This interview was edited for clarity.
Planning Commissioner Rachel Levi voted no on the Milltown development. My understanding was that they could not vote no. They can’t vote no because legally, unless there’s some kind of code or something else, it would be discriminatory to vote no. So I’m wondering how that was even possible.
I guess I’ll speak broadly. My understanding from reviewing how council members and planning commission members are supposed to deliberate for quasi-judicial hearing, which is what that the planned development is, whatever decision they make, they should have findings of fact supporting the decision, and those findings should be consistent with what our code describes their authorization for decision making is. So they can’t be arbitrary.
In the case where she voted no, she was voting no against the motion to recommend approval of the permit. So she wasn’t necessarily, by definition, voting no against the permit. She could have. As far as I know, she didn’t state any of this, so I can’t speak to her mind frame, but she could have said in the discussion section of the vote, I would vote for this motion if there were different conditions, for instance, based on these fightings of fact. It doesn’t necessarily mean she was just opposed to doing it.
Now, if the Planning Commission as a whole voted to disapprove, and they don’t get to disapprove. They get to make the recommendation to the council. But if that is how they decided, they would need to state findings of facts supporting that decision, why the project isn’t consistent with town goals and policies.
Do you find that the people that come on the planning commission, that they’re kind of for development? I mean, that’s kind of the reason why they’re on the planning commission, right? They want to navigate how that happens?
I think people are there for various reasons.
I don’t have finding a fact. It’s just a sentiment that I’m getting. They want to be part of the discussion. Like, it’s going to happen, and you just want to make it in a positive way. Some of the comments that [commissioners] made… kind of like, well, I don’t really like it, but it’s good, you know? So, comments like that where they’re kind of wishy-washy, but then they’re making a permanent decision.
I think that’s the challenge of quasi-judicial matters is they’re not empowered to just not like something and then vote accordingly. It’s not their opinion. They’re acting as in a judge’s capacity to make sure the project is consistent with what they’re authorized to make decisions on. Like I said, they can’t be arbitrary.
I totally understand. I guess where I’m coming from, and I think other people are coming from, is what you qualify as arbitrary is arbitrary.
We don’t have anything that prohibits us from allowing growth in town. If we want to stop growth, we have to pass, whatever it is, prohibitions or moratoriums, or change our code now before the applications come in.
We don’t have anything that prohibits us from allowing growth in town.
You saw this in the pipeline. These things take years to develop. Milltown was put in 2023. [Twisp Town Planner Thom] Vetter probably knows things down the pipeline. So when you say there’s this code on what siding you’re going to use, or what your height is going to be, that’s not arbitrary. I’m playing devil’s advocate here. If the population decreased by 26%, I’d be writing the same story. But in this situation, the population is increasing.
We don’t have anything in our code that allows us to say no to development. That’s not something they can point at and be like, we’re not going to allow this development because our code says we shouldn’t.
We don’t have anything in our code that allows us to say no to development.
There’s nothing to point to.
Yeah.
[Twisp Councilmember Will] Menzies said the same thing about [Stonefly Communtity LLC]. He’s like, Oh, great. Another $600,000 kind of unit going up. I think his quote was even, like, it’s not going to contribute anything to Twisp, but he voted for it. You get these comments that there are people that are hesitant, but there’s no avenue.
And that’s what I’m saying is when you’re sitting in the quasi-judicial seat, which is different than the legislative seat, it’s another responsibility of those elected officials or appointed officials for the planning commission. When you’re in quasi-judicial, you know that legally, and you can be held personally liable if you don’t follow what the rules say for those quasi-judicial decisions, the only way you have to express your own personal sentiment is through sane comments like that. It’s like, I don’t really want to vote for this because I don’t think this is the best project for our town, but our code allows us to do it and this project is consistent with the code. Therefore, I’m voting yes. That’s what you got. And that is okay. They can virtue signal, even though they’re not required to vote yes, but they are required to have findings of fact for whatever decision they make.
…the only way you have to express your own personal sentiment is through sane comments like that.
Finding of fact is the key point. They’re not required to vote yes, but there’s nothing that would support them voting no.
Well, it depends. I could think of scenarios where you could vote no.
I mean current scenarios.
I won’t take a stand on current scenarios because that’s all potential litigation, right? If I were to tell you that Milltown is completely perfect with the code and the council should adopt it, and I’m kind of making a statement that could be used against whatever decision the council makes, and that’s not in the interest of the town. Like, I can’t do that. That would be me putting the town at legal risk, because the council hasn’t made a decision on Milltown yet.
But the bottom line is, and you know this pretty well, there is no legal basis for [preventing] this project. Let’s just take the emotion out of it. Like, concrete fact, there is nothing that will stop this development from happening.
I mean, it’s gone through a lot of reviews. If it’s appropriately conditioned, I agree. There should be nothing that stops it from happening. I’m not speaking specifically on the project. I’m saying if the project is appropriately conditioned to meet the requirements of our code, then it should get through the development approval process.
Does that mean that you’re in support of it?
I’m neutral on whether the town approves it or not. I will say, I’ve been working on that project as an elected official for a long time.
