this one on the top of the list because of the concern for legal non conforming of existing facilities. Another longer term project would be defining commercial. So what does commercial mean? You know, what's that threshold? And then finally, tiered thresholds for those commercial equestrian facilities.

We see those as longer term projects that need more input, more discussions, and also direction from the Board of County Commissioners to move forward with those. This is the timeline of this project. I had mentioned in my earlier presentation, my briefing, that we're here today to do work study, happy to answer any questions. We have our presentation with the Board of County Commissioners on Monday. And then we're waiting after that to what is our next steps and what is our narrowed scope of work moving forward. And with that we're happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Do any planning commissioners have any questions?

I could I could start out with a few. Let me get organized here. So I I did speak to Rafe before the meeting, and he provided a little bit of insight on the case studies and how you but is it Garrett? Is that correct?

Yeah.

Did you did you analyze the all the data?

Yes. Correct.

Rafe and I were talking about 600 compliance cases that were researched, and that was a dataset that started out from everything related to a horse and then you narrowed it down to was it 43 or 38 cases?

Yeah. The initial initial initial narrowing was, I believe, it was 38. And then beyond that, it it was eight that we really dove into in the most detail.

And were those eight related to the Roundup Lane case study? Or were they related to multiple facilities?

They were related to multiple facilities, including the Roundup Lane.

Okay. I guess the the main concern I have just initially, newer to the Planning Commission, and I know this has been going on for over a year, I think. But the concern I have is I'd like to see more facilities talked about and discussed as part of planning because every facility is probably unique to itself, and the problems that they might have on Roundup Lane might not be happening in other parts of the county. So I'd just like to see if we're gonna establish something that affects everybody. I'd like to see that everybody's currently being affected.

Hi. Danielle Douthat. So I just had going back to what was stated just now, was having read the emails that are the comments from different people, and I think during one

of

the comments from a week or two ago was that the working group was given a list of the complaints. But I don't believe we ever were, unless I missed it.

Not the full list.

Could could that be made available to us?

To the planning commission? Mhmm. Yes. And I guess we're we're also sensitive to the information that's in there because there's sensitive mean, we didn't make it widely available on purpose. It has property information. I just wanna be You

take the property inform like, we don't need the addresses.

Could you

just, like, take that column out? Is that possible?

It depends how narrow you wanna get, but what was so you want the full so when we're looking at this, the six seventy nine requests and the five eighty eight cases, those rows?

Is that what you gave to the working group?

They got everything, and then we showed our methodology and how we narrowed it down.

So if we could see see that, but without any addresses, like just take can we just take the addresses off? That way we wouldn't

We'll look into it because sometimes the addresses are woven into the comments. I'm just yes. It's complicated and that's why we didn't share it widely because it's it's concerning. Because if you receive a complaint on your property, it's and then it was the case was closed and it was dismissed. That feels uncomfortable for folks. So we were very sensitive about that.

And I appreciate that.

Yeah. Because just

was because it more just a wanting to see the actual complaints and not the you know, like more I understand you have given us a little bit of a filtered view of that in this presentation. But I just wanted to know if we could see any other details of that. And I knew that the working group had seen that, and so I just was curious.

So what we can share, and then you can let me know if you want more, is the summary that we had, and then I can share kind of a snapshot of what this is. And then we can kind of talk about what would be helpful for you all.

Okay. I think that would be helpful.

Okay. And then summary though of the methodology and then more specific case details of those eight are now published on the web page. And we can share that with you.

I'll look at that.

Yeah. Think that's a good starting point. Okay. And then if you want to us to zoom out to share more information, we can do that.

And then I did have I feel like the farm stand situation sort of has come out of left field, unless I missed a lot of things.

It's part of the co compliance case when it talks about it's it was in '28 2018. Let me go back.

And part of that and so that's how we're pulling it forward?

That's correct. So when it comes to commercial retail sorry, give me one moment.

Uh-huh. So just based off of the roundup lane case

And it was involved in So

I missed that.

That's correct. Yep. So it lists here hay sales from semi trailers. That's the topic that we're looking to address.

Because I I read the farm stand the the code, you know, and it it clearly states, like I mean, I don't I have it memorized, but like 50% has you to be from know, but that's already in code.

We agree.

So as long as we're following that code that already exists.

That's correct. And I think what we're getting at is because like the 50%, you know, those percentages or any sort of percent, that's not verifiable. That's where we wanna be a bit more clear that this is clearly intended for if you're growing. So if you aren't growing anything, this isn't the that's not the intention. And I know that sounds very clear and obvious, but it sometimes needs to be clearer.

All right. And then the other statement, this is just a statement. I just wanted to sometimes when we've done a lot of research on a topic, we think we have to change it. And I appreciate that one of your options is status quo. But I feel that that, if that is where we end up, I want us to feel good about that and that that is a a real option and like a real a real option.

Yeah. I understand. Okay. And I will say too, when we're talking about the simple simple solutions, there'll be multiple options. Like I said, we're gonna prioritize it and kind of put it in such a way like these are some things that can move forward or to acknowledge they're already moving forward and could address some of the concerns.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for

the presentation and the endeavor of this thorough assessment. It's a lot of pieces. I was just going to maybe offer a suggestion, take it or leave it. And maybe the work group could decide if this is a good idea because I don't know. But in the larger survey, so the SurveyMonkey that went out, and something to note for the commission, the you've also collected geography.

And I was pleasantly surprised to see that across 300, 400 plus folks, the geography of respondents was evenly split through North, Central, And South Kitsav. So that was really great to see. And there's a question in there later, question I wrote down, 13. It's more qualitative where it talks about, please describe any specific positive or negative impacts. And maybe that could be coded in a way across geography and included in the assessment.

It feels broad enough to give us an additional visual or understanding of where various issues or positive or negative feelings are coming up, that kind of thing. I don't know if that's a good idea. Someone else can decide, but just to offer that could be another route.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Data can be looked at in a variety of ways, but I appreciate that suggestion.

Heather, I have a question. On page 10 of the presentation where it notates code from 1999, Is that the code that is being used today?

No. No. So previously in 1999, the commercial stables were a separate use. And it was a conditional use permit. And in 2016, it fell under agriculture. So that was a shift. Okay.

I know I mentioned this before, and I've asked questions about it. I'm trying to understand what has been the big push with this equine facility code because back in 2011, Kitsap County had developed a strategic agriculture plan that almost mimics to the t what's being presented today as being recommendations and considerations to issues that were the same as it was in 2011. As that's fifteen years ago, I'm trying to understand what Kitsap County did for enforcement over those fifteen years and what kind of code and what code did they use to enforce concerns like the eight that you've presented out of the data that you've narrowed down as being the major complaints. So I don't know if you can answer that, but it's just concerning to me because if these issues were major and they were concerns of the county, why weren't they addressed with code revisions over the last fifteen years?

I can just say some general statements, but probably not fully answer your question. But I think the creation so since 2011, an agricultural code was created. So that's that's a change. My observation is when it comes to the co compliance cases that we've looked at, if a complaint was raised, it's not always the exact if there isn't a code to enforce, there might be a different code that does exist that could be enforced. So that was our observation.

For example, if a complaint was made about something related to agriculture or equestrian, but then something was being built and there wasn't a particular permit for it, that's what would be addressed. So I think sometimes when these situations arise, it's the code that exists that then is enforced. Not to say that that's the way it always should be done, but you're not always looking to create more code, you're enforcing what already exists. Another thing that I'll say that has come since is this is new and it sounds like yes, it took a long time, but the formation of the Agriculture Advisory Council, it's happening now. So the 2016, yeah, Agriculture Code and the Agriculture Advisory Council, those are two pieces I think that are related to that.

And I think, yes, I think Kitsap County is continuing to grapple with this and rural lands and agriculture. Again, going back to we don't have agricultural zoning in Kitsap County.

Okay. I appreciate that.

Mhmm.

I just have, you know, concerns because we're talking about eight complaints through the data that you've provided since 2012.

Specifically related to a question or the topics that we were looking into.

So how are concerns that are raised today enforced with code enforcement?

That would probably be a question best answered by code compliance. And if you want, we can follow-up with more information on that. Is that a general question or related to agriculture? I

guess I'm trying to understand the connection that if you code currently and there's a situation that arises relative to the equine facility, how are you addressing those on those situations? Who's who's going out and enforcing the code that you currently have?

Code compliance.

