In late 2022, the community of Roslyn was prompted to engage with development concerns around the Roslyn Urban Forest with a formal survey.
This survey received a little over 200 views, 86 starts and 35 completed entries.
In 2023 the City of Roslyn will disseminate another Survey which will hopefully capture more voices. Be sure to sign up for SMS notifications by texting, "Overlay" to 509-260-2602.
On November 16th, 2022 the City of Roslyn came together as a united community to discuss the fate of zoning ordinances imposed by previous administrations which restricted the fair use of property owners bordering the Roslyn Urban Forest.
Nearly 50 people showed up either in person or virtually! Including the current property owners affected by the Overlay.
The goal of this summary is to communicate a temperature reading on the discussion that occurred in the room that day. The City of Roslyn did record the teleconferenced meeting, so please be sure to request the City to post the recording as soon as it is available.
For now please refer to the summary below:
Mark Garka chaired the meeting and all commissioners were present along with City staff and two representatives from City Council.
Property owners of the parcels in the Overlay spoke first. Prior to opening the floor to comment, Mr. Garaka asked the public to voice their opinions on the fate of the current provisions of the Urban Forest Overlay by sharing their preference for,
(1) leaving it as is, (2) modifying it (3) eliminating it entirely.
Only one landowner in the overlay voted to eliminate the overlay entirely. The other landowners in the room that day shared their interest in modifying the code to retain some elements of the current code.
Members of the public at large overall understood the unfairness of the current code through public discussion. After becoming more informed on the history of the codes' origin and implementation, the public at the meeting was curious to understand how the land stewardship plan might be referenced in future code revisions to properties that border the Urban Forest regardless of the Overlay designation or not. The majority of the public voiced a similar trend seeking only to retain a modified version of the current code.
There was some confusion related to the definition of a forest, in that some public members cited the lack of forest structures on their property, leading to personal concerns about eligibility for overlay enforcement.
Unfortunately, the Land Stewardship Plan is not an accessible document for all individuals as it contains over 50 pages of technical details specific to the Roslyn Urban Forest. It was requested by community members to rewrite the provisional guidelines that cite the LSP in a more clear and more specific way. Some community members requested the creation of a formal buffer zone containing provisional guidelines referenced in the LSP. This viewpoint seemed to resonate in favor of the subset of people who voted to modify the current overlay code.