What do you think of it?
I think that the initial proposal is intended to address needs that the proponent saw in the community and I agree that people should be able to use their property through property rights consistent with what our code says. The special circumstance for that project that really involved a higher level of decision making from the town was whether or not to let the annexation occur.
Does that increase the value of that property?
It did. It also just made better sense for the land use proposal there. What we did is we put in mitigation measures for that annexation that they’re required to perform. So, by letting that property come into town, they’re now able to access our water and sewer.
That’s a huge gift that you gave them.
Well, it’s not a gift. It is factually what they’re able to access, but they’re also in return doing development on that property, which right now is at a much lower use than it will be once the project’s completed.
We have controls. Depending on how many units they put in on that project, there’s additional cost to them for their impact to our sewage treatment facility.
Because they have to put in the lines. They’re responsible for the line.
Well, they are, no matter what they are. We’re finishing updating our treatment plant, and there’s a lot of capital cost in that. If they’re going to have a larger impact because of the annexation, because a lot of the project is already in town, we’re not penalizing them for those potential units. Because they’re already in [town.]
So what’s the penalty for the additional units?
There’s extra costs they have to pay if they have hookups beyond a certain number in their project so that it offsets having the annexation come in. It offsets the cost to the current utility users.
Is it a one time cost?
It’s a one time cost. The one time cost for the connection, and then they have to pay in, like everyone else does routinely with their sewer bill.
Well, the owners…
Yes.
The owners will, not Hank [Konrad, owner of Milltown], but whoever he sells it to.
That’s correct. Whoever is operating. Whoever is connected to the system. But anyway, so the point being is there was a lot of thinking and controls in our pre-annexation agreement about mitigating the impacts of the annexation.
But that’s like, nitty gritty, sewer, water, power.
That’s what the town does.
The other thing is, from what I’ve read, it’s not confirmed that it will be affordable housing.
Yeah.
The tiny lots, I guess, are affordable 160 [thousand dollars], but it’s not… you’ve been involved probably from inception on this project, and you had a concept, and it had to pencil out. Where did it get lost? Where did the affordability part get lost?
Well, I’ve never been under the impression it was supposed to be an affordable housing project, from the definition of, like, a controlled cost. Their intention has always been, from the applicant’s mouth, to try to make the housing affordable to the type of workforce that Hank is familiar with- people that are working at the store- and the different life stages that the families of those employees are in. That’s always been the intention, but we’ve never conditioned the project based on that because it is just a development project in town. It’s not a fixed subsidized housing project.
I’ve never been under the impression it was supposed to be an affordable housing project…
No, it isn’t, but you said yourself that he wanted to provide housing for his employees, and people like his employees, but that in essence is affordable housing, isn’t it?
I mean, there’s affordable housing by definition of, like, you have covenants and restrictions on what the actual price of the unit is set at, that it’s legally bound to the property. And then there’s, in the case of Hank, him trying to develop the project so that the units may be mirroring what those values would be if it was legally controlled- not market rate.
Legally, but he’s trying to create a market system.
But he’s not creating a legal framework that controls the value of those properties. That’s always been up to him, which way he goes on that.
Whether legal or market rate, he’s trying to create market conditions for affordable housing, is what I understand.
Yes.
My question is that somehow affordable housing, which is issue number one for people around here, or at least comes up in your council meetings… the person to your left constantly brings it up. Like, here we were, Hank, he’s a behind the scenes guy. He does a lot of good, and then somehow, after all of that, we don’t know, you don’t know if it’s going to be [affordable housing]. It’s not stipulated.
I’m not making any guarantees.
But it passed the planning development, and we don’t even know.
But not because it’s an affordable housing project.
It has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, I mean, the applicants typically, nowadays, talk about the housing issues to justify to the public why their project should go forward. If they’re not putting on encumbrances that guarantee affordability, then you can interpret whether you think that’s really an affordable housing project or not. My opinion is that it’s not unless it is putting on the encumbrances.
That’s not to say that the applicant may decide I’m going to take a financial hit, and I’m going to sell these properties at a loss to me, so that the initial people getting in have a lot more affordability in that purchase. But if you don’t have a legal apparatus to then control what they turn around and do, they could turn around and sell the property for three times the value the next day, and the original applicant can’t do anything about it.
If they’re not putting on encumbrances that guarantee affordability, then you can interpret whether you think that’s really an affordable housing project or not. My opinion is that it’s not unless it is putting on the encumbrances.
And Hank understands that.
Yeah. I mean, I presume, I haven’t had at length discussions with him about it, but the other thing that could take place here with regard to Milltown, so far it hasn’t, but we recently did CHIP [Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program] applications through Department of Commerce for these types of developments. If they want to receive CHIP funding, we are the applicant for it, but they have to guarantee and do covenants tied to the property to guarantee for 25 years actual affordable housing structure for the units. That option is open to any developer that comes into town that wants to go after CHIP funding with us. So Hank could still do that.
How would that work? There’d be a covenant that the new owner can’t sell it for 25 years above a certain price. It would no longer be Hank’s property. It would have to be a covenant with a new…?