Okay. And so I guess I'm trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we've had eight since 2012 where the county's gone out and investigated code compliance issues. So out of fourteen years, you've addressed eight?

I think there's more to it than that.

But But as far as the as far as the code compliance issues, though.

I think that's perhaps a generalization and maybe I don't understand your question.

I guess what I'm getting at is is that we have current code already, correct, regarding equine facilities?

Equine facilities is defined and we have an agriculture code.

Okay. And that code is what we are currently using if there is an infraction or a code compliance issue?

That's correct.

Okay. I guess what I'm getting at is with the eight that we've had since 2012, we've used our code to address those eight issues that have arisen.

I think that's the difference is addressing the doesn't always case closing doesn't always mean addressing to everybody. So if a case was closed without violation, that's the concern, And that's why we're taking a look at this. And that's why this was made a priority by the board of county commissioners. Because if a case was closed with no violation, but they feel that there is concern, they're saying to us, we're not sure that our current code is adequate. Okay. Thank you.

I I don't wanna be too repetitive, but I just think we should see more data. I think we should see more about the other neighborhoods, and you could identify them without addresses to make them anonymous. But I don't wanna see neighbor complaint driven regulations if it's only happening in one part of the county. And if it's happening in all parts of the county, that regulation should impact all of those facilities, not just the unique parts of one. But not try not to be too repetitive.

It's okay.

I'd also like

to thank you, Heather, because your job's not easy, you don't get enough credit for it. So thank you for thank you for your work.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

To provide just a little additional information on the cases, So there were 47 code compliance requests identified that were related to what we identified with those key terms. So it's things that could be related to horses, manure, equestrian facilities, animal densities, those types of things. There were 47 requests, which means somebody made a filed a complaint, and then 38 cases. And so that's a case is where a request is reviewed by code compliance. They determine that it it warrants visiting the site, making an actual case, and following up on it.

So 38 cases over 41 properties in that fourteen year period. Of those, eight are what we took a deeper dive into to look at and really pull out all of the information from each of those cases for the overall summary. So that's not to say there were only eight over those fourteen years. Those were the eight that were most topical to the assessment.

And and I understand that. I'm just I'm I'm a resident of Central Kitsap, and I'm familiar with Roundup Lane, not the problems that it has, but just the the shape of it. It's a long road. There's multiple residents on it. I assume that's part of the problem. But if other facilities don't have that problem, I don't see why a code that impacts just one part of maybe what an issue is would be necessary. And we do have a lot of codes for noise, manure, dust. And if those issues are the only other problem in the other parts of the county, they might be sufficient. It's I'd just like to see more of the data if we're gonna make a recommendation.

Understood.

Are there any more questions?

Yes.

Okay. So in the again, I'm going back to the big survey. So it's the Commercial Equestrian Facility Assessment Survey. And I'm going back to question 13, where there are all those qualitative responses. And so there were two sixty five responses, and I was just curious if you all are gonna use that additional information and, yeah, how you present if you sorry. If you plan to work with that additional information to add to some of these kind of complaints or issues, additional issues that are gonna come up.

Yes. And especially once we receive more, I guess, we're sharing kind of the general survey results and our findings from them. But once we have a narrow scope of what our next steps are, we will, again, relook at the survey, relook at what we received in the feedback, and then continue our process.

Great. Thank you. And so I'm referring to the survey that's posted on the website in SurveyMonkey. So you can still click on that link and see all the results if you you want to scroll through them. So that's just what I'm those are the responses I am speaking to. Mhmm.

Thank you.

Hi. Sorry. But I just wanted to circle back to something that was just said about the so your concern is because I guess I was looking at some of the items that you had brought up and since it said no violation, in my head that was being fully taken care of. And so, but with that last conversation, so you're saying that even though it says no violation, something in that description is triggering that you think we should have gone farther?

The Board of County Commissioners.

Okay. The Board of County Commissioners. Do we know for each one of those because I was looking at them and maybe I just missed it in your description of which thing for each, say, of those eight you think didn't go like, which piece of it was the sub so and these are the items.

That's correct.

So these so even though there was no violation, you still feel like these are problems. Or the Board of County, somehow we still as Yep.

And so we're breaking down these impacts to say, does something already exist or is there something more that should be done based on each impact? And for example, when we talk about best management practices, that's why we brought in the workshop of like, okay, these exist and this is how we're managing. Right. But how can we do better? What is missing? And like Garrett had mentioned, Kitsap Conservation District is a great resource. How can we connect these better? For example, when it comes to dust, and Garrett had mentioned that earlier. Are there resources that would help in a question facility or agriculture in general? That be the way to address it.

Because it is protected by the Right to Farm Act. However, it could still be negatively impactful to the neighbors. So that's where it's not necessarily a code violation issue, but it is an impact to the neighbors issue that

But they could still be and this is just a thought. Mhmm. You could do the best practices to 100% and someone could still feel that maybe it could be better.

That could happen, but I also think it's a matter of that being clearer for Kitsap County to say these are already in place. And I think some of these, it's easier said than done. For example, we don't have access to the farm plans. So there's just some things that are written in our code that make it although it might be closed no violation and there's still impact, but that's why we're here today. There's still impact to say, these things are still impacting a property.

What can be done to, you know, to change that? But we're also acknowledging that the Right to Format Act exists, but also the best management practices are a part of that. And yes, that's tricky. We agree. Meaning, you could we all I think we acknowledge, yes, there could still be a neighbor that's concerning, that raises complaints to no end and is never gonna be happy. But we're also why we're working on this is there's concern from the board of county commissioners that some of these are legitimate concerns.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

I have just one final question. Would this be its own code separate from agricultural code or would it fall underneath?

We're not proposing anything separate. It would be within agriculture code.

Okay.

I just have one more comment about this. I think that the slide on page 20 that talks about tiered structure for commercial equestrian facilities is really important because we have many different sized equestrian facilities. And if you don't focus on allowing some kind of flexibility with that, that could really be devastating to some of the the smaller operations. I wanna recap, your land use goal number 19, support farming agriculture and the environment. It states in the land use policy 19.2, continue regulatory and nonregulatory preservation of historic or working farmland land use policy.

And in 19.1, it says foster agriculture opportunities by promoting flexibility and development regulations.

We agree. Thank you.

We have planning commissioner of Lee online.

Oh, yes, Heather. Thanks for that great presentation and all the questions from, from the diocese there. So with regards to best management practices, that can you, mean, explain that more? That that's more of a suggestive thing, right? And it's not very regulatory. Like, it's basically like, this is what we'd like you to do, but it it sounds like, and people can either do that or or not do that. Is is that true?

Yes. That's my understanding.

So maybe I mean, in my mind, maybe that gets at this eight or 43 or whatever it was, where, you know, basically, the the county follows up and there's no code violation. But, you know, maybe a neighbor who's next door would beg to differ about that. So, it's just something to say like, I just wanted to clarify that when we're talking about best management practices that it's that's not regulatory, that's just suggestive. Anyway, thanks for the great presentation.

You're welcome, and I think you hit on the nuance of it, is it's not regulatory. So that's and then if that's what makes it difficult sometimes.

I was just wondering if anyone could speak to why the animal density table was removed.

There was a significant opposite opposition. Okay. And I will say even mentioning it last year was terrible.

Because to me, that would help with the tiering structure.

Yeah. And I understand. But my understanding, there was great opposition in 2016 to it. And then when it was proposed last year, mentioned, terrible. So I think great opposition to that here in Kitsap County.

Just concern of because we have so many a variety of parcels, you know, restrictions on the parcels, size of parcels, that we don't have a one size fits all and really emphasize the best management practice and the farm plans to help determine animal densities. So that's why we're lifting up, okay, if that's the case, how can we do better with our best management practices if there's a concern? Thank you for asking.

No more questions? At this time, I recommend that we take a five minute break. Are there any objections? Hearing no hearing no objections, we'll recess until seven. You want Paishin to start?

Where did Adrian go?

Good plan. I want you to announce. We'll get started in three minutes.

Adrian stepped. Alright.

Are we ready to begin the meeting again?

We're missing Commissioner Hampton. Alright. We'll just we'll get we'll

look in another minute or two.

The next item on the agenda is the public hearing for the boundary line adjustment code. By a show of hands online, can we verify how many want to speak?

I am not seeing any virtual attendees. Oh, yeah. If you're if you were virtual right now and you're wanting to provide testimony during the public hearing, please raise your hand at this time. Alright. I am seeing one virtual attendee who's wanting to provide testimony. So we can start with in person attendees, and then we'll move to virtual attendees.

