HomeMy WebLinkAboutJanssen re. Wilke MLA19-00013Receive at Community Development by email 9-13-2019.
Jefferson County Department of Community Development
2019 Comprehensive Plan and Amendment Docket
Staff Report and SEA Addendum
Re: Rezone of Wilke Property
240 Sand Road Port Townsend, WA 98368
Public Comment September 10, 2019
Dear Board of Commissioners and Planning Committee:
We, Claus and Teresa Janssen, residents at 232 Sand Road, live adjacent to the property at 240 Sand Rd.
whose owners are seeking an amendment to the comprehensive plan. We have lived on our property
for over twenty-five years. We urge the county not to approve the amendment to the County
Comprehensive Plan for rezoning 240 Sand Rd for the following reasons:
1. Approval to amend the comprehensive plan will set a precedent by which any property owner
having 10+ acres can request rezoning and will have reasonable cause to believe it will be
approved. The county does not have adequate infrastructure (sewage, electric, water,
technology networks) to support the rural population growth that will follow. Our valley which is
the watershed for Discovery Bay cannot sustain the increased number of wells and septic
systems that would result.
2. Access to the property at 240 Sand Rd is over a one-lane dirt road that is an easement through
our property. If additional 10+ acre properties on Sand Road and S. Edwards Road are
subdivided (because of this precedent) the road over our easement could not sustain the
increase in traffic from ensuing property development. We are not inclined to increase the
easement, nor do we desire to pay for widening the road, increased maintenance, or paving.
3. The wetland on the property at 240 Sand Rd is part of a fragile ecosystem that drains the
Quimper Valley. The wetland on our property at 232 Sand is one and the same as that on 240
Sand. Some years, depending on rainfall, it is dry, but most years it hosts an itinerant lake over
which our property line passes. The requested rezoned property line would run through the
middle of this lake. Modifications of any kind affect the entire drainage system. When the 240
Sand Rd property owners (Wilkes) dug a trench to drain the wetland during the summer of 2018
without notifying us, it also drained water from our property. This wetland has already been
altered. We fear that further development (building of an additional well and septic) in such
close proximity to the lakebed would further damage this vital and sensitive natural drainage
system.
4. One of the points mentioned in the request for the rezoning amendment was that since our
property at 232 Sand Road was a 5-acre plot, the owners of 240 Sand should have the right to
rezone to that size, also. We remind the commissioners that our property was developed in the
mid-1970s. The 5-acres was in compliance with county zoning rules at that time. The
comprehensive plan was modified in 1992 to 10-acre minimum. A party that purchases a
property in 2017 should not expect the same zoning rules that existed more than forty years
earlier when environmental stewardship and zoning laws were lax.
Receive at Community Development by email 9-13-2019.
To summarize, the county comprehensive plan was revised in 1992 to prevent investors from
purchasing properties in designated rural areas in order to subdivide and resell, or otherwise
develop, particularly in sensitive ecosystems.
For the above reasons, we urge the Jefferson County Department of Community Development
to deny the rezoning request.
Thank you for your consideration,
Claus and Teresa Janssen
232 Sand Road
Port Townsend, WA 98368