POULSBO — Even though the public hearing for the city’s proposed Critical Areas Ordinance is set for Feb. 21, Planning Director Barry Berezowsky doesn’t expect it to be passed that night.

“The earliest I would expect the council to adopt it would be March 7,” Berezowsky told the council’s public works committee Wednesday evening.

The council could adopt the new CAO Feb. 21 or send it back to the Planning Commission for revisions, he said. Once the new CAO is adopted by the council, the citywide moratorium on development in or near critical areas will end.

But that still leaves the city’s new Planned Unit Development or Planned Residential Development ordinance to be approved before that citywide moratorium on them expires March 13. That is, unless the council extends the ban at its March 7 meeting, Berezowsky said.

In anticipation that the council will prolong the moratorium on PUDs, Berezowsky said plans are underway to have the Planning Commission in addition to four community members review the ordinance in March and present it to the city council.

“Those community members will represent the wide range of interests associated with the PUD ordinance,” he said. “We don’t want to have someone who is directly affected or has a dog in the fight.”

By having community members work with the Planning Commission, the hope is to expedite the review process, Berezowsky said.

“Is this something entirely new or is it something we can cut and paste?” Councilman Mike Regis asked in an attempt to gauge the full scope of work involved.

The PRD ordinance is an entirely new document that was written in response to the misuse of the current ordinance, Berezowsky said.

“We were seeing a lot of small lot subdivisions,” he said. “If we wanted to do small lot subdivisions, we could just change our code to allow them.”

Because the standard for open space and recreation areas is so low in the current PUD ordinance, the intent of Planned Unit Developments wasn’t being fulfilled, Berezowsky said.

“It was never our intent to allow small lot subdivisions,” Councilman Jeff McGinty said. “We were trying to give them another tool to use to develop property.”

PRDs could be useful in attempts to develop parcels of land which are currently encumbered by critical areas that restrict normal development practices, Berezowsky said.

“You could use it come up with the density, but still protect the critical areas,” Berezowsky said.

Regis said before that idea is considered though, the city must take a look at the entire area that would be potentially impacted.