04/20/2006: "A Very Serious Guesthouse Problem"

By Miriam Ziegler and Tom Baldwin

What on earth are we arguing about? We feel as if we are living a bad dream, one of those nightmares in which everything is distorted beyond recognition.

The current battle raging in the San Juan Islands over the issue of Guesthouses (aka Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs) really makes little or no sense to an impartial, outside observer. Surely, the Friends of the San Juans are committed to saving us all from some dreadful future of (sub)urban sprawl that will spoil the beauty that we all cherish. But is their fear founded in fact? Or are the methods that they use to save us from ourselves fair, honest, or even legal? Let's step back and think rationally about the realities of life and property use in the San Juans.

By now, surely everyone in the county is aware of the statistics surrounding guesthouses: a study commissioned by the County in 2001 showed that fewer than 8% of rural and resource lands had ADUs of any kind (detached, attached, or internal); only 3% of R&R parcels had ADUs used as long term rental units, and less than 1% for transient rental, mainly during the summer months. It seems from these and many other data gathered by the County that there is no guesthouse problem and none on the horizon apparent to any rational observer.

Yet, we have a very serious guesthouse problem. In 1996 we bought a 5-acre parcel on the south end of Turtleback Mountain overlooking West Sound, and after a great deal of planning and investment, we built a one-bedroom 800 sq. ft. guesthouse. Our plan was to use the guesthouse as a vacation home during the final decade or so of our careers as college teachers, and when we retired, to build the final residence. The guesthouse would be just that, a place for our daughters to stay when they visited us. We were granted a 4 bedroom septic permit and we installed a 4 bedroom septic system. We reserved the prime building site for the future residence, put in the driveway and all the power, water, septic, phone, etc., to that site, and built our guesthouse nearby in 1997-98.

Enter the Friends of the San Juans, led by Lynn Bahrych, Maile Johnson and Joe Symons, who in 2000 sued San Juan County, claiming that the county was not in compliance with the Growth Management Act, and asking that the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board block all future construction of ADUs. The county has vigorously defended islanders' longstanding right to build and maintain guesthouses, however, and the appeals court was about to rule on the issue in 2005 when things suddenly changed.

The new County Council seems to have totally capitulated to the point of view espoused by the Friends of the San Juans. The Councilors, concerned that the county might win the appeal, obtained stay. One of our Councilors told us that if the County were to win the case, there would be a guesthouse on every parcel, resulting is many hundreds or thousands of new guesthouses. This is an amazing comment, considering that there are no data at all to support it, and yet, this person is deciding whether or not we can build a house on our 5-acre parcel, in addition to the existing 800 sq. ft. guesthouse.

To be sure, the Planning Department and the County Council have been working on a vesting ordinance, and we have been assured that our situation would be dealt with in a fair and reasonable manner. The current version of the vesting ordinance has an arbitrary and highly restrictive window, "5 years back and 2 years forward", that would allow anyone who built their guesthouse between November 30, 1995 and November 30, 2000 to build their main house within the next 2 years. Unfortunately, that timeline would not help us, nor would it include many other people in similar circumstances.

While the restrictive language might be removed or modified by the Planning Commission so that our own problem would be solved, our predicament is minor compared to what the County as a whole stands to lose. As citizens, our concern goes beyond whether our own specific circumstance will be accommodated by the County. The questions surrounding both the process and the substance of the final ordinance on ADUs are much broader than one property owner caught in the middle—though there are many others in similar situations. For an excellent review of the legalities and the potential harm to the County if an ordinance like the current proposal is passed by the Council, everyone should read the County Prosecutor's brief for the current case languishing on hold in the Court of Appeals: http://www.co.san-juan.wa.us/prosecutor/adu/sjc_brief_080604.pdf.

What we have now is an amazing situation. A relatively small group of people has, in effect, gained control of the County Council. The County's appeal of the WWGMHB decision has been put on hold for many months with the Appeals Court, and the County Council has recently requested an extension of that stay. A recent filing of a brief of Amici Curiae in opposition to the Council's request for another extension by two Orcas property owners has resulted in the Council's hastily moving up the public hearing date for the brand new ordinance banning all detached ADUs, an ordinance referred to as "simple" and "elegant" by our Councilors, to an earlier date in an effort to ram the ordinance through before the court has a chance to rule on the pending appeal. This process is clearly not open, fair, honest, reasonable or rational.

It is time for more County residents to ask our Councilors for some rational answers about why the Court ruling is being blocked, and to express their own views on ADUs to the Planning Commission and the County Council before and during the hearings on April 25 (Council Hearing on ADU ordinance) and April 26 (Planning Commission hearing on the vesting ordinance), and May 9 (tentatively scheduled Council work session on the vesting ordinance). Perhaps public opinion can actually apply some brakes to the runaway freight train.

It is clear to us that the battle royal over guesthouses is a phenomenal waste of precious time and taxpayer's money. We do not question the Friends' sincerity or commitment to their cause. However, we are scientists, and we are in the habit of relying on data to draw conclusions. In this case, the data do not support the Friends' case. Simply put, there is no guesthouse problem in San Juan County, other than the enormous mess that has been created by the Friends of the San Juans and compounded by the current County Council. It would be wonderful if these people would listen to the voices of their friends, neighbors and fellow citizens, and to the County Prosecutor Randy Gaylord who will have the unenviable responsibility of defending the County from the flood of lawsuits that will surely follow passage of the draconian ordinance currently being considered by the County Council.

(Miriam Ziegler and Tom Baldwin are members of the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics of the University of Arizona, Tucson.? We discovered Orcas Island in the early 1980s, when we were invited to UW to present a seminar on the cloning and expression in E. coli of the bioluminescence genes from luminous marine bacteria.? We?plan to retire around 2010-2012 and thereafter to live on Orcas Island)