Town may hold public forum on growth next year
Twisp leaders have heard it loud and clear from a handful of vocal residents: They don’t want unchecked growth in town, and the town’s development rules need to be rewritten in a way that makes sure that doesn’t happen.
Some community members are even calling for a halt to major new developments, if only temporarily — and a majority of the Twisp Town Council agrees.
Milltown, a 135-home development east of Blue Star Coffee Roasters that received the council’s approval last month, served as a wake-up call for some in the community.
Following that decision, some residents called for the temporary freeze on large developments.
Twisp resident Louise Suhr emailed the town on Aug. 10 to register her “strong disappointment” over the Milltown decision.
“If a moratorium cannot be applied retroactively to this project, I urge the council to implement one immediately to prevent future large-scale developments,” she wrote.
Any such moratorium would only hold for six months, unless the town council agreed to extend it. Town officials would need to show progress on amending its land-use rules during the moratorium.
Suhr listed “air quality, adequate water resources, and increased traffic and congestion” among her concerns. The Milltown proposal includes an allowance for wood-burning stoves, which degrade air quality in the winter.
“I urge the council to consider the broader, long-term impacts before making irreversible decisions that will shape the future of our town,” Suhr wrote.
Other commenters said town officials weren’t doing enough to address increased wildfire risk while approving more residential growth.
“The town’s failure to deal with wildfire risk factors is foolish and irresponsible,” Twisp resident Nancy Farr-Sekijima wrote in an Aug. 7 email to the town.
How to limit growth?
The mayor and members of the council have all expressed interest in rewriting the town’s land-use rules, whether through some tweaks to the town’s zoning regulations, or a more thoroughgoing rewrite of the comprehensive plan — the document intended to guide growth throughout town over a 10-year period. The latest comp plan update happened in 2016.
Mayor Hans Smith also encouraged the council at its Aug. 11 meeting to organize a community forum on growth, so all voices could be heard on the subject. Winthrop held a similar town hall meeting on Tuesday (Aug. 18) as it prepares to update its comprehensive plan.
Even as the mayor acknowledged the value of a town forum, and of a new approach to planning in Twisp, he also brought up a significant obstacle: money.
The town has exactly zero dollars set aside to rewrite its comprehensive plan or hire a consultant to run a public forum, Smith told the council.
“We are going to have to use a consultant to assist in this process, and it is going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars to do it,” he said.
The forum may still happen, however. The council’s Finance Committee will look into how to pay for it in early 2027.
Council member Molly Filer suggested soliciting the help of a qualified volunteer to run the forum, or at least someone willing to provide that service at a steep discount.
A comp plan update would also be expensive, the mayor said. The town could start tapping into its budget reserves and remove funding from other services to save money for the update, he said.
But don’t expect it to happen next year.
“It’s probably out of reach to do it in one budget cycle for us,” Smith said.
Council member Tim Matsui pressed the issue, however, saying the town needs to update the plan that would guide growth in an overarching way, instead of considering each new development on a case-by-case basis.
“Right now, everything’s ad hoc and willy-nilly,” Matsui said. “I don’t know how we get there, how we pay for it, etc., but it feels like we need to make that a priority.”
Some changes are already underway in the Twisp Planning Department, entirely comprised of a single planner, Thom Vetter, who is contracted to work 20 hours a week.
At a Twisp Planning Commission meeting last week, Vetter said a draft inclusionary zoning document is done and awaits public review. Inclusionary zoning incentivizes developers to build affordable homes in exchange for more housing density. That could enable developers to turn profits on their overall projects, even if the affordable lots aren’t money-makers.
And a long-awaited housing action plan should come before the planning commission soon, Commissioner Anna Rose said. That plan is likely to include a strategy for bringing more affordable housing to Twisp, where the median-priced home is out of reach for a large majority of residents.
Moratorium?
A majority of the town council on Aug. 11 expressed interest in a moratorium on planned developments — the subdivision option used by Catholic Charities Eastern Washington to build its 72-unit apartment complex behind Rosauers, and the one also used by Milltown’s developers.
Those two planned developments alone could add more than 200 units to Twisp’s housing stock, which would significantly boost the population of a town that currently has about 1,100 people.
“We’re one more legal planned development application away from, like, pure chaos,” said council member Will Menzies, who supports a moratorium on planned developments. Council members Rosemary Seifried and Filer also showed support for the moratorium.
Mayor Smith warned that a temporary ban on this type of development could drive developers to build on long-plat subdivisions. Unlike planned developments, long plats don’t require land set aside as open space, and they wouldn’t go through a public review before they are approved.
“All those other protections are completely lost” when a developer decides on a long-plat subdivision, Smith said. “We don’t have a silver bullet here, for deciding how we’re going to control development.”
Hearing the will of the council, however, Smith agreed to bring more information on restricting planned developments to a future meeting.
Skatepark up in the air
For now, the Twisp Town Council is just as divided as the rest of the community about where to site a skatepark in town.
After hearing a wide range of public opinions, and even arguing amongst themselves over the location, members of the town’s Parks and Recreation Commission landed on a compromise and recommended to the council the east side of Twisp Park as the place where a new skatepark might be built — albeit smaller than the 10,000-square-foot facility advocates had hoped for.
A final decision to build a skatepark at that site, behind Wagner Memorial Pool, wouldn’t come until after a master plan for Twisp Park was completed, assuming the town receives grant money to create the plan.
The Twisp Skatepark Coalition isn’t the only entity seeking space in Twisp Park. Groups interested in sand volleyball and a community garden have also expressed interest.
“I’m not fully supportive of the east Twisp Park location,” council member Seifried said. “For me to be comfortable supporting that location, I think I would just need to hear from more people in the community.”
Seifried and Filer both are concerned about losing green space in Twisp to a concrete skatepark.
Menzies, on the other hand, was supportive of the east park location. Matsui and council member Tim McGuire were OK with the location, too, as long as the town kept its options open.
Filer and Matsui in particular were interested in seeing the town acquire a private property across from the Idle-A-While Motel for public use, whether as a skatepark or as a gateway to town-owned property to the north that is being converted into open space as part of a salmon habitat project.
That location had been rejected as a skatepark site by the Parks and Recreation Commission, which noted strong opposition from neighbors — including the motel’s owner and management.
Even so, Filer didn’t want to close the door on the possibility of a skatepark across from the Idle-A-While.
“A lot of the concerns about that location were about safety,” given that the property runs along Highway 20, Filer said. “I believe those are very solvable problems.”
One apparent point of agreement among community members during the skatepark debate was that it shouldn’t be built at the Sports Complex, near Twisp Municipal Airport, because the location is less visible and accessible.
Seifried wasn’t ready to reject the Sports Complex location, saying that a skatepark at that site could become a draw for one of Twisp’s more underappreciated public spaces.
“If we want it to become a vibrant place where people go … having it be a place that draws people is also a good investment, in my mind,” she said.
Smith advised council members that they should decide on their priority location for a skatepark by the time the Twisp Park master plan grant is announced in October.
