09/13/2006: "CC "Aliquot System" Policy Remains"

The Comprehensive Plan had anticipated that land within a land use designation that was larger than the minimum size allowed, could be legally divided down to the smaller acreage allowed. For example, If a part of the county was intended to be not less than 10 acres in size, and a property owner owned 20 acres, it was assumed that someday -all other things being equal- the 20 acres could be cut into two 10 acre parcels. That was then, and this is now, and if that 20 acres turned out, under the new precise measurement of land (using satellite measurement, such as GIS, that is able to take into account the curve of the planet) found that the 20 acres was a bit short of exactly 20 acres, the owner will be denied a right that he once thought he had.

A number of SJC landowners have now found that there are two ways to define how much land they own, and that when the planning department uses one of those ways, the landowner comes up short from what they thought they owned. As reported in The Island Guardian ( previously reported ), the County used to use what is known as the "Rectangular Survey System", which did not take into account that land is not flat, but as round as the earth that it is a part of, and so in the past. as some surveys came to be joined with others, there could be overlaps of the lines. The solution was to simply make the lines join up, and a legal description explained which direction to walk in, and for how far, to find a boundry point, but 20 acres was considered to be, 20 acres, even in fact it was not quite.

GIS (Global Information Systems) has changed all that. Now when a survey is done, the exact amount of land can be calculated and recorded. As a result of the new accuracy, some land that was assumed to be a specific number of acres, which was frequently a nice round number, all of a sudden came up a tad short, or a bit larger, than was understood by all to be the case prior to the new and improved methods.

So what is the problem? According to Councilman Bob Myhr, there is no problem. Myhr told The Island Guardian that there are enough parcels in San Juan County now, and since "there has been an existing ordinance in place for eight years, ..I don't see a reason to change that now". But Land owners who purchased land that they were told could be legally divided, and now find that because of the "new way" the County has of determining the actual size of their property, have potentially lost a sizable portion of their investment, believe there is a really good reason to, as in the words of Councilman Ranker, County Administrator Pete Rose, Assessor Paul Dossett, and other professionals, a need to address a fundamental question of fairness.

Ranker asked for additional information from the Assessor's office on how much land has been impacted by the problem, and that unless it would result in an unexpected increase in the number of lots, said he was "leaning toward…I feel like we need to be fair", and so wanted to know what the possible impacts" might be.

But Myhr and Chairman Lichter were having none of it, and Lichter said that he would "like to continue same system: use the Aliquot system for administration and planning, and the GIS system for the assessor". Ranker responded that it appeared that Lichter and Myhr were not willing to wait for additional information, so he would abstain from voting on the issue, since he believed there was insufficient information to make a decision. This was in line with the previous testimony at a work session when local surveyor Jeff Iverson told the Council that "you have not even "scratched the surface of this problem", and urged them to obtain additional information, so that they could make an informed decision.

Myhr made a motion to, in effect, continue to do what they do. Ranker abstained. Those effected may be coming back to the question of fairness, with a legal argument as to why the issue may need to be looked at a bit more closely