It would be a covenant, and who controls that covenant would still need to be resolved. We’re not in a good position, the town, to actually enforce those covenants. We require them. There would have to be another entity. It could be Hank. It could be a subsidiary of a business owned by Hank or something like that that does it. Someone contractually would be required to enforce those covenants.
Would Housing Trust do it?
They do do that. It would be up to the applicant to create that relationship.
I was interested that MVN said Hank wanted to guarantee it for locals, and so he has a stipulation you’d have to prove your county residency. Is that legal?
I have no idea. I have no idea.
I was under the impression, after talking to [Winthrop Town Planner] Rocklynn Culp, that it’s not legal.
I have no idea.
You have no idea or you just don’t want to comment? Because you’re involved in it. You said you were involved from inception.
Yeah, the land use planning element. So, how he decides to market, there’s nothing binding from the town on what he can or can’t do as far as marketing. If he’s violating state law by trying to say that he will only lease to a certain zip code…
Well, it’s in the newspaper now.
Yeah. I mean, I just, I have no idea whether that’s legal or not. That’s not my realm of expertise.
So, you’re from Mercer Island. You grew up there. So, you kind of know both worlds.
Depends which world you’re talking about.
You’ve been in this world now. You’ve raised your family here. This doesn’t bother you?
What’s “this?”
The development.
Oh, the development. So if you want to know my perspective just on growth in general, I really like the size of Twisp. I mean, we’re 1100 people about right now. There’s challenges at different sizes of town. I’ve been around long enough to know why Twisp hasn’t actually grown that much for a few decades, partly related to our water rights and our moratorium on growth because of our water rights issues.
Early when I came onto council, I worked on the water rights issue because there’s a lot of stuff not happening in Twisp because of this issue. Even if we wanted to grow, we can’t, like, not necessarily which direction should we grow, but we just are limited in having any growth because of our water rights issue. So I worked hard on that issue early on.
I came on in 2010 and I knew, unfortunately, I mean, I shouldn’t say unfortunately. We were fortunate to resolve the water rights issue. I just knew that once that happened, we were going to really end up in some much harder discussions about visioning our future, now that we weren’t growth limited, just because something like water rights limiting us.
I think none of us saw that COVID and remote work and all that stuff was going to create such a strong demand for growth out here as quick as it did especially coming out of our water rights moratorium. We wanted to invest in, and talked a lot about investing in, updating our comprehensive plan and looking at our zoning more, getting ready for growth if and when it happened. It kind of happened overnight in some ways and I feel like we’ve been chasing our tail a little bit about that.
But I also take a perspective- a lot of projects get proposed. We’ve had a lot of projects proposed for development that still have never been built. It’s one thing to get through our permitting process. It’s another thing to actually capitalize and finance these projects. They’re not easy to do. There’s a lot of risk.
I really like the size of Twisp…. I think none of us saw that COVID and remote work and all that stuff was going to create such a strong demand for growth out here as quick as it did…
It’s a money issue, right?
It’s a financial risk issue for those project applicants. Any project that we’ve approved, I presume is going to happen. Legally, we have to be prepared for it to happen. Realistically, on paper, we have a lot of growth. In actual built units, we don’t have nearly as much growth as I think people are seeing with all the planned development projects that are being either talked about or being approved.
Can you explain that a little more? How do you see that?
Any project that is dozens of lots being created, they may have preliminary approval to go and make that subdivision, put in the public infrastructure, and get final approval to be able to sell those slots. We haven’t gotten to that stage in a lot of the projects where the actual individual lots are now out there and marketable and buildable, and even if they were, we don’t know that the market would support building on those slots.
The developer may or may not be the one that develops, actually builds those lots. They may stay vacant for 10 years, 15 years, who knows? So just because the planned development is through doesn’t mean we’re actually realizing the people moving into town and occupying new units.
Just because the planned development is through doesn’t mean we’re actually realizing the people moving into town and occupying new units.
How many situations like that do you have?
I can think of three planned developments that are ranging in time. One of which I don’t even know the status of now because I know they do sunset after a while. But, you know, never got built. Never got constructed. The rule is, more than anything, they haven’t ever been constructed.
So you sat down with Hank?
Yes. We’re talking about Miltown now?
Yeah, we’re talking about Miltown. I appreciate that. I mean, we’re talking about lots. This is 135 units. There’s never been…
If he chooses to build them. There’s a difference between an approval to have the lots available. A lot of developers will get those approvals and try to sell their project. They won’t actually do…
So somebody else will build it. Who doesn’t have a connection to the town.
May or may not. I don’t know. That’s a whole other market.
I see, like, your brain works like it could be this. It could be that. It could be this, and it could be that.
That’s truly how it is.
True, true, but here’s the train that’s coming. Those lots are going to be built, whether he builds them or someone else builds them. I guess my question would be, he’s been here for a long time. He is vested in the community. You’ve been here a long time. Is this really a Twisp thing to do?
Which part?
The development part.
Building new lots?