So the the project lead, at this time, we'll do a short project overview, and then we will open with the public hearing.

Okay. Well, Gareth can slide back up. I'll kick it off. Good evening. My name is Ray Fleishman. I'm the Department of Community Development director. So why a BLA ordinance? Kitsap County currently lacks an ordinance that prevents illegal parcels from being created. So the question you have to ask yourself and that the board will have to ask themselves, if we get there, Are are you content with the status quo that allows for these illegal partials to be created? We started this process back in October, with I had a meeting with a few surveyors discussing this as a potential way forward.

Carrie Saleed took it over the project over. She is now retired as of three days ago. Congratulations to her. A lot of us wish we were with her. But we we did a lot she did a lot of outreach.

She reached out to a lot of different people. We were planning to come to you all back in December, January, and we delayed it two different times to get it right. We wanted to talk to as many people as possible to get that input, to get that feedback, and we're continuing to try to make corrections to make sure that we get it right. And I think the team has done a fantastic job, and arguably I am biased, in trying to prevent these illegal parcels while trying also to minimize the time and cost associated with any potential additional regulations. We listen to the public, we listen to the surveyors, and much of their feedback is reflected in the proposal you see in front of you today.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Garrett to go through the slides.

Thank you, Rafe, and good evening Planning Commission. Garrett Ballou, long range planner. So today, we have the public hearing for the boundary line adjustment code. I'll go to the next slide here. Okay.

So first off, this is a new slide just addressing that there will be changes to the draft code based on comments that we continue to receive, and these changes will be reflected in the matrix presented at the March 17 Planning Commission meeting for deliberations. And so that will incorporate feedback from the public comments received from from the public and from the surveying community. So we wanted to make sure that was was clear at the forefront of the presentation. So going into the background and why, we're proposing a boundary line adjustment code. So, again, at present, Kitsap County does not have an adopted boundary line adjustment, process or an ordinance.

And currently, the process is that somebody can drop a boundary line adjustment and go directly to the auditor's office and have that recorded as long as they meet the requirements of the auditor's office for things like formatting and, like, margin size and those those types of items. And so there's no official county review process on these, and that lack that lack of a review process provides no mechanism to notify property owners that adjustments may create illegal non illegal parcels that cannot be developed or further developed in the future, and that applies if if the property is being sold as well. So the purpose of boundary line adjustment code is to establish this clear consistent review process before recording so that these issues do not manifest, and to inform property owners of potential land use consequences in advance, preventing owners from unknowingly creating illegal or unbuildable parcels through a BLA and limiting those instances where problems are discovered later when development is proposed. So going through the timeline, how we got to where we are today, the process so far. In October 2025, the initial Board of County Commissioners briefing occurred on the fifteenth.

The first comment period was open from October to December. Then we had our initial Planning Commission briefing on November 18. And then January 2026, Planning Commission work study on the sixth, second work study with the board on the twenty sixth, and then on February 3, earlier this or last month, the second planning commission work study occurred. And then, obviously, today, we've got the public hearing on March 3. A couple of future events upcoming for this project on March 17, we'll be back for the planning commission deliberations meeting.

And then in April, on the twenty seventh, the board of county commissioners public hearing will be held. Okay. So we have discussed the public questions and concern, the comment themes in our previous briefing to the planning commission, but wanted to bring these up again just to to share with you the the common concerns and questions. So these are the themes of the comments that we've seen. One is the BLA permits will increase costs, delays, and uncertainty.

Questions about whether the BLAs can be regulated by the county and if this would conflict with state laws. Restrictive provisions about nonconforming lots and sequential BLAs, what properties might be eligible, and the role of the county in reviewing documents prepared by a professional land surveyor or a PLS. So what would the permit look like? BLA permits will be type one ministerial, which are DCD's least expensive permit type. Review typically occurs within sixty five days on these.

No SIPA or or public notice or public hearing would be required. These are our most straightforward permit type. And so DCD will review applications for compliance with county excuse me, county zoning regulations and area and dimensional criteria as well as applicable plat conditions if the parcel is part of a plat. One thing one notable item that this process will not include is double checking of any work prepared by a professional land surveyor, which was a common comment at the beginning of this process. So we will not be reviewing any of their work.

We'll only be checking to make sure that the resultant parcels are compliant in in compliance with our zoning codes and that aren't gonna be creating any issues with, unbuildable parcels due to zoning issues later on. And as part of that, surveyors are responsible applicants for the accuracy of their work. Notably, this process, the BLA review process and permitting process does not include review of critical areas. This is to occur at the development stage. And the reasoning for for this is to limit the the timeline of these, also the upfront cost that it would take for these critical area reports, things like wetlands reports, geologic assessments, and the like.

So this would all be something that needs to happen at the development stage when a building or development is actually proposed, not at the BLA stage. And this does lead to some some items that have to be in code in order for that to not occur at the the BLA permit stage. And so one of those is that BLA approval will not guarantee or imply that the subject property may be developed or subdivided or involved in further BLAs. Again, since we're not reviewing for critical areas on these, there's no guarantee that, your property won't be encumbered by critical areas and that could raise issues for development. We're just making sure that the zoning is is really what we're looking at to make sure that the the property is compliant with our zoning regulations, area, and dimensional regulations or excuse me, yeah, regulations of the code and not looking at the critical areas implications.

And piggybacking off of that, configurations or topography resulting from BLA approvals, that can't be used to justify a future variance buffer reduction or other exceptions. So if a BLA changes the orientation of property boundaries and that makes it difficult to develop because of the the property is shifted towards the area to develop is shifted closer to a wetland or a stream, let's say, the the boundary line adjustment itself cannot be used to justify a variance or buffer reduction for that critical area. And so this is something that will also be acknowledged by the applicant on the by signature on the application that the approval of the BLA permit would be subject to this limitation, and the face of the BLA shall clearly state these as well. And this is so that if the property is sold in the future, it's clear to prospective buyers that these that this hasn't been reviewed for critical areas. So now I'm gonna hand it over to Darren Gurney, our current planning supervisor, to go over a few exhibits of illegal BLAs that have maybe harmed buyers and also discuss some of our review capabilities of staff because we have reviewed more complicated proposals than BLAs, things like subdivisions with many lots.

So I'm going to hand it over to him and go through some of these exhibits.

Thank you, Garrett. For the record, Darren Gurney, current planning supervisor, as Garrett mentioned. Before we get into the examples here, just a quick little preamble. It kind of touches on what Garrett said before. But we at Current Planning, we don't go looking for BLAs.

They come to us. They come to us in the form of a permit for development proposal, and then we review for legal lot determination within the permit. That's where we usually catch these things, and then we have to come back and inform an applicant that your parcel was not created legally. Not to say that it's an illegal parcel, but it's not developable necessarily. So this is when we review it, and it's after it's recorded.

It's after many times, it's after somebody's already procured services of a biologist or geotechnical engineer or other engineers to prepare a development proposal. And then after all that money spent, they have to come back and hear that we have an issue with the creation of the parcel. So going into these, these are a few examples. And usually, this comes around lot dimensions or lot area. And so for rural residential zone, that's one of our most common areas where we find these difficulties.

The one you see before you, these are the two lots in the original configuration. The next slide, it shows from the five acre parcel size, it reduces one down to less than an acre. So that is against our rural residential zoning designation that has a five acre minimum parcel size. And when it's in this kind of configuration and it didn't go through the proper channels, we have to come back and say, can't issue any new building permits for new development. You can repair, maintain what you do have, but you can't expand, you can't do new development, and that goes for both parcels involved in the BLA.

So if that one action affects one, it it's affecting all of them. The next example here, you see the vertical line, You'll see it shift to a horizontal. But if you note that the two parcels there are not of equal size, not knowing the exact sizes, let's say the originals were four and three acres, and then they switched to three and a half acres equally on this. Well, one of those actually decreased in size less than the five acres. That renders the BLA.

It's not an acceptable action. So then both of these parcels would be affected by that BLA. This is actually that same same two parcels with a second BLA that occurred to create an illogical boundary pattern. Couple of problems with this is that there's a 140 foot minimum width for a and 140 foot minimum depth. So you can see some of those areas.

