Comprehensive Plan Amendment for Kah Tai

The Friends of Kah Tai Board of Directors recently submitted testimony to the City Planning Office with regard to the upcoming Comprehensive Plan Amendment hearing. The hearing will include consideration of an amendment proposed to insert protective language for Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park into the Comprehensive Plan. There are several versions proposed for the Amendment. The Friends of Kah Tai submitted the first iteration back in February 2011. The City followed suit with its own version. The Admiralty Audubon Society developed language based on wording found in the original grant documents. 

The Friends combined these various versions of language and propose the following language to be included as a Comprehensive Plan Amendment.

"We respectfully submit this as written testimony for consideration of amendments to be adopted for Item 2.5 Kah Tai Lagoon Park Policy (LUP11-015) and request the following be included in the City of Port Townsend Year 2011 Comprehensive Plan:

4.5.1 Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park shall be designed and managed in accordance with the legal obligations assumed under the 1981 Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund Acquisition Grant.

4.5.1a Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park shall be maintained so as to allow only passive outdoor recreation uses that preserve and enhance the natural habitat of the lagoon, wetlands, buffers, and uplands."

ad hoc intergovernmental report, 1977

zoning map in ad hoc report, 1977

It turns out that the base map for the IAC/RCO map shown in the previous post comes from a report entitled 'Kah Tai Lagoon - a Summary Report from the ad hoc Intergovernmental Advisory Committee' completed in February 1977 by City, County, Park and Port representatives. The report was the result of an effort to solve the problem of what to do with Kah Tai.

Also included in the ad hoc report is an ownership map of lands at Kah Tai. Note the varied ownership symbols for the land that is claimed by the Port, all land between the lagoon's south shore and Sims Way.  Click on maps to enlarge.

ownership map in ad hoc report, 1977

a piece of the puzzle

Map from RCO file for Kah Tai grant #81-043.

If the Port never intended to include all of its Kah Tai land in the park created with LWCF funds in 1981, what is this map (click to enlarge) doing in the official 81-043 grant application files at the State Recreation and Conservation Office?

The map highlights two things. One is zoning, showing that all public land in the park boundary is zoned P-1, Public Use, as it has been in every City Comprehensive Plan since 1968. And the second thing it shows is ALL the land at Kah Tai that was owned and/or controlled by the Port at the time of park creation.

That oddly shaped yellow parcel on the west is the property donated by HJ Carroll 'for park purposes only' and held by the Port in retroactive waiver from 1977 until it was included in the park as a part of a required local match for the 1980 application process. And the big yellow parcel to the south of the lagoon? Why, that's all that dredge-spoil-created uplands that the Port now claims it never intended to include in the park. You know, the non-lagoon, non-marsh part where people can walk with their families and their dogs, and bicycle, and sit peacefully to enjoy nature writ relatively large for an urban area. The part with the play meadow, and the bathroom and shelter built by volunteers in 1985. The part of the park that isn't supposed to be a park.

So, could someone explain why this map would be prominent in RCO records for the park acquisition grant if it wasn't intended to show ALL the Port holdings to be included in the park? Why would a map be in the official records while highlighting holdings that were included and holdings that were excluded - and make NO differentiation?

Building a shelter, 2011 edition

Volunteers frame the picnic shelter, 1985. 

The City Council's Resolution (see previous post) is an important step in the process of sheltering Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park from development. An article in Wednesday's Leader gives a brief overview. A couple of very appropriate recent letters (here and here) to the Leader editor are at the 2011 Letters link above but you might enjoy the comments to the letters online. In true Port Townsend fashion, there are as many opinions as there are citizens. And some of those opinions are actually based on facts!

The Comprehensive Plan Amendment for Kah Tai, first proposed in late February 2011, is still working its way through the process at the City. Next up in that process is the Planning Commission hearing, currently scheduled for 12 January 2012. Stay tuned for more information. This is an important opportunity to be heard, as we are each allowed 3 minutes to share our opinions with the Planning Commission.

Also on the Planning Commission agenda is the draft update to the Parks Functional Plan. You can find more information about this important document as well as the amendment process at links on the lower right of the City's website.

that says it all

From the City Council web documents:

5 December 2011

RESOLUTION NO. 11-039

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PORT TOWNSEND,
WASHINGTON DIRECTING THE CITY MANAGER AND CITY ATTORNEY TO
DEFEND THE CITY IN THE LAWSUIT FILED BY THE PORT AGAINST THE CITY,
AND SUPPORT THE DETERMINATIONS MADE BY THE NATIONAL PARK
SERVICE AND THE STATE RECREATION AND CONSERVATION OFFICE THAT
ESTABLISH A 6(F) BOUNDARY FOR 78.5 ACRES AT KAH TAI, AND VIGOROUSLY
RESIST ANY CLAIM BY THE PORT TO REQUIRE THE CITY TO PAY THE PORT
DAMAGES. 