It’s a maximum 137. Sometimes on some applications it says 135 or 137. Either one of those, maybe in Okanagan or Tonasket somewhere there are that many lots. Definitely nothing here. 135 units? That’s huge. You spent a significant portion of time here. He’s grew up here. Is this a Twisp thing to do?
I feel responsibility as mayor to honor what our code and our comprehensive plan says about development and it says that those projects are okay to do in town. So, you know, if we want to stop new development from happening, we have to change our code. That’s the answer. You can’t just go to the project and say, well, we just don’t like this project.
I feel responsibility as mayor to honor what our code and our comprehensive plan says about development and it says that those projects are okay to do in town.
Understood. So you’re the captain of the ship.
I’m not the only elected official.
But you steer the ship. You know this agency. You have the longest tenure, especially with [former Councilmember] Aaron [Studen] gone. You have the longest institutional knowledge. You’re the one that can make things happen or not.
I think you’re giving me way more power and authority than I actually have. Honestly, I’m limited in what I can do. I could monkey wrench as a mayor. I can have influence on how we process applications, for instance, but there’s a lot of risk. I mean, I do a lot to make sure we’re staying consistent with law in managing our risk. There are towns that go bankrupt because they screw around with either prohibiting or delaying developments and they get sued and they lose. Those are massive financial risks.
I’ve never campaigned as an anti-growth mayor or a councilmember. I’ve never walked in saying we shouldn’t grow. I’m working on the same comprehensive plan that this community adopted before I even became an elected official. Do I think it needs to be updated? Do I think we need to do more community visioning about what we want to do? Absolutely, yes. That’s a hard process to do. It’s really expensive. So, it’s not like we can just stop everything and do it tomorrow.
I guess I am of the mind frame that the community has already made its intentions known in our zoning and our comprehensive plan in our development regulations. That’s where, for me as an executive, that’s where I have to live in our decision making. I don’t get to make up new rules.
I’ve never campaigned as an anti-growth mayor or a councilmember.
You know that there’s not a lot of participation in elected office. A lot of people don’t even run. A lot of people don’t even vote. When you say you speak for the town, a lot of the town is not even participating. I mean, maybe they’ll glance at a paper.
So, you were a proponent back in 2010. You opened the door to development with the water rights. What did you want for the town in 2010? How much did you want it to grow? What did you want it to look like?
You’re going after my own personal vision, which, you know, I haven’t really campaigned on. I’ve been more of trying to ensure that we’re following our rules and laws correctly and focused on our responsibilities. As far as my own personal opinion about growth, I think that, you know, a small level of growth annually tends to be good for our businesses, for our local economy. That helps the community that is here thrive to have other resources, things like being able to support a pool and parks and rec and all that kind of good stuff that I think we all enjoy about what’s available in Twisp. If we have no growth, those things are very hard to fund. If we have a whole lot of growth, we lose our character really quick. If I just ballpark a number, 3% growth annually…
That won’t be 3%. You know that. That one development would be like…
You’re assuming that it all comes in all at once, and I’m telling you that that’s not how it works.
Don’t developers want to make the most money out of each track of land?
They’re risk adverse too and so they’re not just going to pour millions of dollars up front and then have nothing in return. They’re going to do one lot of design.
Go to single family, multi-family first and then see how that pans out, and then we’ll decide about senior housing.
Yeah.
You got some feedback from the housing task force, some really tough feedback. So, it’s interesting to me, because you are mildly saying, you’re pro growth, and yet, you didn’t respond to emails, based on what they said.
The housing taskforce folks I’ve also tried to be responsive to. There was just a lot of other things going on with the task force that, you know, was difficult for me to put in the work needed to get that thing moved forward.
What does the housing task force do?
When I was on council, there was no housing task force. The housing crisis in Washington State and the legislators’ emphasis on empowering communities to do something about it, not necessarily telling us what to do, but do something about it, created both requirements for communities to adopt Housing Action Plans. We are not required to do that because we’re not a GMA [Growth Management Act] planning jurisdiction. But, there are grant programs available to support housing programs, like the CHIP grants. If you adopt a housing plan voluntarily, now you can try to get access to those grant resources.
One of the grants that happened before I became mayor was a Housing Action Plan creation grant that we applied for with Winthrop. We jointly applied and got a Commerce grant to create a Housing Action Plan and that’s when we hired Beckwith [Consult], and they worked on a Housing Action Plan fo each municipality but there was a lot of overlap in the information and underlying data they collected. So it was supposed to be more efficient of a planning exercise.
I interviewed [Winthrop Town Planner] Rocklynn [Culp] about this. I’m just going to interject here, because you had an opportunity to get two perspectives, right? But you settled on Beckwith and got one perspective.
Yeah, maybe. I mean, we were looking for efficiency in getting the dollar to go further. That’s why it was done that way. The bottom line is neither municipality, I’ll just speak for Twisp because I’m sure Winthrop had their own perspective overall. But neither municipality really felt that the Beckwith deliverable was adequate as a Housing Action Plan that we are ready to adopt just by itself.
Winthrop went a different direction after that. They took that information and other information with their planning commission, and they created their own Housing Action Plan. They’ve adopted one. They have one.
