Common Sense Alliance

 Consultants hired by the County have created a Shoreline Inventory and Characterization Report (“Report”). The Report is supposed to chronicle the geography, geology, biology, development and uses on your shoreline property. The conclusions drawn from the Report with the numerous Appendices and Maps are to be adopted by the County Council. Once adopted, this Report establishes a baseline that may limit the use of your land. Any change you might propose, even so much as a minor alteration in landscape, may require a permit and a determination that there will be “no net loss” of the "functions and values" of the ecological system.

Since this is unexplored territory, we do not propose to speculate on the costs and time involved in such a permitting process. What we are becoming aware of is that there are many errors and generalizations in the shoreline inventory that are not accurate.

To assist you in correcting the record so that, in the future, there will be no question as to the uses and developments on your waterfront property prior to the adoption of any new regulations, we have prepared a step-by-step guide to evaluating the Report as it is applied to your parcel, together with instructions on preparing a short narrative describing your actual development and use of your shoreline property.

Time is of the essence. The San Juan County Community Development and Planning Department, 135 Rhone Street, Courthouse Annex, Friday Harbor must receive your comments on the Report before 1 p.m. on April 30, 2012.

Link to the instructions to assist you in preparing: 10 Photos and Your Narrative.

Link to attorney Sandy Mackie's form to use as your coversheet:  Mackie Form

With Mr. Mackie on board the CSA will have his particular expertise (read his profile below) as they continue to offer legal advice and interpretations of proposed county regulations. 

The benefit to the County is they will have input that, in some instances will counter staff and other non-profit groups input -or at the least add to it- thereby adding additional balance to the public input available to County staff, the Planning Commission, and the County Council. 

CSA stated in a press release that it is "critical for all to consider the social, economic and environmental impacts of change upon our roral way of living, and to evaluate and balance those competing interests as common sense advises and the law requires."