Council questions city ordinance

Gazette Editor

Colfax City Council Monday night conducted an extensive review of a draft to update the city’s critical areas ordinance. The draft was presented by Don Brigham of Clarkston who has been hired by the city to update the ordinance.

Councilman Jim Kackman, who had earlier submitted comment on an earlier draft, headed the council review of the ordinance. Most of the discussion was based on how the critical area ordinance could impact property owners who seek to develop property in the coming years.

“These regulations are going to affect landowners,” Kackman noted.

Brigham said the first Colfax critical areas ordinance was passed in 2004 under the state’s Growth Management Act which is administered by the Department of Ecology. Brigham also helped the city update the ordinance as part of the annexation of property along the North Fork of the Palouse River. That annexation included the Redtail Ridge development which to date has added one residence.

Brigham said most of the administration of the critical areas ordinance boils down to common sense. He told the council they had some latitude on how the ordinance was drafted and he didn’t see anything in the present draft which could “ignite fireworks” for the state agencies involved.

Review of the flood draft took an hour and 20 minutes.

Potential development of the N. Palouse area was one of the concerns discussed Monday night. Kackman noted the N. Palouse addition contains some of the wetlands areas designated in the revised plan.

Kackman believes over the year the critical areas regulations have been made more restrictive as the “best available science” findings have been applied by state agencies. Such items as the size of buffer zones around wetlands have been expanded.

City Attorney Bruce Ensley, after learning the city does not have a critical areas map, suggested the final draft of the ordinance exclude references to maps and map overlays. He pointed out would-be developers will need some way of determining whether or not property proposed for development will be subject to requirements under the ordinance.

Kackman explained as the ordinance is now written, property owners are required to determine if parts of their land could be in one of the critical areas which can include wetlands, aquifer recharge areas, critical game habitat, geological hazardous areas and frequent flooding areas.

The city does have maps developed with the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA for flood prone areas and many of those are along the N. Palouse River addition which extends almost to Glenwood.