Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Whitman County Commissioners have set a hearing for Monday on two proposed zoning changes dealing with ag cluster zones.
At issue are notices about applications for cluster residential districts and height requirements for building houses on hills. These rules would be for unincorporated areas of the county.
The hearing will be Monday, July 3, at 11:15 a.m. in the commissioners’ room at the courthouse.
Whitman County Code for cluster residential districts now requires living spaces of dwellings to be below the top of a hill.
The proposed change would make it so the entire building, not just the living space, needs to be below the highest point of the hill.
The original language on this was added to the county code in 2007 after County Planner Alan Thomson and staff reviewed similar policies in other states such as Colorado.
The second proposal would require notification of adjoining property owners when an application for a cluster zone is filed.
The matter came up after the planning commission denied a zone change application last July by the Evangelical Church on Airport Road near Pullman. In the process, a planning commission member interpreted the code in a manner not previously considered.
The county planning commission has since come up with proposed changes to the cluster residential code to no longer require a waiver from adjacent commercial operators. If approved, the county would be required to notify everyone, residential or commercial, within 1,000 feet with no waiver needed from the commercial operators.
The waiver had been required because commercial operators were more likely to have concerns about practices such as aerial spraying.
“There is a perception that farming and residential is incompatible,” Thomson explained.
For homeowners, the issue is different.
“It’s not an incompatibility for single family residents to have more single family residents move in next door,” said Thomson, who has worked for the county planning department since 2002 and spent time on the original ordinance which went into effect in 2004.
The proposal would also require a waiver for houses built within 100 feet of an ag zone. If the waiver can’t be produced, the requirement will remain at 200 feet.
Is Thomson surprised about the proposed changes to the code?
“I think we’re just evolving. Ag practices have become more efficient – the main thing was overspraying,” he said.
If county commissioners approve these zoning rules changes, the comprehensive plan would automatically be updated to include them.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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