You're going down to, like, five, ten feet. It also makes this is a scenario where you don't really know where your property lines are, it creates a lot of disputes between neighbors. And they come in asking us to solve the situation when we can't at this point. The next example, this is this is a much larger development pattern, so think of this as couple 100 of acres. If you see the small rectangles on the bottom, each of those technically had tax slots that you could segregate.

They were 4,000 square foot lots. Some of those blocks had 12, some 16, so you expand, you segregate those out, and then you see a boundary line adjustment that occurs, and it comes in the form of a subdivision. So the green area is where those were all adjusted to, and you can see it looks like a subdivision. However, that didn't go through our subdivision review where the roads, we would condition and do a traffic impact analysis to see if road segments need changing improvements, intersection improvements. You're also talking about notifying the neighbors of this development that's gonna occur.

So we don't really get to let the community know, and we get a lot of questions like, why are you allowing this to happen? It also comes in the form of sidewalks on the roads, transit stops, garbage collection, road maintenance, open space maintenance. All of these things are things that we consider during subdivisions. So go ahead and go back one. You're too fast.

So the remaining large parcels in that green area, you'll see on the next image down, it was further adjusted to create other parcels, and this is all in that five acre zoning. So it's required to have five acres for a minimum parcel size when you subdivide. Next slide. So this is is an example in the county. This is actually a legal adjustment that occurred, but it is again the same situation of it's mimicking a subdivision concept.

And the larger remaining parcels on the right, that is now in a 22 lot subdivision application. So instead of nine parcels of the original configuration, you're now seeing close to 30. And, again, it's the the improvements and the analysis that comes with all of the parcels and their access and impacts to the neighboring communities. And finally, this is another example where you have the top top image, you have a horizontal line, and you have let's say you have a a five acre, four and a half acre, and a one acre on the top there. And then you shifted it to where you have two one acre parcels and a larger eight and a half acre.

That one that went down to one acre, that puts the entire thing in a compromise situation where we can't issue the building permits again. So this is just a few examples. I can say that we have enough that we could fill up a couple of hours of examples of these things. So with that, I'm gonna turn that back over to to Garrett and Rafe.

Thank you, Darren, for going over those exhibits for us. If you have additional questions on the this presentation or the boundary line adjustment, code, my my email is up there. It's also on the website now, with with Carrie handing over the project to me. Do

any planning commissioners have any questions at this time?

Just one. When I first heard of the BLA code, I went through all the public information that was available and all the comments, and a large part of the surveying community wasn't in support of it, which I'd shared at a previous meeting, maybe at the wrong time. But the curiosity part I still have about that is the surveying community stands to benefit the most from a BLA code because there'd be a requirement that a surveyor do it and that there'd be a survey. So I know that there's been some changes to the BLA code, and I'm and I know that it's become a little bit easier from what it was originally presented, and I appreciate that. I'm just curious if there's more support from the surveying community.

I I won't I don't think I'll address the the support piece. You you'll get that from the feedback and whether or not they support it or not. I will just say I will provide some facts to you. 70 BLAs were done for Kitsap County, recorded in Kitsap County in 2025. Over 90% of those used the surveyor. So most of them are already using a surveyor to to record their BLA.

Can I ask a little clarification on that? If the requirement would be that they use a surveyor, I believe the the code also states that there's a requirement that they do a survey. And doing a survey with a surveyor is a lot more expensive than just using a surveyor to do a BLA.

We can talk through the code. The code right now says that the surveyor draws the map.

Okay. But there's no requirement for a survey?

We can talk about that during deliberations.

Okay. Thank you.

Any more questions?

Yeah, I have a question with regard to the illegal nonconforming lots specific to the innocent buyer where someone purchases a property, discovers that it's unbuildable. There's currently a innocent buyer provision in the code, state code, county code adoption. And I wonder how many of the examples that you cite could have been accommodated by the innocent buyer provision, 16.04. One six o a and b.

I don't know the number. I will say that the innocent purchaser provision is a band aid and prefer not to use band aids. I prefer to fix the code to make sure that we don't have to go to that process. But I will also say that I have had an applicant in my office within the last three months that sold a portion of their property. The remaining portion was two and a half acres in a rural residential. And then they came in to develop that parcel, and they said the quote was, why did DCD not review this to tell me that I should have kept five acres because I would have kept five acres. That's not an innocent purchaser. An innocent purchaser wouldn't apply to those people.

How much do you recognize the caveat emptor condition of the state of Washington? So you can't protect a person from being uninformed in the same way that we're not reviewing for critical areas and topography and all this. Right? You can't protect someone from themselves to the nth degree. And so at what point do you say we need to regulate, we need to not regulate given that it's it's a buyer be buyer beware state. Right?

Sure. That's a hypothetical question. Yeah. That's something we're always trying to answer. Right? We're always trying to answer where's where's the line for regulation? Absolutely. And we're here to present an option. You all and then the board of commissioners decides is that where the regulations wanna lie. We just we analyze and we provide a proposal and whether or not that's supported, that's where that's where the end of the that's where the line is drawn. So yeah. I think I'll I hope that I don't know if that answers your question. We're not we're not the ones making the decisions. My team provides the information and the analysis and then you all make a recommendation and the board makes a decision.

So it's it's a balance then. Right? What is the cost? Have you quantified what the cost is for compliance with the new proposed regulation? You've looked at a number of other jurisdictions that do have regulations to varying degrees. We've received expert comment from surveyors who say what kind of anecdotally the cost is for situations that do have these regulations. Have you I mean, we just went through a lot of analysis on the equine situation quantifying the numbers, how big an issue is it. Have you done so for the BLA assessment?

So I'm not exactly sure what your question is. I do want to clarify really quick is that just from a parliamentarian process, the public hearing is supposed to just provide the information and the detailed questions that are outside of content are supposed to be held for deliberations. So I've kind of taken a little, gone a little beyond maybe where I should be answering questions just for the interest of you know public transparency. But I do wanna I do wanna emphasize that the deliberations is where a lot of these questions you're asking should be answer asked and then answered. I'm not trying to avoid your question.

I'm happy to answer all your questions especially in two weeks. But the interest of following parliamentarian process I want to point that out.

Yeah. Appreciate that. Thanks.

Commissioner Bleep?

Yes. I just I wanna thank the s DCD staff for that excellent presentation. I think it it clarifies for me that I mean, I know we've had many people write in, we've had many people testify. We've talked about this for some time, but it it pretty much lays clear to me the need to have a BLA ordinance. And there was a two to one comment previously, just previously with regards to cost.

Well, you know, there's also a cost associated when, you know, you as DCD have to tell the people who come in and the BLA was created a nonconforming lot. I mean, that's a huge cost and a really big a really difficult thing to undo. So and then I guess I had one little I had a quick question. Anyway, so thanks for that. With regards to, and maybe maybe this is more deliberation stuff. You know, I'm gonna hold this part because maybe this is more detailed for a future meeting. But thanks for that great presentation.

At this time, I will open the public hearing when providing public testimony. Please remember to state your name in the general area in which you live. Also, kindly note this public hearing is relative to the boundary line adjustment code.

Alright. I will now start calling up the names listed on the public hearing sign in sheet. So please come forward when I call your name. After all in person speakers have provided testimony, we will then invite the virtual attendees to, provide testimony. So first up is William Palmer, and then following that will be Josiah Kippberg and Richard Brown. Will you please come forward to those front row seats to be ready to testify after? Thank you. Thank you.

I submitted a letter.

Can you turn your mic on, sir, please? Pardon? Can you please turn your mic on by pushing the there you go.

Is that better? Yes. Is that better? Okay. Start over. I'm William M. Palmer. I'm here representing the Kitsap Alliance Property Owners Organization. There are two or three other members of our organization that will also speak. I have been opposed to a BLA ordinance at least three times in the last thirty five years.

I continue my opposition for the need for such a code. Many of the points that I have to present have already been made in the letter I submitted to the Planning Commission on January 29. I'm not going to dwell too much on those, but accept to say that I continue my opposition. And one of the reasons is that there's no substantive discussion of issues in the staff report. In fact, I've reviewed in forty five years, I've reviewed most all of the land use related ordinances and comprehensive plans that Kitsap County has put before the people and finally adopted.

And I have to say that this is one of the worst ordinances I have reviewed in those forty five years. Now I can go into detail on that,

but the

issue isn't try to make the ordinance better as far as I'm concerned is do away with the ordinance altogether. Now I don't have time to address all the issues, but I'm gonna get to a couple others. The big issue that was also addressed in my letter is there's no financial impact analysis. Last I heard, anyway, Kitsap County has got a revenue problem, and that's affecting DCD and other departments. And as far as I know, they can't do much hiring a new staff.

