The Clark County Council voted unanimously on Tuesday, July 15, to approve a $155,003 contract with ECOnorthwest to conduct an agricultural lands study, setting the county at risk of missing its state-mandated deadline of December 31, 2025.
Under the Growth Management Act (GMA), cities and counties are required to update their comprehensive plans by 2025 to accommodate 20 years of projected population and job growth. Cities are required to identify enough land for future housing and employment. Although the GMA does not require an agricultural lands study, state law prohibits cities from expanding urban growth boundaries onto designated resource lands, such as farmland, unless the county first reviews and potentially undesignates them.
Late last year, city leaders from Ridgefield and La Center argued for the inclusion of a study to assess whether some agricultural lands should be reclassified for future development. The newly approved study will analyze land in unincorporated areas of the county outside current urban growth boundaries to determine whether it should be retained with agricultural protections. Under state law, a comprehensive, countywide study is required before such land can be redesignated and made eligible for development.
Council Chair Sue Marshall, who has previously warned the study could jeopardize the county’s compliance with the state Growth Management Act (GMA), joined in Tuesday’s unanimous vote despite her concerns. The contract approval followed a tight 3-2 vote in April to revive the study, after the council had previously canceled it in March due to timeline concerns. Ridgefield and La Center both submitted proposals that would require removing farmland protections to accommodate job and housing growth, prompting the cities to push for the reinstatement of the study.
“The votes aren’t there to change it, and in terms of doing an agricultural study... the consultant firm … put in a reasonable proposal and it would be a worthwhile endeavor,” Marshall said. “Somebody’s gonna do an agricultural study, we want to have a good study.”
Marshall also responded to The Reflector regarding comments made by La Center Mayor Tom Strobehn in June, criticizing the county’s handling of the comprehensive plan. He stated that Marshall had previously toured La Center with him and expressed support, only to question the continuation of the study later. Strobehn also told The Reflector that the county’s delay in adding the study resulted in an additional nearly $90,000 cost to its comprehensive plan update, which was used to pay city consultants for the comprehensive plan.
“Some demonize the county as if the county is applying some heavy hand on all of this, but what we’re doing is trying to do our best to comply with the Growth Management Act,” Marshall said.
“If the mayor of La Center wants to take a comment I may have made out of context to support his narrative, you know, that’s his prerogative to do that,” Marshall said. “It doesn’t really advance the conversation… If you advance the conversation [we had] further, I asked if the land that they were wanting to bring in was agricultural land, and I said that would be difficult. It’s not easy to bring in agricultural land.”
The study is now expected to delay the comprehensive plan update until May 2026, which may lead to the Growth Management Hearings Board determining noncompliance with state law. This may lead to the county becoming ineligible for certain state short-term loans and grants next year.
Clark County is noncompliant with state law as of press time due to a 2022-approved surface mining overlay, which lacked an Environmental Impact Statement. This resulted in county staff reportedly not applying for certain short-term loans and grants, making the loss in funding difficult to determine for the Clark County Council. The overlay has since been repealed by the Council as of May.
She said the current deadline of December 31, 2025, is set in statute, and if the comprehensive plan is submitted late, the state could once again withhold critical funding.
“There’s a penalty that the county could be facing,” Marshall said. “Not the cities... it will all fall on the county because the county is the governing entity that adopts the overall comprehensive plan.”
As of press time, the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board had not yet issued a formal ruling on whether Clark County is back in compliance following the repeal of the mining overlay. A meeting on the matter was scheduled for Monday, July 21 as of press time.
