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Port Orchard Independent

The
battle to defend property rights continues

Kitsap
County awarded farmland preservation grant

County
beats deadline for making CAO revisions

Little by
little, property rights being eroded

Washington
state's shoreline regulations are badly out of date

Kitsap County

LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR

County
approves Indianola preserve

Church
unloads unwanted property for preservation

Historic
preservation board set

The battle to preserve property rights is in
danger of being lost

By KARL DUFF
Port Orchard Independent Contributot

May 20 2010

It would be nice to find effective means of alerting the public as to what’s
happening to our property rights without necessarily shouting at the top of
one’s lungs.

A more graceful way of commenting on the skullduggery of paid “public
servants” without calling them liars would also help. But it doesn’t seem
possible

Since Kitsap County’s Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) was drafted in 2004, the
Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners (KAPO) has repeatedly filed correspondence
and testimony regarding the severe consequences of land-use regulations causing
once-legal property improvements to suddenly become “non-conforming”. (This term
is a land-use euphemism meaning “illegal, but temporarily tolerated.”)

Setbacks, buffers, impervious surfaces, auxiliary dwelling units, etc.,
characterize most non-conforming properties in our county that would never be
permitted today under newer regulations.

A “non-conforming” property is subject to severe restrictions against further
improvements, restoration and use, even if a home is destroyed by fire or storm.

It requires government variance to obtain permitting.

In addition to impacting insurance rates, variances can be appealed by
anyone. This then requires public hearings, starting with the Hearing Examiner.
This usually requires an attorney and produces further appeals at ever higher
and more expensive levels of litigation.

The next level of appeal is our county commissioners, then Superior Court,
then the Court of Appeals.

Cases have occurred in Kitsap County in which such appeals have caused the
property owner such hardships as (1) eight years of delay; (2) giving up and
leaving Kitsap; and, (3) bankruptcy — even when finally victorious in the
courts.

I’m not making this up.

The state Department of Ecology (DOE) has escalated the stakes for the
Shorelines Master Plan (SMP) updates. It published that it intends to “phase
out” all non-conforming properties.

For water-adjoining properties now bound under setbacks and buffer
restrictions, rendering them no longer conforming (i.e., buildable) means the
state intends them to eventually revert to natural shoreline wildlife habitat.

DOE, having now been caught on the record with this stated policy, is now
naturally denying it.

This should be properly regarded as a lie.

On Feb. 9, DOE was represented by high-level career staffer Eric Stockdale at
a San Juan County Council meeting with a power-point presentation on wetlands
rules, best-available science and updating processes to SMPs and CAOs.

When councilmember Howie Rosenfeld asked Stockdale how DOE was dealing with
non-conforming use in other counties, he answered by saying that San Juan County
was the “first and only jurisdiction” with concerns over DOE’s non-conformance
policy.

This is a strange fabrication, since it is known that these concerns have
been raised in Kitsap, Jefferson, King, Yakima and Okanogan counties and DOE,
having been previously caught lying, has even been obliged to publicly disavow
its published “phase out” policy.

Is this merely bureaucratic ineptitude — an indication of Stockdale’s
ignorance or non-professionalism?

No, Stockdale has been at DOE for a long time and did not just fall off the
turnip truck.

Schemes to stop growth and restore pre-Columbian wildlife habitat are
apparently further along than we knew.

This may explain why in 2005-6, Kitsap County steadfastly refused to provide
“grandfather” clauses for already-developed properties in the Critical Areas
Ordinance (CAO), despite KAPO’s vigorous calls for such property protection.

State DOE is also apparently now using a policy of isolating individual
counties by whatever means they can to further intimidate and extend its
regulatory control over private property.

By isolating counties (i.e., “You’re all alone, San Juan; no one else sees
the problem you claim”), DOE can more easily impose its way.

It has even required individual counties to sign SMP update performance
contracts in order to obtain state grant money (read: bribes) to help defray
costs.

DOE has selected one of the weakest (and environmentally radicalized)
counties, Jefferson County, as the first to face DOE approval of its SMP update.
Once Jefferson is “in the bag,” DOE anticipates this precedent will make it
easier to roll over the other counties.

There will be no rescue from these policies unless private citizens and
businesses rise up to defend against such illegal “takings” by government of
private property that prohibit owners from use, without compensation, contrary
to the rights declared in our state and federal Constitutions.

Too many citizens busy with other things have rationalized that what sounds
good for the environment must be good for all of us, without realizing that by
remaining uninvolved, they’re giving away to government the most essential
commodity that makes us a free people — our property.

Karl Duff is a Port Orchard resident.

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