06/02/2006: "Stop County Council"

The County Council is on the verge of surrendering important property rights of landowners in rural and resource lands.
Unless and until the County loses the guesthouse appeal now pending in the Court of Appeals, property owners in those areas—which constitute a significant proportion of County lands—have the right to build a main residence and a small accessory dwelling unit to use as they please. (The overwhelming majority use their guesthouses for friends and family on occasional visits. A small number rent their guesthouses long-term to supplement heir income. And a very, very small number rent them on a transient basis.)

The Council is poised to extinguish those rights, permanently and for no reason other than to appease the "Friends" of the San Juans. Make no mistake: the so-called "local solution" now pending before the Council may purport to authorize a few guesthouses for a few property owners, but as a practical matter, no one we know would be able to satisfy its ridiculous prerequisites. For most, the requirement of a separate water membership—even when the existing water access is sufficient for both structures—is an insurmountable impediment. And the proposed "vesting ordinance" leaves most of the people who have been planning (and waiting) for years to build their home or guesthouse in the lurch.

The hearing next week will likely be the last chance County property owners will have to voice their opposition to these unnecessary limits on guesthouses, short of formal litigation. Once the County dismisses its appeal, the rights of property owners will be extinguished. Rather than executing their surrender to the will of the "Friends," the County should let the appeals court decide the issue; unless the court rules against the County--which seems unlikely at this point--it will be clear to one and all that the County Council, and the Council alone, is responsible for this abandonment of its citizens.

Ever the since the "Friends" began this litigation many years ago, they have sought to persuade County residents that there is a guesthouse problem, and that having a guesthouse is both illegal and environmentally irresponsible in most cases. This is simply not true. Until the "Friends" sued to invalidate the existing guesthouse ordinance, there was no question that a guesthouse was permitted in rural and resource lands. Although the "Friends" persuaded the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, and the Superior Court upheld one part of the Board's decision, that case is on appeal and that decision is not final. If the appeals court rules in the County's favor, the old guesthouse rules will still be in effect. But if the County dismisses the appeal before the Court rules, then the Board's overreaching decision will stand.

So, in preparation for the final showdown on June 6, we should review the issues that have been obscured by political double-talk over the past two years as the "Friends" have been maneuvering for a settlement, rather than a decision, in the guesthouse case that they filed some seven years ago.

Peg Manning
Orcas