Will Stanton Settle In? Part I

Today, in a brief outside time, I hear the snow geese flying overhead. They come in from somewhere farther north and settle in for a comfy winter in the northwest. Flocks of them have been flying overhead for several days. They call to one another, ‘Honk! Honk! What’s it look like down there? Should we stay there?’ And eventually they make a decision, stop honking and settle in to a temporarily unused agricultural field.

Today was the Point Roberts Taxpayers Association Annual Meeting. The group has a Board that meets more regularly but the membership seems to show up only once a year. Today’s meeting was to inform the troops about the status of Stanton Northwest Properties plan to create the fabulous gated community of 100+ homes, each costing $1 million, next door to the Lily Point Park. Or maybe it was to incite the troops. Or maybe it was to confuse the troops since at the end of the meeting there was a peculiar coda about the urgency of global warming, which I’m pretty sure Stanton has nothing to do with.

Anyway, the current unhappiness of the Taxpayers is that the County government which, some 8-10 years ago wanted a new zoning plan that required endless meetings here in Point Roberts, somewhere along the way changed that zoning plan, after it had been formally accepted by the County Council, without notifying the people on the Point.

Here’s the history as I heard it today:
1. Originally, the zoning permitted only one house per five acres in areas of the Point that weren’t developed (i.e., large parcels).
2. The new zoning plan (which might have been called ‘The Character Plan'--I'm not sure about the name) that local people worked on and the county accepted created something called ‘Transitional Zones’ for areas involving five or more acres. In such areas, a developer could have one house per acre (instead of one house per 5 acres) if he clustered the houses and left 50% of the parcel as open space. A second option was also included: a developer could have one house per acre if he clustered the houses AND provided 30% of the parcel as open space, including community access and trails, as well as beach access if beach was accessible
3. Sometime after the acceptance of zoning plan #2, the County eliminated the choice involving the 30% open access. That is, the option that required public access to beaches, trails, whatever, was eliminated entirely. Only the clustered houses +50% open-space option remains. Strangely (?), the county does not seem to know how this change occurred.

The Stanton Northwest development is designed to meet the 50% open-space requirement. The Taxpayers wants it to meet the 30% requirements with public access, and are making vague noises about demanding #1 as a fallback position if they can’t have the 30%+ public access. Stanton has not yet received permits for this development and owns only one of the two parcels of land that it needs for this development. According to a Stanton principal at the meeting , the piece the company owns (about 30%) involves the company’s current investment ($4 million, involving bank loans). The company is said to have an option to buy the second, larger property. The 30% that the Taxpayers’ want set aside is the property that Stanton has already purchased. This parcel is next to the already completed Lily Point Park and that is why that is the part that the Taxpayers want devoted to community use. The Stanton group: not only not so much, but not at all.

That is the nature of the dispute. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll try to summarize the discussion at today’s 2.5 hour meeting. Honk!