Every single ordinance that Kitsap County adopts has a financial impact on DCD and the public, and that's not been addressed. I've made that point directly to the Board of County Commissioners on quite a few occasions. There's no there's no reason Kitsap County should adopt any new ordinance without such a financial impact analysis. And if you wanna know what that is, it's cost benefit analysis. And I'm critical of the staff report too.

Mr. Palmer, we're going to have to wrap that up. Pardon? We have to wrap up. Your time's up. Your time's

up. Thank you.

Okay. I request the ability to come back to the, podium at the end of the other testimony to make my final two points. There's no reason that should not be allowed not

be allowed.

My name is Josiah Kibberberg from the South Kitsap area. I'm addressing some of the issues as far as the boundary line adjustments. I've done some research from public records requests in regard to how many BLAs there have been. Over the last twenty five years, there's been 6,746. Majority of those are single family homes, and majority of the, issues that were brought to you guys today were undeveloped lots.

In the last twenty five years, there's been 1,140 of those. So as, staff has brought those concerns forward, it's only affecting a small fraction of undeveloped lots. And the terms, that have been used have been illegal lots or illegal boundary line adjustments. R five does not mean you can't develop a smaller size lot than five acres. If it's designed with BLA for an acre, half acre, it falls still falls under, you can build underneath those those size of lots.

So the terms of illegal is very detrimental to, not only you guys, but to the public. But also majority of these BLAs are single family homes that are already preexisting. And if we put in this ordinance, what's gonna happen is when these homes go to sell, if they're under contract in any form, most, homes that are under contract are forty five, days at the usually the longest. And if something arises, and we are required to get a permit, due to, county code, that would be around sixty five days. And to even comprehend getting a surveyor to get that project in a timely manner, majority of the time, these sales would fall through, and that'd be a huge financial impact not only to the individual selling homes, but also to the revenue for excise tax would definitely hurt the county in the long run.

But you can see here, this is not necessarily for just undeveloped lots that's it's gonna affect which majority of staff has brought to our attention, but it's gonna drastically affect the homes that are already preexisting. And with the cost of living right now, adding these costs, a simple survey at a minimum is usually about $5,000. And if somebody loses out on a home sale or the deal falls through, right now, the average wait time for a home sale is over three months, and average offer is one offer in those three months. And if it this gets kicked out and the deal is lost, the financial implications on the seller is monumental. Monumental.

Thank you.

For the record, Richard a Brown. I've lived in Port Orchard for the last eighty six years. This all started in Manchester. When I took a 40 acre parcel and sold it for a logger, and we started developing houses on California and Alaska streets. And we changed the boundaries on the lots because the septic tank ordinance went from 7,500 to 12 to 9,600 square feet.

Then it went to twelve five. So we were doing boundary line of justice on a plat that was developed in 1891 by Libby and Bloomer Real Estate Company of New York. We created hundreds of houses. This ordinance has been turned down five times now, and I don't see any reason of it doing now. The other thing is is that the staff has no right and is not bonded or licensed by the state of Washington to review the surveyors' work. Thank you very much. I sound irritated, but I'm not. Thank you.

Alright. The next three public testimony is from Lila Mueller, John Keefer, and Dave Proctor. Please come up to the front of the room. First up, Lila Mohler.

Lila Mohler.

My name is Lyle Muller. Work for Ward c Muller and Associates, and I'm from Port Orchard.

From Port Orchard.

The the in the the BLA BLA last draft dated dated, I believe it's 02/06/2026 in section I. It indicates that there's an application guide and a submittal checklist, but I don't see that those have been produced yet, so we have no idea what we're supposed to accomplish in the BLA ordinance. So you can't make a decision on that. In k, it talks about a survey map and it talks about notice to title. Once again, there's nothing defined in what is required on the survey maps

survey maps.

So we can't determine determine what constitutes the requirements of the ordinance other than we can't do this and we can't do that. The fact that they have spent the last twenty minutes, the staff has telling us why the BLAs are nonconforming and illegal. The ones that they have a mine, the lots were nonconforming prior to my working on the client request to change the boundary lines. The short plat was done in 1992 which was a one acre zone and the lots were one point nine seven and one point five seven acres respectively and in turning the lot line around the two lots came out 1.76 acres each. The outside boundary of the property never changed, just the areas of the two lots in between.

The individual requested to change that based upon topography and critical areas such that there were building envelopes on the properties and the average lot lines is still half of the overall boundaries. If you have any other questions, you can talk to me later. Thank you.

Right, John

Good evening. I'm John Keefer. I'm from Pacific Northwest Title. I'm also a licensed professional land surveyor for the last twenty seven years. From the title aspect of this, it's a poorly structured document.

The fact that we were told that they were reached out to the survey community and the development community, title industry was never talked to about this. I was never talked to as a professional land surveyor. I'm not sure which ones were. I know two over an additional two over here that weren't spoken with. One of my main concerns is with the title industry is you're doing boundary line adjustments.

They come up in title review. And we can't clear title to those boundary issues if we can't get one done quickly. The buyer walks. There's no two ways around it. The sale drops out.

There's nothing we can do. We have to disclose it. If we make aware of it, it goes in on the title commitment. The other thing that wasn't mentioned in the documents were timely manner for getting that done. So I have two residences on two adjoining lots, and they built the fence wrong.

Do I have to submit an application, wait ninety days to get an approval, sixty five days to get an approval before they can do a boundary line adjustment? The buyer's gone. They won't deal with it. The other thing that wasn't mentioned in there, which I have to deal with time in and time out and the reason why you didn't address it with the title industry is nowhere in that do they mention having the mortgage company sign off on a boundary line adjustment, if there is one. We go to great lengths to have to clear title to get partial reconveyances from banks after the fact.

So it's not just the property owners, it's the lenders that need to sign off on a boundary line adjustment. There'll be more later on in your future meetings. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Alright. Dave Proctor.

Good evening. My name is Dave Proctor. I'm a licensed surveyor in Washington here and been practicing for about twenty five years, thirty or so in Kitsap. Not always as licensed. We've done extensive boundary line adjustments. Our office, CSI Thornton surveying operating Kitsap and predominantly in Pierce County. I'm glad some of you brought up some points that I also had concerns with. I have a bevy of notes here that take far longer than three minutes to address. One of them specifically to the point you guys asked about costs. I'll address those costs because I know from experience what they cost.

In Pierce County where we do a preponderance of our work, the application fees alone are between 25,000 and $3,000.2500 dollars and $3,000 That's for the review. The county is losing money at that rate, and they're looking at increasing their reach 20% this year and next year. In King County, BLAs are costing between 7,000 and $11,000. The fact that Kitsap is gonna sit here and tell you that this is gonna be a simple review, and it's just gonna be a couple of things here and there, maybe for the first year, but I can assure you that there's no way this thing is gonna stay a simple easy process. We've got all kinds of other things.

You're gonna turning into a short plat application, which is back in the day was a fairly straightforward application, couple $100, thousand dollars, whatever. This is gonna be the whole thing again. The county I have some of the same problems everyone else has. First up, a little bit perturbed because you've given the impression here that they had reached out to the survey community.

Survey

community. The county's had my email for thirty years. It hasn't changed. I wanna know when I was informed by Gary, wherever he is sitting over here. Was seemed to be the only one who went to these meetings. There's a lot of problems with this stuff internal. The county is exempting certain things. You can't do BLAs across waterfront properties. You can't do them on vacated properties or vacated right of ways, why not? Once you've acquired a vacated right of way, it's yours.

Why can't you then adjust that to a neighbor? We just went through this process. Right of way was vacated between two properties and then after the vacation was done, the property said they wanted to give it to the neighbor, sell it to the neighbor. You're telling me we can't do that? We can't do it on Tideland properties.

We can't do it across jurisdictions and other some jurisdictions and what zones. Every other county allows for that. So they're complaining the fact that they're the only county that doesn't have a boundary line ordinance yet when they've reached out and looked at some of these other things, they're going to only adopt the worst parts some of those things and start to implement some of their own bad ideas such as these. Anyhow, yeah. They need more output and input from the survey community. I think this is an extremely poorly drafted ordinance. Thank you. Alright.

The next three public speakers, Patricia Ryan, Michael Gustafson, and Jamie Clough.