Twisp identified they wanted to do the same thing, but we never got going on creating the Housing Action Plan. We didn’t really have the internal resources to go past what the grant gave us of having to consult and assist the process.
Beckwith was all they gave you money for.
The state, yeah. So we identified a lot of the shortcomings of the Beckwith report, but we didn’t really know how we were going to get to the next phase. So when I became mayor, that’s kind of where it was. We had this Beckwith report. We had adopted it, the council, as a preliminary housing analysis about a Housing Action Plan. We wanted to go forward from there. So we formed a task force.
We identified a lot of the shortcomings of the Beckwith report, but we didn’t really know how we were going to get to the next phase.
That’s the Housing Task Force.
Yes. And it consisted of the mayor, two council members and two planning commission members as well as the town planner. That’s what you heard- those planning commission members that were frustrated with the progress we were making. That’s what they were complaining about because our planner is a contract planner only up to a certain amount of hours. Basically, I’ve made the decision that his services are better right now focused not on our Housing Action Plan and task force but the other things going on that the planner has to be involved in in town.
So the two council members, the two planning commission members and myself were left with trying to write this Housing Action Plan, or at least come up with a framework for it that could then be sent on to Planning Commission, go through public review, eventually get it adopted by the council. It wasn’t going smoothly. The drafting wasn’t going smoothly. There was a lot of, initially, a lot of, I don’t know if I’d say disagreement as much as just needing to get everyone on the same page about what we were trying to address with Housing Action Plan.
What were some of the sticking points?
What type of housing is a problem in town? Whether affordability really is a problem or not. All these different levels of questions. Then what kind of actions would be appropriate for us to recommend for addressing whatever those housing shortcomings are in Twisp.
I think if you asked each task force member what’s the housing crisis and what should be done about it, you’re going to get five different answers from the task force. So we’re really trying to take the five different opinions and put something together that’s uniform, that we think the community will be responsive to, but we’re really just volunteers that are not, you know, professionally experienced in developing that type of an action plan.
So, anyway, that’s kind of where we’re at is we haven’t made that much progress in our voluntary capacity. Been looking at whatever avenues we could take to develop a plan that we feel like could be reviewed and approved through council and more recently, and I think this gets at some of your questions that you reached out to me about, the Housing Trust.
The Methow Housing Trust has taken an interest in assisting the local municipalities, plural, in identifying what their priorities are, not the Housing Trust priorities are, but what the local municipality priorities are for housing, and if that lines up with any of their mission or vision, they’re interested in assisting the process.
So we’ve had some discussions about that and we’ve also had, by the way, changes in the task force representation because of the last election cycle. We had new council members come in. So [Councilmember] Katrina [Auburn] used to be on the task force. She’s no longer on the task force. Now [Councilmember] Molly [Filer] is on it.
So it’s Molly, [Councilmember Tim] Matsui, [Planning Commissioner] Rachel [Levi], [Planning Commissioner] Anna [Rose] and myself. We have been engaging in more discussions about how to move the process forward, what our priorities are. Right now, the task force has identified some priorities. I don’t want to speak for the task force because it hasn’t come out of that process yet.
My goal for the task force has been to take all the actions that Beckwith recommended and some of the other reports that have been produced like the county’s recent work on homelessness and just take the recommendations for actions and spend some time going through each of those and prioritize them, which feels like the right one for our community. Are there ones we want to just cross off the list and say, this has been a recommendation made by some other planning effort. We’re not prioritizing it for moving forward in town.
It’s an action plan, right? It’s just meant to give us guidance in where we should start focusing our energy, on whether we’re focusing on code revision, dealing with zoning, whatever it is to try to conceptually make more affordable housing available in our community.
Right now, being driven more by the council wanting to see something in place to address projects coming in in the near term, planned developments and subdivisions, their hope is to see something that assures there’s more affordability in those projects. Like long-term affordability guarantees. That’s become a higher priority than just dealing with the whole holistic list of actions that have already been drafted via those other planning projects. So that’s essentially where the task force is today.
We’re pondering some more near term recommendations to the planning commission and the council ultimately to create incentives to create affordable housing in town.
I think if you asked each task force member what’s the housing crisis and what should be done about it, you’re going to get five different answers from the task force.
So, you’ve been operating, like, construction is going on without a general Housing Action Plan.
We’re not required to have one.
It’s kind of like, you’re throwing darts at a board, but you don’t have a dart board.
Welcome to government.
Some people would say that Housing Action Plan doesn’t matter, doesn’t carry legal weight. It’s just advisory.
Well, it’s true to a large degree. It’s meant to be a roadmap for myself as an administrator and the council to have consistency on what actions we are prioritizing. And it may be something like our action is update the code to do X, Y, and Z. Like, you know, we’re not allowed to do this, but like make it mandatory that a certain percentage of the units in a new subdivision are protected covenant affordable housing units. So the plan doesn’t actually revise the code. It just says that’s our top priority project. It’s going to be a whole list of projects. It might be consider reducing connection fees for projects that bring in affordable housing units. Those are the actions. And it will guide us into then going and getting those code revisions or our fee structures done.
