One of Bainbridge Island’s newest council members has been pressing his fellow councilors to pass a building ban that would halt large-scale development on the island.

Councilman Ron Peltier is calling for a development moratorium to be adopted by the council while the city is updating its comprehensive plan, the expansive policy document that will guide growth on the island for the next two decades.

Peltier, who was elected to the council in November after a campaign that largely focused on growth and development issues, began beating the drum for a building ban just weeks after his victory at the ballot box was certified as official.

In mid December, he sent an email to five other council members who would still be on the council in January, as well as all seven members of the city’s planning commission, in which he proposed the adoption of a development moratorium.

“Over the past couple of years Islanders have seen dramatic changes on our Island negatively impacting its special character and the quality of life,” Peltier wrote. “We need a break from projects such as Visconsi, Grow Village, and the Wyatt development which has brought us our latest large clear cut.

“These types of ongoing land uses are threatening to undo what we hope to protect in our comp plan update. They are slowly ruining our Island.  While we plan for a sustainable future, and preservation of the Island’s special character, developers and land owners are undoing it, piece by piece,” he added.

In the email, Peltier recalled the briefing from Planning Director Katharine Cook during the orientation for new council members at city hall.

Peltier said the planning director “warned that development pressures from outside are building” and that the traditional seasonal lull in building permits had not materialized.

Peltier said he wanted a moratorium on “subdivisions, major site plans and major conditional use permits, as well as building permits in high aquifer recharge areas.”

“A failure to do this will mean that the things we hope to achieve with our comp plan, and with the update of our critical areas ordinance, will continue to be preempted by a development community eager to profit from the increased demand for housing,” he added.

Peltier said this week he would say more about his proposal at the next council meeting.

“I would encourage citizens to attend that meeting to hear for themselves what I and my colleagues will have to say,” he said in an email to the Review.

In his email to council members and planning commissioners, he asked for support.

He began by noting: “While I am still a council member elect I would like to take the opportunity to address you as a group, something I won’t be able to do by email when I officially become a council member.”

A moratorium, he wrote, “will allow us to plan for the future of our Island without watching it unravel before our eyes in the meantime…It’s time for us to step up and defend our community vision and show Islanders the leadership they expect from us.”

Using the comp plan update as the critical reason for the building ban could potentially halt some development for a year, however.

Although the comp plan rewrite was expected to wrap up this summer, City Manager Doug Schulze announced Tuesday the city was seeking an extension from the state that would give Bainbridge until the end of the year to finish the rewrite of the growth plan. Schulze said the update had fallen behind schedule largely because of the “very robust public participation” in the project.

The moratorium idea was an unexpected addition to this week’s council agenda.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, Councilman Roger Townsend asked for the item to be added to the agenda and said emails about the proposed moratorium had “flooded my inbox.”

Discussion of the moratorium was pushed off to the end of the meeting, and was finally taken up nearly four hours after the start.

By then, some on the council said talk about the ban should be pushed off until the next meeting.

A few members of Bainbridge’s building community told the council that public discussion of a moratorium may create negative ripple effects and could lead to uncertainty about projects and jobs.

Still, Townsend said any talk of a moratorium should be done in public and not just on social media.

“I think it’s important as a council for us to have a public discussion that is reviewable, and I think it is an idea that merits discussion,” he said.

“I’m not certainly saying that I’m a proponent of it necessarily, or really ultimately,” Townsend added. “But I am a proponent of making a public process and having that conversation — and not having it occur just by email or just in the paper.”

The council agreed to add the topic to its agenda for the next meeting on Jan. 19.