Message from the President |
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Hello fellow PAW members!
The change in weather that was felt over the weekend on the Peninsula was a physical shift in seasons. From the summer weather of sunshine and 70 degrees to fall with rain and more rain! We are also embracing another shift as we are planning for a conference, getting the final details nailed down, and seeing the results of our work. We also have one more webinar to offer on October 28th. This webinar is titled “Limiting City Liability in Land Use Matters”.
Are you looking forward to some real face time? We sure are! We look forward to seeing everyone at the upcoming IN-Person conference in Chelan on November 15th and 16th.
Please read on to learn about our Board of Director Spotlight, Organizational Spotlight, and more about the conference I mentioned earlier.
As ever, we encourage ideas from our membership. Please reach out to us if you have ideas for virtual social hours, training requests, or need help seeking a specialist for a project you are working on. Remember, “Good planning doesn’t just happen…”
Cheers,
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Marla S. Powers
PAW President, Conference Chair
Board Member since 2015
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Thursday, October 28th, 2021
12:00pm-1:30pm
Limiting City Liability in Land Use Matter
Scott M. Missall, Attorney at Law, Ogden, Murphy Wallace, PLLC
Emily Miner, Attorney at Law, Ogden, Murphy Wallace, PLLC
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Monday, November 15th-Tuesday November 16th, 2021
Chelan, WA
Register for in-person attendance
or purchase on-demand recordings of the sessions
made available after the conference concludes
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KERWIN JENSEN
Kerwin Jensen is currently serving as the Director of Development Services for the City of Richland, Washington. He has served in that capacity for the past six years. Kerwin oversees the planning, building, economic development, and housing divisions. One unique aspect of his job is to manage, market, and develop hundreds of acres of city-owned land, including over 1,300 acres of land recently acquired from the United States Department of Energy Hanford site. Kerwin has worked in local government for 33 years throughout the West, including the states of Montana, Utah, Colorado, and now Washington.
Kerwin has been married to his wife, Sydney, for 36 years and they have four grown children and nine grandchildren. Together, they love to travel and see other parts of the country. Although they have done little international travel, they have been able to visit all 50 states in the U.S. and five Canadian provinces. Some of their most unique travel experiences include visiting and watching a performance at the Haskell Library and Opera House, which literally straddles the Vermont/Quebec border; playing five-pin bowling while waiting for a tow truck in Rodney, Ontario; and hiking with all four of their young children to the top of Angels Landing in Zion National Park, which as a parent was “a pretty nerve-racking experience”.
Kerwin feels that the Planning Association of Washington (PAW) is a great network of professionals who work in both rural and urban settings. He has learned that the leadership of PAW is very dedicated and has a strong desire of maintaining a professional organization with a great emphasis on continuing education. Kerwin has enjoyed the opportunity to serve on the PAW board as an ex-officio member and liaison to the Western Planner organization and looks forward to great things from PAW.
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PAW provides our planning and development team with the education, ideas and planning tools related to permitting, public outreach, strategic planning models, frameworks for smart land use decision making and sustainable infrastructure ideas that will assist Skagit County as we build our own organizational capacity needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our association with PAW is essential, if not vital, to understanding the vast changes in the community, our profession, and the state.
Skagit County has had a long association with rural planning for a strong and livable community within the Skagit Valley. Since the 1960s, the county has been protecting forestry, agriculture, salmon, and the way of life that is bound up with the land. Skagit County adopted its first Comprehensive plan in 1965, and its first zoning ordinance in 1966. In 1973, Skagit County passed a “Large Acreage” lot size ordinance establishing a 30-acre minimum lot size on agriculturally zoned lands. In 1979, Skagit County increased that lot size to 40 acres and to 20 acres on agriculture reserve zoned lands, with a desire to close loopholes in the previous ordinance. In the 1980s, Skagit County added a section to prevent “castling” (locating a large home on agricultural land in such a manner that land is taken out of agriculture production) requiring that all buildings be constructed within 200 feet of the front property line. The Growth Management Act (GMA) passed in the early 1990s, requiring the designation and protection of agricultural and forest lands of long-term commercial significance. In 1997, Skagit County established farmland preservation through the Farmland Legacy Program.
Today, more than 13,000 acres of prime farmland has been preserved from future development by purchasing conservation easements. Challenges remain, including intense population growth, labor costs for the natural resource industry, workforce housing, maintaining land access, climate change impacts to low lying farmlands, increasing fire concerns in the eastern heavily forested parts of the county, and long-term water security for agriculture. Today’s challenges include working with our many partnership organizations to create and maintain a regenerative agricultural economy while understanding agricultural tourism, managing our critical areas, salmonid habitat needs while still providing the region with long term food security. A key challenge as a department is the retirement of veteran (30 to 50 year) planners and the training of new brilliant younger planners coming into the team.
We appreciate the opportunity PAW provides for learning, peer networking, and education, especially for our elected and appointed officials, to help them make wise decisions to carry the county forward.
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Planning Association of Washington
1-877-460-5880
info@planningpaw.org
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