Anacortes Planning Commission urges council to adopt development regulation amendments, advances zoning map changes

The Anacortes Planning Commission on Oct. 22 unanimously recommended that the City Council adopt the proposed 2025 Comprehensive Plan periodic update development regulation amendments and accompanying zoning map changes after staff presentation and commissioner deliberations.

Planning Manager Libby Grage told commissioners the packet included the formal draft and a new right-hand column summarizing additional staff recommendations developed after the draft went to public comment. "I am Libby Grage, Planning Manager in the Planning, Community and Economic Development Department," Grage said in introducing the staff presentation and the proposed amendments.

The commission spent most of the meeting reviewing and debating a long list of technical and policy changes. Commissioners discussed, among other items, minimum lot-size and form-and-intensity standards for Old Town and several residential zones; whether to formalize a permitted status for "single-family small lot" housing in Old Town; how minimum lot sizes for duplexes should change from current code; clarifying which code definition the city will use for "affordable housing"; whether to add the word "planned" to the active-transportation exhibit map; and an exception for Jay Avenue (20th Street/Second to Ninth) where staff currently recommends sharrows rather than a separated bike…