You’re looking at the nitty gritty. Do you like the nitty-gritty? It seems like you’re passionate about that.
Things get done at the nitty gritty. It’s the unfortunate reality.
But you also have to, like, in order to steer the ship here, you gotta know what’s happening over there, right? You can’t just be over here. So over there, literally over there, you got buildings going up. The landscape is changing. The only three story building was the community center. Right? Like, that’s unheard of. And then, boom, turning around, there’s another one going up.
Completely allowed in our code. There’s a lot of differences of opinion about all of that stuff and the code is what I have to live by. That’s the bottom line.
… the code is what I have to live by. That’s the bottom line.
And you’re not going to run on changing the code, or do you plan to?
I’m all for changing the code. It’s really difficult. So, take building height, for instance. If the community doesn’t like three story buildings, they should write us some letters and let us know that three story buildings need to be nixed.
But you saw the reaction to [Catholic] Charities. You saw the packed room. I think twice or three times, once in the planning department. It was packed. There were no seats. People were in the hallway. I mean, isn’t that an indicator?
So the people that make the decision about whether we’re allowing three stories or not is the council. The council may hear in a particular project that people don’t like it, but if people don’t say we want the code changed… They’re not going to do it.
They probably don’t know.
I mean, that’s the process.
Do you see a need to…?
I don’t mind three story buildings. It doesn’t bother me.
I don’t mind three story buildings. It doesn’t bother me.
Do you see a need to curb growth?
I would love to have the magic wand to keep us at 3% growth. Like, I would like to do that.
Do you know how to make that happen?
It’s really difficult because there’s a lot of impacts. When you start changing the code, there’s always unintended consequences and as you start researching, you know, oh, we’ll do this. Does it really work the way you want? A lot of times you’re bringing in a hammer to do something that requires a scalpel. So there’s no quick or easy way about any of it and I know how much money and time it takes to address code revisions.
That’s why I say our best step forward would be a new comprehensive plan and a revisioning- getting all the public inputs so that we have clearer messaging about what zoning should look like in town, what development standard should be in place for the aesthetics of how projects look.
Our code and our comprehensive plan was written in 2010. It was a long time ago. It was before we had catastrophic wildfire coming right up to the edge of the town. It was definitely before our most recent spates of growth. We were still in the moratorium days of development back then. The housing crisis was not even described as a housing crisis back when that comprehensive plan was written. So, I’m a big fan of us doing that work.
What I don’t have is the solution to do it because it costs a lot of money. Frankly, I’m more concerned with us operating a functional police department and being able to provide our core services that we’ve already laid out and invested in. It’s probably a $200,000 project to go do just the comprehensive plan rewrite that can set us up to then start addressing our zone code and our development regulations appropriately. If I had an infusion of money, I’d start doing it tomorrow. I’d like to have done it 10 years ago.
Our best step forward would be a new comprehensive plan and a revisioning- getting all the public inputs so that we have clearer messaging about what zoning should look like in town, what development standard should be in place for the aesthetics of how projects look.
Could Milltown provide that funding for you?
It will provide funding in terms of coming in as tax revenue eventually. Until they start having individual lots that are assessed at whatever their value are, it doesn’t add any additional revenue to the town. There are fees they pay for the planned development review process, the permit, but that just covers the cost of us doing all that specific review. It’s not for additional community planning at the broader scale, and that’s been a problem. We’ve been very underfunded in our planning department for a long time. A lot of these problems, honestly, are, I think, from just that. We haven’t invested because we haven’t had the money to invest into our planning department for decades.
I hear it both ways. People that have been here a long time aren’t that big of a fan of seeing a lot more people coming into the valley and feel like the culture’s changed and that’s pretty normal. I mean, that’s not a unusual sentiment. People that have moved here recently that like it the way it is and feel like it’s, you know, getting discovered. Those are struggles we’re always going to have. I mean, as a small town, adding 500 people to your population in any jurisdiction is usually not that big of a deal, but when you’re a small town, that’s a big new portion of your population.
I mean, you’ll get a traffic light one of these days.
There you go. That is that’s the red, red line, right?
Is it? What is the red line for you?
No one wants to see that, for sure.
Well, we’re getting a traffic circle eventually over here. The county engineer, Josh Thompson, he actually made a really good point. He said people are going to have their blinkers on to turn left to go to Catholic Charities, but the people that just want to go straight, they’re going to be sitting behind the people that want to turn left. That’s probably why we’ll need a traffic circle just to get everybody moving. You’re saying 500 people isn’t going to but, I mean, it’s going to affect everyone.
I’m just saying that that’s not necessarily that many people to add in light of what the human population is like these days, but for a town our size, it’s a meaningful change in population. It’s just unrealistic for us to expect we’re not going to have growth.
Well, yeah, but I think there’s a difference between 2% and 500 people. There’s a huge difference in that.
Yeah.
What are you going to campaign on? Or maybe you won’t have a challenger and you won’t have that problem.
I don’t know. I think those will be interesting discussions to have. I could campaign on a lot of ideas. I still have to have a way to manifest the idea, right? Like, I can say I don’t like growth, but what are you going to do about that? What does that actually mean?