Patricia Ryan, Central Kitsap. Kitsap County assumes no responsibility for its role in the zoning process, which failed to recognize or account for the thousands of prior divisions of land that have parcel sizes less than the minimum area requirement of the zone established. Consequently, with this proposed BLA ordinance, the county is taking a dictatorial position that abridges the rights of landowners. What Kitsap County cannot seem to recognize or reconcile with their claims that BLA have been recorded that may have made nonconforming or unbuildable lots or parcels, is that it is the county that adopted zoning lot sizes that completely ignore previously lot creation. Under the less restrictive regulations.

But now, for example, there are literally thousands of lots in rural five acre, rural protection 10 acre, and rural wooded zoned areas that cannot meet the minimum lot size requirements or regulations I'm sorry, requirements of the zoned applied by the county. And to couple that fact with environmental regulations, which in some instances seem to make existing parcels so encumbered such that there are limited or no areas for home sites. Thus, in many instances, there is a need to adjust property lines to provide the buildable areas on the lots or parcels they own. The point is property owners use BLAs as a way to mitigate the adverse effects of ill conceived county zoning practices. And not to is a takings.

Thank you.

Thank you, commissioners. My name is Michael Gustafson. I live in Southworth. I rise in opposition to the county adopting a boundary line adjustment in any form. You've heard already from people that said we need a number of specialized expertise specialized people to become a part of part of this.

What has not been talked to are the legal aspects. We have two state laws, RCW 7.28, which define which states that fence lines existing seven or ten years define a property line. So it's property line that's been there for ten years, that becomes a recordable property line. RCW is 36.78, which you're not familiar with, the Growth Management Act, requires the parcels not be not be made more nonconforming. These two laws are intention.

They fight one another. You need an attorney and a judge to determine which is which prevails. I spoke to you last time a couple weeks ago that I experienced this in Jefferson County, which has a BLA. I inherited a house from my folks when they passed, and there there was an existing fence line of many many decades on actually on three sides. It turns out that the legal description did not follow either of those fence lines and in fact went through the center of the house.

Well, I always spent ten years doing what you're doing, and I read all the rules. I said, well, I'll just supply under RCAB seven seven point twenty eight. The fence line determines the property line, and I sold the property. DCD refused to acknowledge the sale for a couple of years. So finally, I took a land use attorney, set him up to Jefferson County to the judge in Superior Court who said the fence line is the property line.

That goes back centuries. Look at the look at the pictures in Ireland of the rock walls. That's how we do property lines. Second of all, boundary line adjustments are classically made between two adjacent owners. We now have something called a critical areas ordinance, which you're becoming familiar with.

When you look at the overlays on the county, the county maps, which I have all of them, you'll find that probably 80 or 90% of the county is encumbered by critical areas. The two adjourned parcel owners likely would like to both develop their part their parcels. So you put a a wiggle in the line, and then they're both okay for critical areas. One night, was up in Kingston at a public hearing on critical areas, and the map the maps I had the maps on the wall, and a and a citizen came up and said, I own that piece of property. You got colors all over it.

What's that mean? I said, well, that means it's encumbered by critical areas. Well, can I build on it? I said, well, Chris Andresen was the county commissioner and in attendance at night. He said, Chris, will you come over here and talk to this man about his property? It's totally encumbered. Can he get a billing permit? Oh, we'll give him a variance. Illegal lots and variances. On top of it, the average burial parcel size is two acres.

Sir, we're

getting that wrapped existing.

So We need to wrap that.

Thank you. Are included. Bye.

Good evening, Planning Commission. My name is Jamie Clough. I live in Central Kitsap, and I'm representing the Kitsap Building Association. Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide input on the proposed boundary line adjustment process and regulations. I want to begin by recognizing the significant amount of work that DCD staff and the county has put together, and thank you very much for your efforts.

At the onset, we want to be candid. We do not see evidence that the current BLA process is creating widespread problems that would necessitate major reform. The underlying adjustments have historically functioned as a straightforward administrative tool to resolve minor lot configuration issues, clean up title complications, and facilitate reasonable property use without creating new lots or increasing density. In that respect, the existing system has generally worked as intended. That said, we understand the county's desire to clarify code, ensure consistency, and follow the other counties in the state.

We appreciate being invited to help shape the outcome. Our goal is to not resist change for the sake of resisting change, but to ensure that all regulations, one, preserve BLAs as a simple administrative process, not discretionary or under public review. Two, avoiding adding costs, delays, or procedural complexity for property owners and applicants. Three, providing clear objective standards that limit ambiguity and reduce staff and applicant uncertainty. And four, do not unintentionally restrict long standing lawful property rights or practical law configurations.

We also want to emphasize that any additional review layers, particularly those that involve environmental review or duplicate other permitting processes, resist overburdening an already stretched DCD staff. If the goal is efficiency, predictability, and compliance, the code should be streamlined should streamline review rather than expand it. We remain committed to working constructively with the county to refine language, identify unintended consequences, and ensure the final product is balanced, practical, and legally sound. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this process, and we look forward to continuing the conversation and helping produce the best version possible. Thank you.

Alright. Next up is Helen Jones and then Gary Chapman. Gary Chapman.

I think I've signed up

in the wrong I'm in the decline facilities one. So

You're not wanting

to testify at this time?

Oh, I do. I just thought we were still doing the BLA thing, so I wanted to make sure.

Yeah. At this time, it's it's boundary line adjustment, public hearing.

Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. I wrote on

the wrong piece of paper.

No worries. Alright. Jerry Chapman. Jerry Chapman.

Hello there. My name is Jerry Chapman. I'm a licensed land surveyor. I live up in North Kitsap. You know, there's a few comments about the different sections I want to talk about real quick just to get in record so you can look at it later. Section C number two, adjustments not permitted for properties on either side of a road. There's a lot of land that's on either side of roads. Think that should be stricken from it. There's a lot of reasons why people have land on the other side of the road and they want to deed it to their neighbor because they don't have any use for it or whatever. It seems to have no purpose to me.

In section E number eight, they must have a building site. We do a lot of boundary line adjustments for Great Peninsula Conservancy and salmon habitat groups. Who are buying land, Thailand specifically, and they want to own that fee title for conservation. And so they literally are buying land without any building site or access. The purpose is for conservation.

I think that should be allowed, and that should be added in the code. The same section e number 10, there's a the an area that talks about easements. They they they just talk say easements in general. I think they should add the word access to easements, access easements. So part of there's part of plotting.

Can't, you know, if you want to adjust a access easement, you need to do a plot alteration. But utility easements, there's lot of utility easements. Those are allowed to be added without replatting the property or doing a plat alteration that follows state law. I think that should be added in and clarified. The big one is Section E 13, the five year rule.

That goes back to short platting ordinance, And that's a very old rule that goes back into the 80s when the four lot short plots were around and people were doing four lot short plots to circumvent plotting code. I did a quick search and no other county in the state has a five year rule to their boundary line adjustment ordinance. And so that's extremely burdensome. There's a lot of instances where we've done a boundary line adjustment for one neighbor. Six months later, we're going do it one on the other side, the other neighbor.

If the five year rule is in there, we can't do that. One of the examples that was shown previously was a boundary line adjustment I made, and I made a nonconforming lot, made it too small, my mistake. So I went ahead and changed it. I redid the boundary line adjustment, made them conforming. If that five year rule is in there, I won't be able to fix it. So there's a lot of good reasons to get rid of the five year rule and allow people to fix common mistakes. Thank

you.

Alright. At this time, is there anyone else in person that would like to provide testimony for the boundary line adjustment public hearing? Public hearing.

Hello, everybody. My name is Christian Burns, third generation from Port Orchard. So touching on what this gentleman was talking about over here, line item 13 that I saw, I didn't like that nomenclature in there. I didn't like that it would remove the ability to make an erroneous adjustment to a parcel that has been adjusted. Moreover, I feel like, generally speaking, these BLAs are typically between neighbors, family, friends, people that are already amicable in nature, and they're already try they're trying to make an arrangement to help one another out.

I just had this happen with a client, in a neighboring county. The neighborhood came together and allowed him to move some lines. They traded property. It was simple, easy peasy, and he was able to build a structure on his property that wouldn't have otherwise been allowed. I think that was good, and it it encourages community and and what we want in our community.

