It isn’t over until it’s over.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors is set to approve the county’s new general plan on June 3 — having voted unanimously to signal their intent to do so on Tuesday — but major questions left from the two-and-a-half-year-old general plan debate are yet to be resolved.

The applause had barely ended Tuesday after the board voted its intent to approve the county general plan update before the supervisors voted to start another controversial planning process with long-term implications for the county.

The board voted unanimously to take a look at the several so-called urban bubbles in the county, areas from Big Ranch Road to Moskowite Corners zoned for possible residential development. The study will include the controversial Angwin urban bubble and the debate about development in the rural village high in the hills.

At practically the same time, the county will redo the housing element of its general plan — a gauge of how much residential growth will be allowed in the county for the next several years.

Add to that a Napa County Transportation and Planning Agency led-countywide planning summit that will likely take place June 13. It will take on the subject of how much growth is occurring throughout the county and the cities.

“We’re hammering out just how we want to approach this,” said Eliot Hurwitz, program manager for transportation and land use at NCTPA. “The long-range planning issues that face the county don’t stop at any particular boundary.”

The woman at the helm of the general plan update, Napa County Planning Director Hillary Gitelman, wasn’t celebrating too much Tuesday. But she said the road ahead makes sense to her.

“I think all three exercises are going to inform each other, so the timing is going to work out well,” Gitelman said.

The county must have a state-certified housing element in hand by June 2009, she said, which essentially means it must provide a draft to the state in 2008. Having the urban bubble issues settled at roughly the same time the county does a planning summit could help iron out all the major planning issues facing the county so staff would have an easier time constructing a housing element.

“The intention was to try and preserve agriculture and to look at each bubble individually to see if the boundaries need to be adjusted,” Gitelman said.