Island Guardian

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing - Revealed

By Jay Kimball

Last October, Kevin Ranker, Alan Lichter, and the Friends of San Juans offered silky sound bytes about how their new Guesthouse/ADU agreement would end litigation, allow new guesthouses, provide affordable housing, save money, reduce taxes, blah, blah, blah.

For those of you watching the issue in the papers the past few weeks, the truth is out - the latest revision bans guesthouses, offers nothing for affordable housing, and lest we forget, is partnered with an agreement that San Juan Prosecuting Attorney has said is "illegal" and neither the Council nor the "Friends" have been able to refute. In what Councilman Ranker referred to as their "local solution", the Council stands ready to deliver the big guesthouse giveaway to their "Friends".

As the playwright George Bernard Shaw said, "A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul."
This issue has been driven by the "Friends" leadership and litigants, who have their own guesthouses/cottages/studios and seem to want to "pull up the draw bridge" now that they have theirs. It has all the appearance of elitist hypocrisy.

Here is a Council that was about to see the county prevail in their multi-year litigation defense against the "Friends". At the 11th hour Kevin Ranker and Alan Lichter pulled the case from the courts and, working with their "Friends", dashed together 80 paragraphs of building code changes and an illegal settlement agreement. How ironic that our own county government would shoot itself in the foot on an issue it fought so hard for. Those must be some pretty good "Friends". Numerous editorials in the local papers have outlined the conflicts of interest each member of the Council has with the "Friends", as they ramrod the "Friends" agenda through.

Now while Ranker, Lichter and Myhr have been catering to their "Friends" needs, guesthouse supporters filed an Amicus Brief with the courts asking that the court decide the case. It caught the Council off guard and they panicked. The Council hastily accelerated the public hearings from May into April, and the "Friends" dashed together a counter to the Amicus Brief that gives the courts the impression that it is a "done deal" and asserts the County Council has "scheduled a vote to adopt the ordinance on April 25th." Really? How did the "Friends" get this inside information, and why is the Council rushing what is one of the most contentious issues they face? If we read the public announcements about the hearing, there is no indication a decision will be made. It says the hearing is to afford the public the opportunity to comment. You would think that the Council would want to hear from the public, ponder their concerns carefully, speak to the issue and have a dialog with the community. It would be nice if they took the time to visit each island, convene a community meeting and explain to the public why it takes 80 paragraphs of building code changes to make their "Friends" happy.

At the last Council hearing on the subject, Councilman Ranker expressed worry about the Amicus Brief and prodded Attorney Randy Gaylord to do something about it. Ranker also tried to suppress the dissenting opinion of the Planning Commission that called in to question the validity of the process and findings.

Clearly the Council is afraid of the courts. And the Council's attempts to repress dissent signal the weakness of the Council's case and their fear the public will catch on to it.

By not letting the courts decide, the Council is dooming the county to more endless litigation. Letters and emails to the Planning Commission during their review of the issue favored guesthouses 4 to 1. I spoke with the Council's administrator and judging from the emails and letters, she says it is the hottest issue before the Council. With so many people in the county affected, and with such gross mishandling by the Council, the Council's "local solution" will rapidly escalate into major litigation.

The only hope for a fair and balanced conclusion to this issue is to have the court decide the case. There is a petition going around asking the Council to do that. You can download a copy at www.OrcasStyle.com. And as I am writing this, I just received notice that the courts have reviewed the guesthouse supporters Amicus Brief and find the brief raises a "substantial issue".

If you care about this issue, the thing to do is to show up at the Council room on April 25th at 2:30 pm. You don't need to say anything. There will be plenty of people there for that. What is important is that the Council know we are concerned and are watching.

I checked the weather for that day, and the forecast calls for a beautiful day of democracy in action.

(Jay Kimball lives on Orcas Island and produces a web page dealing with the on-going Accessory Dwelling Unit issues)

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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)

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