But you’ve opened the doors to growth. You knew with the water rights…
No, no, no, no. I opened the doors to growth from a water rights perspective because that was hamstringing our local economy. I mean, it was not good for our community. We were in jeopardy of having to never allow another business to open up in Twisp because we didn’t have the water to provide another connection. I didn’t want to resolve that so we could have rapid, unchecked, unbridled growth.
I opened the doors to growth from a water rights perspective because that was hamstringing our local economy.
The door was opened, and why didn’t we have a HAP [Housing Action Plan] then? Why wasn’t that the time?
No one was even doing Housing Action Plans back then. They didn’t start showing up till really the COVID era and when the housing crisis across the state really got tough. So, I mean, again, we’re a small town. We struggle just to provide the services that we are required to provide and that we incorporated to provide to our community. I can point out a thousand different things that I would like to invest more time and effort into, but I need staff and I need money to do those things. And, you know, pick your poison. Housing Action Plan wasn’t clear to us as a priority back when the water moratorium got lifted. That just wasn’t where our mind was. I’d still say that regardless of whether you have a Housing Action Plan or not, updating our actual Comprehensive Plan and our zoning should have been a priority. We talked about it as a priority a lot. We didn’t have any financial resources to do anything about it.
We struggle just to provide the services that we are required to provide and that we incorporated to provide to our community.
What would be a good size of the town for you to feel the town is financially stable? How many people would it take for the town to be the way that you would like it?
I don’t think there’s a magic number. I get concerned even thinking about 5,000 people in Twisp is like mind boggling to me. I don’t know what Twisp would be like then because we have a lot of limitations still in the services we can provide to a larger population. So, you know, we kind of know what a thousand people looks and feels like. We’ve had that for a long time. We also had a lot of vacant land during that period. I could see us being at a double population and having it be a pretty thriving community. I don’t like thinking much beyond that.
I could see us being at a double population and having it be a pretty thriving community. I don’t like thinking much beyond that.
So it’s 2,000? [These developments] are going to be 1,600. I mean, that’s 400 away from 2,000. That’s 400 away from doubling. Some of these people already live here and they’re just going to move over there, so it’s not going to be a population gain. And then you still have more developments in the pipeline. So are we looking at 5,000 people?
Well, you know, over whatever period of time it takes us to get there, unless there are other things that control what we can do. We have a water system plan that just came out that shows that we are limited in water rights up to about, I think, 3,500 people or something like that.
So it can’t go past 3,500?
Well, unless we acquire more water, which is not easy and it’s really expensive. There are some definite barriers to growth here, and that’s probably okay. The whole county has that situation with water availability.
It’s also a wildfire risk. You’re encouraging people to move to an area that has a lot of fire risk, which affects plans for evacuations, one lane road in each direction for evacuations.
Yeah. So there’s a lot of issues becoming much bigger. I don’t disagree. Not to mention services. What kind of services does a larger population need? More police, probably more healthcare than we currently provide.
On the Housing Trust, what’s that relationship like these days?
Like I said, they’re interested in supporting municipalities in coming up with whatever our priority housing actions are if it aligns with things that they see, they want to address, they’re interested in partnering. So, for instance, you asked could the Housing Trust be the steward of a covenant for Hank’s project if he did an affordable housing project there. If we create an incentive program for affordable housing projects in town, not necessarily the Housing Trust coming in and building projects, but another developer doing that, where they need somebody to be on the hook for monitoring and defending the covenants, the Housing Trust would likely be an entity that could do that.
How would they get paid?
I think there would be a fee with the developer for it.
It would have to be annual, right? Or is it one time for 25 years? Or how would that work?
I don’t know. Usually there’s an HOA with those kind of projects, so it may be an HOA due to the development itself. So you, as a resident in that development, would pay a fee that helps cover the cost. That’s as far as I know. I think that there’s potential with that kind of thing, but there’s a lot administratively on our side that I don’t know or understand yet that I’m trying to understand.
Does it feel odd for you that [Beckwith Consult] is a company out of La Conner? Does it feel odd that a contractor comes in and advises on a housing plan in different areas?
No. I work with contractors all the time. Beckwith didn’t make policy. They make recommendations. Their formula was the state had those grants available to help municipalities and counties develop Housing Action Plans, but they were very much tiered towards the GMA requirements for Housing Action Plans and the housing elements of comprehensive plans. Beckwith had experience with supporting those kind of GMA-specific issues. They did an okay job if you look at it through that lens.
But they did a boilerplate.
Very much boilerplate. My biggest complaint is the data they collected didn’t separate out whether you were talking about within the jurisdiction of Twisp or within the zip code, and there’s a lot of land that’s in 98856 that’s not in the town. Their data is weighted on talking about issues and I can’t tell if they’re talking about an actual town issue or bigger circle.
My biggest complaint is the data they collected didn’t separate out whether you were talking about within the jurisdiction of Twisp or within the zip code, and there’s a lot of land that’s in 98856 that’s not in the town.
They didn’t even think about that.
