Legal Battles, Public Testimonies Highlight Challenges of Shared Vision
Recently proposed zoning law changes has some Okanogan County residents seeing red.
Most of the people who testified in the commissioner’s office and Agriplex this spring expressed what they see as an unfair process that skirted public review. In response, a group of property rights activists formed the Okanogan County Property Rights Coalition (OCPRC), a conservative property rights advocacy group that is going through the proposed zoning changes line by line. They don’t like that less than 20% of Okanogan County is in private hands, and the land that’s left is being regulated even more.
The debate over zoning and the future of Okanogan County is one of stewardship versus protection. Those on the stewardship side favor interaction between humans and the natural environment. Protectionists favor limiting human intrusion to the extent possible.
It’s also a battle over differing visions of Okanogan County, what some see as transplants from the west side that want to protect the land versus long-time residents, who are often poorer, that want to develop it. They are not unaware that organizations such as Futurewise and Methow Valley Citizens Council have donors from Seattle and Methow Valley, which might as well be Seattle, from their point of view. Outsiders are viewed with suspicion.
“I should have worn my cowboy boots,” said a Methow Valley resident of 30 years after a recent OCPRC meeting, concerned that her tennis shoes might have given the wrong impression.
The members of the coalition include farmers, small business owners, and retirees. Marc Doney and Nick Timm, who are both running for the open District 1 Commissioner seat this November, attended recent meetings. Timm announced his candidacy for the seat at a coalition meeting in March. Both Timm and Doney oppose what they call “cookie cutter zoning,” applying a zoning code across different areas of a county that is larger than three states in the union.
The coalition wants to stop special interests from outside the county influencing their corner of the world. They view Methow Valley as an elite establishment that doesn’t represent the views of the whole county, and they’re worried about its influence.
OCPRC is fueled by passion, not funding. Their entry into the zoning debate highlights the challenges grass roots organizations with little to no budget have against well-established organizations with full-time employees. Members rush to monthly meetings after work and are given homework assignments between meetings that push their agenda forward. Keeping up with public meetings in Okanogan, which can be an hour or more away for some people, is another challenge.
“If we elect conservative commissioners, then we don’t have to babysit them and we can move on with our lives,” OCPRC co-founder Kathy Powers told the group at a recent meeting. “We need a conservative patriot to serve on the board to stop this nonsense.”
At issue is how the county should develop in the next chapter of its life. Growth is pitted against limited natural resources. If one loses, the other will likely rebel.
First Comprehensive Plan Update in 50 Years Leads to Web of Lawsuits
Prior to the first revision of the comprehensive plan in 2014, the plan hadn’t been revised since 1964. The comprehensive plan is a blueprint on which the zoning code is based. It identifies land use, including areas intended for growth and land set aside for forests, mining and agriculture. Within a month of its revision in 2014, Futurewise and MVCC filed a lawsuit. They asserted the comprehensive plan allowed more growth than the existing water supply could sustain. The Department of Ecology agreed and filed an amicus brief.
In March 2016, Okanogan County Superior Court Judge Christopher Culp said he could not make a determination in the case until the zoning code was adopted and he could make a determination whether it indeed impacted water quantity and quality, as well as the effect it would have on wildfire risk and farmland preservation. A zoning code was adopted a few months later. MVCC and Futurewise appealed again, this time joined by the Yakama Nation in a separate lawsuit.
In June 2017, Judge Culp issued a stay on the lawsuit with MVCC and Futurewise on the condition that the county revise its comprehensive plan and zoning code by December 31, 2018. Yakama Nation agreed to dismiss its lawsuit if the county passed a new zoning code that met the court order by that date. The county missed the deadline. Yakama Nation agreed to a stay until the county adopted a new zoning code that complied with the court order.
In July 2019, the planning department released a new comprehensive plan for public comment. The planning director left at the end of the year and Stephanie “Pete” Palmer was hired for the position. Palmer worked in planning for the Colville Confederated Tribes and is a tribal member.
The county hired a law firm in Seattle to ensure the new zoning code met the requirements of the court order. To observers like the OCPRC, this was evidence that outside interests were having an undue influence in Okanogan County. From their standpoint, the closed door, behind the scenes revision of the zoning code was a subversion of the democratic process.
