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The proposed amendment also allows potable water service to any approved agricultural business if the business is located near the urban service area. To qualify for this allowance. at least a portion of the business's development site must be located within one mile of a public roadway which serves as an urban service area boundary. The utility service revisions related to agricultural areas involve Future Land Use Element Policy 6.1. Sanitary Sewer Sub -Element Policy 5.8. and Potable Water Sub -Element Policy 5.7. Post -Disaster Recovery and Redevelopment Coastal Management Element Objective 7 and the eight policies associated with that objective involve post -disaster recovery and redevelopment. Specifically. Objective 7 and Policies 7.2. 7.3. and 7.4 call for the development and adoption of a Local Mitigation Strategy (LMS) as an annex to the County's Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. In November. 1999. the Board of County Commissioners adopted an LMS. That action implemented and completed Policies 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4. which can now be deleted. The proposed amendment will revise Objective 7; create a new Policy 7.2 to ensure implementation of the LMS: delete Policies 7.3, and 7.4; and renumber the remaining policies. ANALYSIS This section will present an analysis of the reasonableness of the proposed amendment. followed by a discussion of the consistency of the proposed amendment with the comprehensive plan. ANALYSIS OF REASONABLENESS OF PROPOSED AMENDMENT Optional Agricultural PDs The key component of Agricultural PDs is the requirement to cluster lots. In theory, there are several advantages associated with this requirement. Those advantages are: is Clustering preserves agricultural uses; Clustering discourages urban sprawl; 3. Clustered development can be served more efficiently; and 4. Clustering allows incremental, rather than "leap frog " expansion of the urban service area. During public discussions on the subject. however. the Board of County Commissioners made several findings indicating that the Agricultural PD process is not achieving its goals of preserving agriculture and open space, or discouraging urban sprawl. As a whole. the Board's findings indicate that clustering through the Agricultural PD process should be changed to an option, rather than remaining a requirement. Those findings are as follows: The Agricultural PD process is lengthy and expensive, particularly for small (40 acres or less) land owners. Most Agricultural PDs have been within this size category. The community prefers allowing both the clustered and the unclustered development options to be available to owners of agriculturally designated land. Even if the Agricultural PD process were made optional. an incentive to use it remains. That incentive is that the ability to connect to centralized utility service remains available only to Agricultural PDs. March 20, 2001