They didn’t have data they could draw past that. Their proposal was to deal with the census data and all those things that are still at that level. I’m not criticizing them so much. I don’t [think] we got what we had hoped to get out of the process.
This is why you get two inputs, right? If Winthrop got one and you got another one, then you could have both shared in the [results.]
I don’t disagree. There was a selection committee. People were involved. I mean, It’s hard to play Monday morning quarterback. It’s usable. There is usable information. It’s just not complete enough for us.
Well, at this point, it’s how many years now?
Yeah, it’s getting to be dated.
It’s getting to be dated, and then the other thing is, people’s opinions change as development grows. It’s really interesting because in Winthrop’s Housing Action Plan, it specifically says that in their surveys, people didn’t want multi-family units, and it’s in their report, but in order to build density, or to accommodate the population that they wanted, they have to build multi-family units, and Rocklynn agreed with that.
I think that the task force generally sees a need for diversity of housing types and density to try to address affordability issues. What we want to do is put those recommendations out to the community and get their feedback. We haven’t done that process yet. I don’t know how the council will contend with feedback on things like multi-family housing.
What does that mean that you don’t know how they will contend?
We haven’t gone and done a public process to say, well, we’re going to recommend doing zoning changes to promote multi-family housing development in R1 and R2. Move away from single family. I’m not saying that’s what we’re doing. I’m just saying if we did that, if that was the recommendation, we still have to go through a public process before adopting any actual code updates that affects that.
How do you communicate with the council besides council meetings?
The task force is going to put together documentation and recommendations that the council can then review. They’ll go to hearings with the public. And so, you know, like you said, they got whatever feedback they got and made whatever decisions they made as the ultimate decision makers, the elected officials. I don’t know what our council will do. They may decide to ignore that kind of input or they may back away from something they identified as a priority because they don’t think the community will support it. I don’t know. Depends who’s in those seats at the time in which those decisions happen.
The task force is going to put together documentation and recommendations that the council can then review. They’ll go to hearings with the public.
What would be a good budget for Twisp? I think it’s $2 million now?
It depends. We have our general fund, and then we have our enterprise funds, our water, sewer, utility funds. So if you take everything into account, I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I think the general fund is 1.8 [million dollars] but that includes our cash reserves. So we’re not like spending that money.
So with the growth, you’d have money for a pool, right? Because the Metropolitan District isn’t going to [fly]…
Probably not.
If we could maintain full staffing in the police department, that’s a huge piece of our general fund cost. The reason we haven’t invested in planning is because we’ve historically invested into our police department, with good reason.
You’ve had a couple years where you could have saved that money.
Well, I have been saving that money, but I know the cost back towards policing. I don’t think we’re gonna see that cash reserve maintained. It’s going to go towards salaries for police officers. If we can get police officers hired and still have some residual budget left to go to other programs, we need more resources and planning for sure. I mean, [Twisp Town Planner] Thom [Vetter] is at 20 hours a week, and that’s just to really keep the lights on. These projects being reviewed, it doesn’t get us at any of the planning work that I was talking about earlier that we need to do to actually revise our code and get it consistent with what the community may or may not want to see as far as growth moving down the road.
So, I need a full-time staff person there. That would be the best outcome, but that’s probably another $100,000 over what we currently are paying in our planning department.
[Twisp Town Planner] Thom [Vetter] is at 20 hours a week, and that’s just to really keep the lights on.
Can you see a scenario where there is a need for more police officers with the added growth?
It could happen. If our call volume went up significantly, yeah, that would be an issue. If we were like Omak, we would need more officers. There’s no doubt about it. Omak is much bigger than we are, but they also have a lot of other types of calls than we get in town regularly.
Optimally, a three person department is what we’re trying to plan for and fund. That’s where our budget is pointed right now, and we’re not even succeeding in that goal.
How’s the hiring going, by the way?
We’re just not getting new candidates for lateral position. We do have candidates for new hires, but those guys we have to send to academy. Those guys can’t even start working as independent officers for a year.
How does that work? Somebody submits their application, you say, yes, you’re hired, but then the town pays for them to go to the academy?
If we get to that step, yeah. We have civil service, so they have to go their civil service review, then they get reviewed by the chief. He makes the decision, talking to me. If it’s lateral, he’s got more latitude to make that hiring decision without consulting me, but if it’s a new hire that we’d have to send to academy, then we’d have to make that decision together.
You could potentially get someone out of the academy, but that’s pretty rare that people are putting themselves through the academy and then seeking to get hired. Usually they’re being placed by a jurisdiction.
How’s the police chief?
He’s doing well. I think he shares my sentiments that he’d really like to get an officer hired. A lot is falling on his shoulders as well as call out responsibilities, and that’s what makes me worried. He, especially being where he’s at in his career, he knows when he needs to be responsive or not. He’s not just going to show up to every call, ready to go. He’s like, okay, is that a call that can wait until the next day? I’m not talking about emergency calls. I’m saying barking dog complaint or whatever it is. He protects his time well, but that can only last so long. He can’t go on extended vacations right now. But if he had an officer, if he had a lateral on, then he could start to take leave.
And if we get the third officer, then they can all take leave, and that’s the position we need to be.
