2007 Plan Compliance Maps and Decisions

The Board of Clark County Commissioners (BOCC) held a public hearing on December 15, 2009, to consider amendments to the Clark County 20-year Comprehensive Growth Management Plan 2004-2024 map and zoning map to redesignate certain properties as agricultural and to remove them from the Vancouver, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, and Camas Urban Growth Areas (UGAs), respectively. Certain properties were redesignated as Rural (R-5) and removed from the Vancouver UGA. Also certain properties that had been designated R-5 in 2008 were redesignated as agricultural. 

As a result of the hearing, the BOCC adopted Ordinance 2009-12-15 (PDF), which did the following:

  • Agriculture Viability Study Area VB - Redesignated to Agricultural (AG-20) from Light Industrial and Railroad Industrial, and removed the properties from the Vancouver Urban Growth Area. Also removed were parcels that had been brought into the UGA and were previously zoned R05, because they would have been designated as part of the Vancouver UGA, but not connected to it, which is not allowed under the Growth Management Act.
  • Agriculture Viability Study Area BC - Redesignated to Agricultural (AG-20) from Employment Center, and removed the properties from the Battle Ground Urban Growth Area.
  • Agriculture Viability Study Area RB-2 - Redesignated a portion of Area RB-2 to Agricultural (AG-20) from Urban Low Density Residential and removed from the Ridgefield Urban Growth Area.
  • Agricultural Viability Study Area CA-1 - Redesignated a portion of Area CA-1 to Agricultural (AG-20) from Urban Density Medium, and removed these properties from the Camas Urban Growth Area.

By the above changes, Clark County is responding to a 2009 decision of the Clark County Superior Court, which partly reversed and partly affirmed a decision from the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board on an appeal of the County's 2007 action expanding urban growth boundaries. The above changes serve to "undo" the relatively few re-designations that the Superior Court found to be noncompliant with GMA. Clark County is now defending at the Court of Appeals the parts of the Superior court decision that upheld the urban re-designations.

  • Docket CPZ2008-00005-1 - Schwarz property - Redesignated to Agricultural (AG-20) from Rural (R-5). This change responds to a 2009 decision of the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board ruling the County's action to redesignate these properties as noncompliant with the Growth Management Act.

Clark County is responding to a decision from the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board (WWGMHB) and Clark County Superior Court regarding an appeal on urban growth boundaries approved by the Board of Clark County Commissioners in 2007.

The appeal was filed June 12, 2008, in Clark County. It seeks to overturn a recent decision and order from the WWGMHB. The state board found that the county did not comply with the state's Growth Management Act when bringing lands previously designated for agricultural uses into urban growth areas.

Maps of areas involved in the initial appeal