The San Juan County Planning Commission spent the bulk of its Nov. 13 meeting reviewing a revised draft of the county general plan and directing staff to make targeted edits and schedule a public hearing for December.

Staff described the draft as primarily a reordering and clarification of existing material with updated survey results included in the packet. Staff asked the commission whether to retain a separate "recreational support" zoning designation or to omit that label and treat recreational support uses inside a broader multiple‑use framework. "When I looked at kind of the code requirements ... it doesn't state that you have to specify all the zones that are included on a land use plan," a staff presenter said, describing why the general plan can remain high‑level while leaving zone specifics to the ordinance.

Commissioners debated how much detail the map should show. Some said the vision map should remain “high level” so it does not conflict with future zoning; others said the current map's industrial/industrial‑shaded areas are misleading compared to the proposed zoning map and urged a clearer comparison. One commissioner said the map looked “misleading in lots of different ways” and recommended integrating the more detailed proposed zoning map as a cross‑reference. The commission also requested explicit references to State Trust Lands Administration (SITLA/STA) holdings and clarified language about tribal, state and federal land ownership.

Policy questions dominated the discussion. Commissioners weighed allowing more permissive uses (for example, a commissioner argued future energy and extraction options should not be ruled out) against protecting water resources and infrastructure that limit higher‑density development. The group discussed housing priorities and a housing survey that staff said projects a continuing population decline unless workforce housing and affordability are addressed.

Commissioner TC circulated a simpler proposed use table to reduce categories to five core types — residential, multiuse, highway commercial, industrial and agricultural — and several commissioners supported the simplified draft as a starting point for ordinance language. Commissioners also asked staff to ensure the use table does not create unintended nonconforming parcels and to preserve existing approved overlays and development agreements on the county website.

Staff will circulate a revised draft that incorporates the commission's edits, add explicit SITLA/STA references in the public lands section, and publish updated overlays in GIS. The commission agreed to push the updated general plan out for a public hearing in December and asked a volunteer community outreach group to broaden notice ahead of that hearing.

What happens next: staff will make the agreed edits, circulate the redlines to commissioners for review, finalize GIS map overlays and publish notice for the December public hearing.