I feel like feel like sorry. I'm unprepared for this. I feel like any kind of bureaucratic intervention on what we own is not a good progressive move. I think that the system that we already have in place is effective. I think it works well, and I don't think that, additional fees and additional intervention from third parties is gonna help anybody. I understand to an extent where you're coming from, but I don't think that this is the right move. I think that we should forego this new permitting process, and I think that it should not be incorporated. It doesn't help. It just doesn't. It's already simple.

It already works, and I don't think we should reinvent the wheel on this. I think it works. It's not broken.

Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Is there any other in person attendees liking to provide testimony at this time?

At this time.

Okay. If there's no other No other in person attendees.

Attendees. Mister Palmer. Mister Palmer. Sir, as we recognize that you want additional time, we need to be fair to everybody. And I would recommend that you put your comments in writing and send it to cjewel@kidsapp.gov, and it'll become part of the record.

Okay. I can well do that, but I think that's a highly unfair requirement.

I

was patient to wait for the other testimony and add additional comments to what I already said is not a problem for the other people. They could do the same. They should be able to

do We

are keeping the comments to three minutes, and we've given that to everybody who signed up, and we're gonna stay consistent across the board. So I appreciate that.

One more thing regarding the three minutes. No

Sir, we disclosed this at the beginning of the meeting that for public hearings, would be limited to three minutes.

Three minutes. I will submit my comments in writing.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. At this time, do we have anyone who is on virtually wanting to provide testimony at this time? Please raise your hand at this time. All right, I see Pam Jones. Hi,

I'm Pam Jones and I'm a licensed land surveyor in Tacoma, And we perform many boundary line adjustments for all different jurisdictions. One thing I wanna make the the Kitsap County aware of is all the lawsuits that have been sued in other counties based on some restrictions and code enforcements they have in place. It sounds very much like Kitsap is very concerned about the creation of parcels through the boundary line adjustment process that's far different from dealing with boundary line adjustments that have to do with all the reasons people have already stated for resolving boundary issues with neighbors. There are many parcels that do not meet the current zoning minimum lot size that should still be allowed to do a boundary line adjustment to resolve issues between neighbors by adding the five year rule also. That also, like the gentleman already said, if a neighbor does a boundary line adjustment with one neighbor and then needs to do it on the other side for the other neighbor at a different time for whatever reason, that five year rule is Five year rule.

Terribly restrictive, and it is not helpful at all for resolving boundary issues in a timely manner. So so that's my testimony. My testimony.

Are there anyone else who are on virtually that want to provide testimony at this time? Please use the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. All right, I don't see any other hands at this time.

And we can move forward to close the public hearing. This brings us to the second and final general public comment period. I want to remind the public that this is not a Q and A session. The Planning Commissioners and the staff are unable to answer your questions at this time. Do we have anybody wishing to speak? I believe we're going to start with in person attendees. Please use your microphone, sir.

In

Mike Estrson,

general, regarding county regulations, same thing applies to the state, and they've stepped over the line on a grand scale as well. If they ain't broke, don't fix it. And it's not just for this. I spent ten years sitting where you are, and I saw lots of places where we have caused houses not to be built. They talked about creating parcels that couldn't be built on. We're creating parcels that can be built on, but these ordinances fly in the face of that. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Eric Olson. I live here in Port Orchard. So I just wanted to have a couple of reflections about what's been going on here. After months of dealing with the equestrian code in general, all the surveys and the workshops and all the time and resources and money being spent on trying to figure this out, we've come back pretty much to Square 1 and only found out one thing that there is one facility causing this issue, and it's not even because it's an equestrian facility, but because it's using the farmstead code in a way that wasn't really intended in its spirit.

That being said, the whole roundup lane study is a little bit misleading because it implies that there are other places that are taking advantage of this possible loophole when there just isn't one. So this is a single issue that needs to be handled by the parties involved in it. It is emotionally charged from what it seems like, and it got the attention of the right people inside the county to make it a bigger deal than it needed to be. We already have codes and laws and regulations that deal with everything else with all the complaints that were inside that plethora of complaints and the survey data that we got back from that. What we have found out now is that we just need to take out the farmstead thing that we've or sorry.

The farms the farm stand thing outside of the equestrian side of this and deal with that engine just leave the entire equestrian community alone. That's the only thing that we've really discovered here over the last going on six months now that we're having to deal with this. So and then in just in closing, the tiered system is an extremely bad idea. All of the equine facilities are literally every shape and size, and trying to put in a tiered system just puts a foot in the door for later ACUPs and CUPs. So thank you very

much for your time.

For the record, again, name is Richard A. Brown. 285,000 people are chasing too few parcels being built on. These parcels are not available because of the Growth Management Act. And the county is constantly trying to figure out how to stuff more people into less and less land.

Currently,

currently There's there's a 115,000 single family residents, 71%. 81,600 people are living in single family in this county. When I started this, I started to understand that people on their way up deserve an even break on buying houses. That can happen if there's no land available. The county knows it and the growth hearings board in Seattle, they don't give a damn about it.

The Puget Sound Regional Council doesn't care about Kitsap County. So you as commissioners need to think about what you're doing when the staff brings you all kinds of things that's already been decided years ago. There are no commercial farms in Kitsap County as outlined by the Growth Management Act. There is no timber business in Kitsap County. And seeking to punish people for things that they have no control over just doesn't work. I would ask the staff to back off just because you couldn't get it before. Quit trying to get it now with a new planning commission.

Hi. My name is Anna Dukes. I'm from Bremerton, and I'm a member of the Equestrian Working Group that we've been working with the county. I wanna start by acknowledging all of the work staff has done on this project. I've been working with Heather, Garrett, Jim, Scott for the last six months, and we've really seen how much effort is going into this.

This is my first time being involved with the local government, so I'm still kind of figuring out how all this works. But to me, when we got the case studies and the survey, it really made me question kind of how our processes and systems are working. So we really had to push to get for those case studies. And of those eight cases that were the ones most relevant to the equestrian code, not all of these were even commercial facilities. Some of them were just a residential facility with horses on them, and some of them are horses mixed with other livestock.

And so it was not very clear why exactly this is. I guess, my question is, why is this a priority for the county? We have limited staff resources. And how do we how do we prioritize and think strategically on how to use those resources? And to me, the data that we found just does not justify the level of effort that we've been seeing put forth by the county.

My second point, I wanted to quickly touch on the Roundup Lane case study. I think as you've heard, what we've learned is that the hay sales were the main concern from the neighbors. There's a lot of traffic from semi trucks bringing in hay and customers buying hay. Think there's just there's this sorry, I didn't really practice my speech today. But I think, really, there needs to be a path for these small home businesses in rural areas to grow.

Because right now, you can start a small business that fits in with the home business code. But then once it grows past that point, you need to rent commercial space, is cost prohibitive. So I wanna see a structure that allows our small local rural businesses to grow. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Helen Jones. I'm a resident of South Kitsap. I'm a retired resource planner for a local conservation district. I'm not here representing them because I'm retired now.

So I'm just speaking for myself, and I also own horses and a donkey and keep them at home. And I'm also in the working the working equestrian facility group. I wanted to point out for one thing that most of the complaints that were in that database aren't even about horses. And then as they got less and less, there's maybe 40 or so that might be about horses. And also that there's already existing codes to address the complaints, and there's already an existing pipeline for inspecting properties and for enforcing code violations.

BMPs were developed by the Natural Resource Conservation Service and are also used by conservation districts to work on a voluntary basis with landowners. And so trying any words I heard earlier about turning BMPs into code, it goes completely against the nature of those organizations, which was to work with landowners on a voluntary basis. And I'm running out of time, so let me put my reading glasses on here. And then a really important point I wanted to make as a farm planner is that using stocking rates for all properties across the board, especially in a county like Kitsap, which has tons of critical areas. There's properties, I've been on five acre properties that maybe a quarter acre of the entire property could be used for horses.

And I've been on two acre properties where all of it could be utilized. So doing the stocking rates, using stocking rates across the board just by how many acres are, you're going to

end up with

big messes on some properties and unfair restrictions on other properties. And what someone else said earlier, wrote here too, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Please leave the existing code alone. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi. Good evening. Blake Baker, Paulswell, Washington. I'll say it's encouraging to hear that, some members of the planning commission are familiar with the property in question of this case study in that general area. Now that it's kind of put out there publicly, it feels a little bit liberating for me because then I can come out and say, hi.

