Guemes Island Planning Advisory Committee

Annual Meeting

Guemes Island Planning Advisory Committee

Annual Meeting

November 19th 2023

Meeting Called to Order 2:04pm

Board Members Present: Michael Brown, Allen Bush, Steve Orsini, Kathy Malley, Gabe Murphy, Jep Burdock, Patty Rose

Members of the Public Present: Many

Annual  Meeting Agenda: Approved

Welcome: Chair Michael Brown gave a brief introduction of the group and the meeting.

Treasurer’s Annual Report 2023: Jep Burdock

Starting balance in 2023: $11,765.35

Donations Received: $3,005.00

Legal Expenses Total: $7,415.20 (Well drilling code amendment work and Young’s Park hearing and appeal)

Appeal Filing for Young’s Park: (Skagit County) $916.89

Mail Box (The Mail Box, Anacortes, 1 year): $199.50

Year End Balance: $6238.76

New GIPAC Physical Address:

GIPAC #829

1004 Commercial Avenue

Anacortes, Wa. 98221

GIPAC Efforts in 2023: Michael Brown

It was a pivotal year for GIPAC efforts:

• To reiterate: GIPAC is not against wells on the island. We seek to make sure wells do not get drilled causing neighboring wells to fail. We seek to preserve the viability of all Island wells by promoting responsible development.
• The board attended a work session with the health director, the planning director, and the BoCC to discuss code on wells and rainwater catchment.
• The board sought clarification on well related codes and submitted a code amendment request, hoping the county would begin to follow existing codes.
• A brief history of this effort was given by Steve.
• One result of this effort is that now rainwater catchment IS an option and not forbidden during the permitting process.
• GIPAC hopes the county will move towards templated rainwater catchment designs, rather than requiring individually engineered solutions.
• GIPAC started the year monitoring the beaver pond issues, but have not made any progress on that front.
• GIPAC finalized the request of Joan Palmer to transfer the Roz Glasserbequest fund to the Skagit Land Trust to do invasive species removal and native plant planting at Kelly’s point in fall 2024 spring 2025. Thanks to Roz/Joan for their generosity.

Young’s Park Status: Gabe Murphy gave a summary of the timeline of the events of the Young’s Park gravel storage situation. He thanked the community and specifically Yadi Young for their advocacy and support throughout the process.

USGS Study Presentation:

Michael gave a brief introduction.

Leland and Wendy introduced themselves.

The USGS team gave an overview of their work over the last two years.

The study is not completed yet and they are currently considering if the beaver pond does affect infiltration and the overall water balance of the aquifer.

There was a brief Q&A:

Senator Lovelett brought up PFAS testing since this was an issue on San Juan Island.

GIPAC will ask the fire department if they have any records of using fire fighting foam in trainings.

Election:

It was announced that the day before the annual meeting, one of the two candidates who were running for the two board positions up for election, needed to step down for personal reasons. The board explained that the current bylaws did not have a mechanism to bring another nominee up for election to the position, so the board considered other options.

The board considered a motion by Kathy Malley to change the verbiage in section 3.5 Board Membership to allow flexibility in the number of board members. The proposed change was:

From: “The board of Directors shall have seven (7) members.”

To: “The Board of Directors shall have a minimum of five (5) members”

The clause that allows this change is:

“At any Annual Meeting, the Board may change the number of Directors by majority vote of Directors.”

A vote of the board was held and the motion passed unanimously.

A vote of the membership was held to elect the one nominee (Kathy Malley) to the board. The nominee was elected unanimously.

2024 New business: Michael

Look at Variances

Work to ask county to adopt rainwater catchment templates

Meeting adjourned.