Commissioners’ split makes difference on land use

Sam Fox, 20, grinds a piece of steel at Fabrication Products, a Minnehaha factory forced to delay its expansion after a 2005 ruling by county commissioners that the company would have to share road-building costs. (Steven Lane/The Columbian)

In 2005, Ron Jones’ plan to ride the construction boom by adding 80 jobs at his Minnehaha steel factory collided with the Board of Clark County Commissioners.

In a 2-1 ruling, the commissioners upheld a hearing examiner’s decision that to expand his facility, he’d have to help build a public road through the site — a road that would ease truck congestion on St. Johns Boulevard but slice out a third of Jones’ buildable land.

Jones appealed the decision to a Cowlitz County judge, and that ruling, Jones said last week, cleared the way for him to finally enlarge his factory without extending the road. Today, the new facility is nearly complete but empty.

“This company was unable to grow during the best of times,” Jones said. “And now is not a good time.”

The ruling that delayed Jones’ project was one of 32 land-use appeals heard by the current county commissioners during their four years together.

A few of the decisions — on a Salmon Creek Wal-Mart, an asphalt plant in Brush Prairie and a gravel mine along the East Fork of the Lewis River — make headlines. Most don’t. But some say the decisions are among the most important the three-member board of commissioners gets to make.

And when Commissioner Betty Sue Morris steps down in December, whomever voters elect to replace her will be sliding into the board’s swing seat.

Morris likes to describe commissioners as the county’s legislative, executive and judicial branches, all in one: First they make the rules, then they enforce and interpret them.

In the county’s land-use appeal process, the commissioners theoretically act like Supreme Court justices: impartial umpires calling legal “balls” and “strikes” without fear or favor.

But, as with the Supreme Court, the record shows a more complicated world, in which commissioners with different ideologies regularly break along familiar lines.

“Everybody’s got a different strike zone,” Commissioner Steve Stuart said.

Since 2005, the three sitting commissioners disagreed on 14 of 32 appeals, a Columbian public records request shows. Of those 14, the Democratic Stuart and Republican Marc Boldt disagreed on all but two.

Morris, a conservative Democrat, sided seven times with Stuart, five times with Boldt.

“We have sort of a sense of where the other two are philosophically,” said attorney James Howsley of Miller Nash, who often represents developers in land-use cases. “She’s the biggest crap-shoot of the three.”

The effects of Morris’ legal rulings have gone beyond such high-profile projects as a proposed gravel mine near Daybreak Park on the East Fork of the Lewis River — she joined with Stuart to block it — and a batch plant near central Brush Prairie, which she joined with Boldt to approve.

They’ve also affected projects from Jones’ steel factory — she and Stuart ruled against it — to a road that might someday break up Peter Blundell’s quiet cul-de-sac north of Sifton.

In 2005, Blundell and his neighbors watched with alarm as New Tradition Homes, the county’s second-biggest home builder, applied to build dozens of houses on the acreage to their south.

They didn’t mind the subdivision itself, Blundell said. But the developer wanted to run a road right up to the public right-of-way beside Blundell’s house — the perfect place for a through-street, should Blundell and his neighbors ever decide to subdivide their own land.

Blundell and the neighbors argued that they’d signed a 10-year contract not to subdivide, and that their dozens of 1.5-acre lots seemed poor candidates for redevelopment.

“If the road didn’t go in, then they would never have to worry about a road in the future,” Blundell said.

Only one commissioner, Blundell said, agreed. “Stuart came out, looked at the situation, said yeah, there’s no reason why this road needs to be there,” Blundell said.

Morris and Boldt thought otherwise. Today, the new road sits barricaded behind Blundell’s house, which is for sale.

Would the two candidates vying for Morris’ seat be more like Boldt, a former berry farmer and conservative state legislator? Or more like Stuart, a former environmental lobbyist?

John Karpinski, a Vancouver environmental lawyer who often represents neighbors against development proposals, sees a stark difference between Republican Tom Mielke, who has made a call for less business regulation the central issue of his campaign to succeed Morris, and Democrat Pam Brokaw.

On next year’s board, Karpinski predicted, “Brokaw would probably be the greenest and Mielke would probably be the brownest.

“I’ve sat down with Pam and talked with her extensively,” he said. “If they aren’t willing to talk with me, they don’t seem to be interested in the, you know, environmental-neighborhood kind of interests.”

Howsley, the development lawyer, agreed that Mielke would strongly favor developers on the bench. But he saw Brokaw as a centrist.

“She’s more in the Betty Sue camp, I think,” said Howsley, a self-described Democrat who supports Boldt for re-election but didn’t want to take a stand on the Mielke-Brokaw race.

And what about Boldt’s challenger, Vancouver City Councilwoman Jeanne Harris?

“When it comes to Jeanne Harris and Commissioner Boldt, I think I’d probably get more votes out of Harris, who I see as more of a moderate who would be somewhere between Commissioner Morris and Steve Stuart,” said Karpinski, who has argued before Harris on the city council.

For his part, Jones, the steel entrepreneur, said he’ll be voting straight Republican.

“I had no idea Boldt would be an ally — didn’t even know the guy — but he is pro-business, pro-growth to a certain extent,” said Jones. “The other two are all about sticking it to the guys who take the risks.”