 

You can download the full document here: (https://weblink.cityofpt.us/WebLink8/0/doc/60803/Page1.aspx)

Note that the full document is very large and a bit unwieldy to download, but it is well worth reading. If you'd like a slimmed-down version, send an email.

Kah Tai boundary, 2011 edition

Kah Tai boundary, November 2011

Posted around the perimeter of Kah Tai  Lagoon Nature Park are notices about the upcoming Planning Commission hearing (12 January 2012 at last report) on some important Comprehensive Plan amendments.  The draft update to the Parks Functional Plan and proposed amendments related to the protection of the Park are being evaluated for forwarding to the City Council.

Included in that posted information is a small grayscale map with a simple legend: Kah Tai Nature Park and a northern compass point (click on map to enlarge).  The map boundary looks very much like the boundary drawn in 1984 (see below, November 13 post). A few parcels on the northern boundary are finally sorted out ( the 1984 map was drawn to accompany an effort to sort out those errant northern parcels) and a piece or two of right-of-way have been added in. The southern boundary has not changed. It has taken 27+ years to legitimize the hand-drawn 1984 boundary. The process was made necessary by incomplete recording to title at the close of the grant followed by the slow metamorphosis of a minority opinion into urban myth. Not everyone wanted the Park in 1981, but a majority of citizens did, and a majority of City Council and Port Commissioners voted it into being. That's how democracy works. You don't get to re-invent an outcome because you don't like it.

Copies of the draft parks plan update and information about suggested amendment language are available on the City's website under Latest News. Our efforts to protect the Park are not finished, but we are making progress.

the persistence of vision

Kah Tai boundary, 14 September 1984

The southeastern boundary of Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park has offered its own set of complications. There's a parcel labeled 'PUD' on all the various and sundry hand-drawn maps posted earlier. That's Public Utility District, not Planned Unit Development.

When our local visionaries were hard at work imagining the park in the late 1970s, that vision included the underwater and upland County parcels, the Port parcels to the south of the lagoon, the PUD parcels to the southeast, and of course, as many surrounding private parcels as could be purchased or donated. The Port signed on as a joint sponsor with the City, so those parcels would be included. The County Commission voted unanimously to donate its land as soon as the grant was funded, and the PUD offered a lease with option to purchase. Actually, make that two leases. One PUD parcel was leased for 5 years, the other for 30 years. The documents do not mention why the PUD land was separated in this odd fashion. The lease amounts were $1.00 per year per parcel.  However, the leases didn't get finalized in time to be included in the grant application, so on all those maps, the PUD land is perched in the southeast corner, sitting by itself outside the boundary. The grant application language includes it, but the grant application boundary maps do not.

In September 1984, the same local visionaries were working to finish the transfer of one remaining park inholding in the northern uplands for which the title was complex and unresolved. The City had managed to purchase a half-interest in it, but the other half was more elusive. Yet another hand-drawn map flowed from the hand that drew all the earlier maps, and in late 1984, the PUD land was considered to be included in the park (click map to enlarge).  In 1985, the PUD lease agreements were amended to make both leases expire in 2012 to give more time for the purchase.

Somewhere along the way, the City apparently neglected to pay its $1.00 per year per parcel lease fee to the PUD and the PUD called in its cards in 1998, declared the lease invalid and filed for a rezone for development.  The City purchased the PUD land for $114,000 to prevent development. Yes, the City may have neglected its $1.00 per year, but the consequent costs seem completely out of line with the public good and taxpayer burdens, particularly since the PUD had endorsed the park concept back in 1981.

Fast forward to 2010. The National Park Service announced that 'all lands owned by either sponsor at the close of the grant on 29 March 1985 will be included in the 6(f)(3) boundary'. The PUD and County lands were not yet owned by the City in 1985. County lands finally changed ownership in 2004. But after examining all the leases and sales and good intentions gone occasionally awry,  the state Recreation and Conservation Office recommended to NPS that both former PUD and former County lands be included within the boundary since the City had documentation of lease control or lease intent for both PUD and County land and did finally own both properties.

And so, after 30 years at risk of growing ever smaller with loss of parcels, uncompleted transfers, voided leases and attempted abdication of responsibilities by sponsors, our intrepid park has managed to stay as it was in the hand-drawn map from 1984, a simple perimeter drawing with wonderfully few labels. 'Kah Tai Lagoon Park Boundary', including the unlabeled eastern bump-out formerly known as PUD parcels 1 and 2, turns out to be refreshingly accurate today.