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Oak Harbor staff propose combining clearing and grading rules into a single Title 20 chapter
Summary
Senior planner Dennis Lafever told the council the city plans to move land-clearing regulations into Title 20 and combine them with grading rules to centralize environmental controls; planning commission and council hearings are scheduled later in the summer.
Senior Planner Dennis Lafever presented a proposed code amendment on April 22 to combine Oak Harbor's land-clearing and grading regulations into a new chapter in Title 20 (environment code). Lafever said the proposal moves the existing land-clearing chapter (currently in Chapter 19.47) and folds grading provisions (now administered by engineering/stormwater in Title 12) into a single, consolidated Chapter 20.15.
Lafever said the change responds to overlapping regulatory goals — vegetation, geologically hazardous areas, floodplain protections and stormwater — and aligns the city's code structure with state frameworks such as the Forest Practices Act (Title 22) and the Shoreline Management Act. "We're actually moving the land clearing chapter of 19.47 out of that title and moving it to Title 20 and then combining it with the grading code," Lafever said.
He outlined next steps: completion of a SEPA checklist, coordination with the engineering division on grading specifics, a planning commission public hearing and a city council public hearing that were shifted into June and July to allow legal and technical review. Council members discussed implementation details. Councilor Wiesner urged staff to preserve a streamlined process for small clearing projects so that straightforward, low-impact tree removals would not be burdened by the full grading-permit process. Lafever and staff said the draft seeks to centralize technical standards while application procedures can reflect differing project scales.
Lafever told the council he had not yet found substantive conflicts between the two existing code sets but that engineering and legal review remain to refine grading thresholds and technical standards. Staff said the consolidated chapter would be presented as a redline draft to council and that legal would prepare the ordinance language.
Ending: The council received the briefing and directed staff to continue coordination with public works and legal; planning commission and council hearings will be scheduled in June and July as part of the formal adoption process. No formal action occurred at the workshop.
