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a node to determine whether the entire parcel should be included in or'excluded from the node. o The staff report has been revised to indicate that the clustering provisions incorporated into the county's comprehensive plan were prompted by amendments to resolve plan intervenors' issues as well as to. meet DCA's stipulated settlement agreement requirements. o The staff revised the Capital Improvements Element to correct the mis-labeling of Table 13.17. It is staff's position that the referenced changes satisfy DCA's concerns and adequately address the issues identified in the ORC report. Future Land Use Element Policy 1.23 As identified in the Description and Conditions section of this staff report, several problems have been identified with respect to policy 1.23. Mostly, these problems relate to a lack of specificity with the policy, particularly a lack of any defined methodology to estimate node size, node development percentage, and other components of the policy. Also, the policy fails to identify circumstances that would make a node expansion "otherwise warranted." In analyzing Policy 1.23, staff has found that the Policy's substantive criteria appear to be adequate to accomplish the objective of allowing node expansion only when a need for that expansion has been justified. The lack of specified methodology, however, detracts from implementation of this policy by changing the focus of node expansion requests from substantive to procedural issues. In node expansion amendment requests addressed by staff since plan adoption, considerable time, effort, and expense have been expended to estimate node size and developed acreage. This has occurred because different sources of information and different assumptions have been useck by applicants and staff. The result has been an emphasis on methodology disagreements, instead of an analysis of substantive criteria based on accepted data, information and calculations. To rectify this problem, staff has revised policy 1.23 to incorporate a methodology to be used to assess node expansion requests. As reflected in the revised policy, the changes involve specification of information sources (current node boundary map, and property appraiser's map) and identification of a development area determination methodology. With these changes, policy 1.23 will be more easily understood and applied by the planning and zoning commission, board of county commissioners, staff, and applicants. While policy 1.23 has a specific 70 percent node expansion criterion, the policy also has the "otherwise warranted" catch-all phrase. Although that phrase had been included to provide flexibility, it has not served that purpose. Instead, DCA has reviewed node expansion requests strictly - using the 70 percent factor and generally discounting the unless "otherwise warranted" phrase because of its lack of specificity. Consequently, DCA had suggested that the policy be revised to delete the phrase or to more specifically define it. Since staff has addressed several node expansion requests, various circumstances warranting expansion without a 70 percent or more buildout have been identified. These include: a need to accommodate a use where no suitable sites for expansion exist in 123