I'm a border at that facility, and I have been a border at that facility since 2022. So I've been there every day, usually for a greater part of the day taking care of our horses. And I just you know, with the limited time I have tonight, I wanted to offer just a small perspective. This is a very complaint driven process where it feels like all the information that gets funneled up is framed in the context of the complaints that are provided. It's encouraging to hear that there's a desire for more data, and I would throw out there as we're looking at that additional data, a question that would be good to ask is, when those complaints are resolved, how are they being resolved?

What type of burden is the owner taking on themselves to help be that good neighbor that really what we're looking for at the end of the day? I'd also ask the question of how many of these complaints became complaints when the property was no longer owned by the family, and it was existing structure that was there that wasn't an issue before. I'd also ask, you know, if there's a way in this process at some point along the way as we really narrow in on how to solve this thing as a community that those of us who have been there day in, day out, met with both the neighbors, and, you know, have a lot of experience with the owners of facility, a way to provide that input about all the good things that they're doing, all the things you're not gonna hear about the complaints that really do make them the good neighbors that we wanna see in the equestrian community. Thanks.

Hi,

my name is Annie Braddock. I'm in the area, and I'm a member of the Equestrian Working Group. Thanks, everybody, for continuing to hear us on all of this. I just wanted to make a couple of points tonight. As an Equestrian Equestrian Working Group member, I was and my fellow members were given the dataset related to the complaints with all the personal information on that.

And as a group, we chose to use that wisely, and we have not disclosed any of that. We were not appointed by the board of county commissioners like y'all have been, so I don't understand why you couldn't get the same kind of data that we could. Very honestly, maybe there's a rule in there somewhere that I haven't, but we've seen all the data with all the addresses and everything, and none of us have disclosed any of that also, by the way. So just a thought. And then if you're able to see that data, I implore you to look at it with your own eyes and come to your own conclusions on the data.

There's lots of ways to skin a cat there, but, you know, just take a look at it. And then another couple of things I'd like to note is that in the complaint data, how much of the data is about of property with a horse on it that's privately owned versus an equestrian facility. Another note is when looking at the data, the manure complaints, how many are there about specific horse facilities or just horses versus horses and livestock or other farm animals such as chickens, etcetera, on the property? Another note is how many complaints in the, presentation today were found only related to the Roundup Lane property and not seen anywhere else in the complaint data. Another thing that I'd like to say is the Roundup Lane property has two businesses on that property.

It is a boarding facility, and it has a retail hay sales business. And how many of the complaints are related to the retail hay sales versus the horse business? And how many have been resolved of each? Thank you so much for your

time for your time.

Hi. My name is Dawn Oyen, and I am part of the Equestrian Working Group. I also have a facility here in Port Orchard. I want to address the concept of tiering commercial equestrian facilities, creating regulatory tiers based on a number of horses, lessons, acreage, or traffic assumes that scale alone determines impact. The working group's review did not support that assumption.

Impacts are site specific and are already assessed through existing livestock management, critical area drainage and land use provisions. A tiered structure actually risks over regulating small compliant operations while failing to meaningfully distinguish actual site conditions. Additionally, requiring conditional use permits or ACUPs as part of a tiered system could create significant financial and procedural barriers for small equestrian operations. Mine is not that big either, so that would be a problem. These processes can be costly and time consuming, and applying them broadly where no demonstrated regulatory gap exists could unintentionally discourage rural entrepreneurship and undermine the viability of small agricultural businesses.

The question before you is not whether oversight is appropriate, but whether new regulation is necessary, proportional, and grounded in demonstrated need. Based on the evidence reviewed, that need has not been shown. Thank you very much.

Cliff Peterson, South Kitsap resident for forty one years, owner of Joy E. Quine, Lays Case Stables. Chair Hall and members of the Planning Commission, thank you for your service to the good people of Kitsap County. I was not planning on addressing the BLA topic tonight. However, something struck me while listening to the the staff presentation. I wanna address a fundamental mischaracterization made by the DCD planning staff. The presentation repeatedly referred to boundary line adjustments as illegal, yet the record shows that Kitsap County has never adopted a formal BLA review ordinance. Historically, BLAs have been lawfully recorded through the auditor's office without county review. The absence of a county permitting process does not make these actions illegal. In fact, it protects individual property rights.

Labeling them as illegal is misleading and creates false narrative used to justify expanding regulatory authority over private property. What is being proposed here is not correction of unlawful conduct, but the creation of new layer of discretionary regulatory control over lawful property adjustments. In regards to the Equestrian Code, which is really why I'm here, or commercial equestrian facilities, year of the world, or whatever we're going call it next, I want to acknowledge and appreciate the recent effort to clarify the term stakeholder. That clarification matters and holds weight because when we talk about equestrian facilities, the people who carry the financial risk, legal liability, property investment, and operational burden of the facility or the facility owners themselves. They are the ones who invested their land, their capital, their time, and often their life savings into these operations.

In every sense of the word, they are the only true stakeholders. I had a whole statement prepared for three minutes, but I'm going run out of time here. We went through the entire survey, pulled all of the comments in there, and did an analysis on them. 85% of the responses in the county's own survey came back as the existing regulations and right to farm nuance laws, all of that or nuisance laws are all plenty for governing the, equine facilities.

Thank you.

Are there anyone in person who would like to provide public comment? Okay. Good

evening. Ethan Crittenden, South Kitsap. South. I'm here because I believe we are drifting into something bigger than horses and barns. This conversation here at the county planning commission is about the role of government in a constitutional republic. In our system, government is not the source of rights. It is the protector of them. Private property is one of those rights, both in The United States and the Washington State constitution. They both recognize the property cannot be taken or burdened without due process. And while regulation has its place, it must be limited, clearly justified, and narrowly applied.

What concerns me is the steady expansion of administrative oversight, new definitions, new thresholds, new registration systems layered onto people who are simply using their land in traditional rural ways. When families board a few horses or hold small events, they are engaging in engaging in voluntary economic activity on their own property. This is not a threat to rural character. It is rural character. There is also an economic principle at work. When regulatory costs

increase

beyond necessity, productivity declines. The logic behind the Laffer curve applies here. Excessive burdens shrink the very activity you claim to manage. Small equestrian operators don't have corporate legal teams. They have feed bills, rising property taxes, and thin margins. More red tape doesn't strengthen strengthen them. It weakens them. We, the people, are not asking to avoid responsibility. We are asking for the government to respect constitutional boundaries. Don't crush rural enterprise with creeping bureaucracy.

Do we have anyone else wishing to provide okay. Okay.

Josiah, Kippurburg, South Kitsap. I'm addressing the aspect of these equestrian facilities as the staff wants to categorize them as commercial. We have not addressed the aspect of when a building or a facility goes commercial. The regulations for fire flow or fire apparatuses, The due cost, on top of, running some of these facilities would be astronomical due to building structure sizes and what they hold, under Kitsap County fire codes. Most of these would require fire sprinkler systems, due to, the size of the structure or the amount of people in those structures.

That being said, majority of these places are in rural areas, and they would have to require holding tanks to, facilitate those fire flow requirements. Due to those two things alone, the amount of cost that it would put on the property owner would be so astronomical that most people couldn't even do that. I firsthand have seen that with one of my own businesses that I was required to do the same, and I turned the business, shut the business down due to the fire costs. These rural businesses or rural communities just can't afford that that concept and the way that the the fire codes are written. The fire chief have codes that are painted with a broad brush, and they are easily dictated on what is required without any pushback.

And the amount of cost and regulatory aspect is just unbearable.

Unbearable. Any

additional in person public comments at this time?

No?

Okay. We will move to virtual. We have Mariah Fair. Mariah Fair.

Hi. My name is Olivia Fair. I'm nine years old, and I live in North Potswap. I have loved and ridden horses since I was born. If you make these changes, it will make it hard to love and own these gentle giants. I work hard every day towards my dreams. Horses are my pride and joy. These changes will not only impact the future of myself, but other members of our community's lives, including several other children.

Alright. I don't see any other hands up at this time.

If there are no additional speakers, I will close the final general public comment period. The last agenda item is for good of the order.

Yes. Thank you. I would just like to express my sincere gratitude for everyone who joined us this evening. I know we are going on three hours, and your time is so valuable. So thank you for being here tonight. Most appreciated.

And I'm gonna share, I thank you all for your grace and patience. Tonight was my first, public meeting, and I filled in for our chair, Ashley. So I appreciate all your grace and patience for this evening. If there are no other items for tonight's meeting, I declare this meeting adjourned at 08:30. The next planning commission meeting is scheduled for March 17 at 05:30PM.