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Skagit County staff propose reorganization of Title 14 to streamline residential permitting
Summary
A consultant briefed the Planning Commission on reorganizing Skagit County Code Title 14 to improve readability and speed residential permitting, including changes to setbacks, lot-certification, tables for zoning standards, and codifying director interpretations; critical areas work will be deferred to a second phase.
Ryan Walters, a private legal consultant to the Skagit County Planning Department, told the Planning Commission on Jan. 14 that staff plan a mostlyorganizational update to Title 14 of the Skagit County Code aimed at improving usability and reducing obstacles to residential permitting.
Walters said the project will group related chapters into six divisions, convert long narrative sections into tables (for uses, setbacks and dimensional standards) and remove non-development items from Title 14. He said the effort is intended to reduce the number of variances required when houses cannot meet current setbacks and to simplify the lot-certification process. “We’re not proposing to rewrite the entirety of Title 14,” Walters said. “It’s really reorganization with limited rewriting.”
Why it matters: staff and commissioners described the changes as intended to reduce time and cost for common residential permits without increasing development entitlements. Walters said typical permit obstacles — such as expensive variance…
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