At the end of 2021, the county approved the new comprehensive plan. Futurewise and MVCC re-opened their lawsuit alleging the county didn’t properly protect water, natural resources, or deal with wildfire risk. That suit is ongoing.
Trying to Make Everyone Happy
Sheilah Delfeld, who served as Okanogan County Commissioner for District 1 from 2012 to 2016 and attended a recent OCPRC meeting, said the planning commission is supposed to receive recommendations from the public, then pass its report to the planning director, which then passes it to the county commissioners for review and public comment. Instead, she said, the county had a top-down approach- the planning department submitted revised changes to the planning commission, often before the planning commission has had time to fully digest the previous draft. Delfeld said people didn’t notice changes to the law until it started to affect them.
Farmers are afraid that without property rights protections, their land will be worth far less.
“Agriculture is demonized. They love over-regulating it,” said Dick Ewing, former head of the Farm Bureau and OCPRC member. “It makes it difficult to pass to the younger generation because they don’t want the hassle.”
Ewing wants to separate “what is actually necessary to have a good county and what is abusive.”
OCPRC says regulations against subdivisions, even in non-farm situations, decrease the value of private property. Among the zoning changes are the replacement of minimum one acre lots with two acres per requirements by Okanogan County Public Health to accommodate wells and septic systems. Palmer said this has been a county and state regulation for years. An exception could be made if the parcel is connected to a public water or sewer system or there is a suitable soil type.
“There’s a woman here who owns 300 acres of land. We feel she should be able to do what she wants with her private property. If she wants to sell to a developer, she should be able to,” said Nicole Kuchenbuch, an OCPRC co-organizer.
When asked about the ramifications of development on the look and character of Okanogan County, Kuchenbuch pointed to the difficulty of staying in agriculture and ranching businesses. A fourth-generation resident of Okanogan County, both she and her husband have second jobs to support their ranching business. She is worried her land will be worth much less if it can’t be subdivided and she, like other members of OCPRC, doesn’t want to be dictated by special interest groups what Okanogan County should look like.
Jasmine Minbashian, Executive Director of MVCC, says the opposite is true. “If you don’t want Okanogan County to look like a suburb of Seattle, you have to have good zoning. If we stop and think about it, we have more in common than we believe and we don’t want this place to become like a suburb.”
“The tragedy is if we keep subdividing Okanogan County, then we definitely won’t have farming in Okanogan County,” she added. “It’s a problem we can solve if we communicate. I don’t see property values going down anytime soon. We have the opposite problem- property values are going up too fast.”
OCPRC Volunteers Roll Up Their Sleeves
At a recent OCPRC meeting, volunteers broke into work groups. One group divided the 200 pages of the proposed zoning code into sections and assigned them to volunteers to go over line by line, highlighting property rights violations. Another group worked on submitting a FOIA request to obtain the court order for zoning. Another group read the legalese of prior court decisions. Another group worked on a press release to relay the coalition’s concerns to local media outlets. One member formed a private group on Facebook to get more people in the community involved. The group doesn’t have money or expertise in this area, but they did the only thing they knew how to do- roll up their sleeves and got to work.
The group is short on time. Powers reminds the group that the planning commission meeting is the fourth Monday of the month, as more people filter into the meeting from their day jobs.
Ewing, the de facto consultant to the coalition, advises the group to submit written comments so that they can be part of the official record. The group is learning as they go, and anyone with special skills or know-how speaks up.
“We’re not a silent majority. So we are a loud minority?” Powers asks the group.
First Things First
After years of delays, court stays, and the upcoming departure of Chris Branch, District 1 County Commissioner who has taken the lead on zoning issues and who is not running for re-election this year, county commissioners are pressing the planning commission to complete their work by limiting their scope to the absolute essentials required to meet the court order. At a meeting in May, the commissioners acknowledged they should have done this earlier.
The commissioners want the planning commission to first deal with the code that satisfies the legal requirements. Then the commissioners can solicit public comments and vote on the proposal. After the legal requirements are met, the planning commission can solicit feedback and submit recommendations on all of the other parts of the code.
Who knows how long that process will take.
