PORT ANGELES — Clallam County residents are using a building permit exemption for 400-square-foot sheds to build dwelling units, garages, offices and other illegal structures, contends the Department of Community Development — though exactly how many, the staff can’t say.
But tackling the issue by requiring homeowners to obtain building permits for structures of 400 square feet and limiting the exemption to structures of 200 square feet and smaller is not the way to address the problem.
That’s what a roomful of opponents told county commissioners Tuesday at a hearing on amendments to the county building code proposed by DCD Director John Miller, who is running for re-election in the Aug. 17 primary against Tim Woolett, Alan Barnard, Sheila Roark Miller and Sean Ryan.
Critics also spoke against an existing limit of $1,500 in improvements annually to a single-family dwelling before a permit is required.
In response, commissioners unanimously decided to send the proposals back to Miller and his staff.
Commissioners want the agency to review the amendments with the county Permit Advisory Committee, a 12-member panel the commissioners established after the DCD director position became a publicly elected post in 2002.
Advisory committee
Building Official Leon Smith, who presented the amendments to the commissioners, said the tighter exemption was overwhelmingly rejected by the advisory committee.
Said committee member Jay Peterson, a Port Angeles environmental consultant: “It’s not solving a problem, it’s just creating more work,”
“A lot of issues were raised today that the permit advisory board that we set up and appointed should look at,” Commissioner Mike Chapman said.
Miller, who called for the hearing, was not there.
He said in a later interview that he had to attend a meeting of the Shoreline Master Program Update-Harbor Resource Management Planning Committee with city of Port Angeles officials.
The staff member who would normally attend the meeting with the city was on vacation, Miller said.
Miller said at least one commissioner had asked him why he did not abide by the Permit Advisory Committee’s recommendation.
“My response was, it is a permit advisory board, and I did not accept that piece of advice from the permit advisory board.”
Had he been at the hearing, he would have gotten an earful.
All 22 who spoke at the hearing were against the tighter exemption.
Offered another solution
Many said they had a more palatable solution: Require builders of 400-square-foot structures to register with DCD and be monitored that way rather require the purchase of $385 permits.
Commissioner Steve Tharinger said at the meeting that a “registry” of 400-square-foot buildings might be the answer.
And Miller said later the registry “sounds like a possible solution.”
Miller doesn’t know how many residents abuse the 400-square-foot exemption but will have a count by mid-September, he said.
In his presentation, Smith described the exemption’s history.
“When the 400-square-foot exemption was introduced, it was to be for an animal shelter, a ‘lean to,’ if you will, that could also be used to store the feed for these animals,” he said in prepared remarks.
“Somehow, it has morphed into what we have today,” Smith said.
“A 200-square-foot storage shed is a large storage shed,” he added.
“A 400-square foot storage shed is hard to comprehend unless it is being constructed as a garage. If it is a garage, it is not an exempt structure. Garages are regulated and require building permits.”
But the audience wasn’t buying the proposal, generated from the International Building Code, and alleging DCD is isolating itself from the citizens who work directly with the agency.
Comments included the following:
Kaj Ahlburg, formerly an attorney and a Wall Street banker and now an appointee to the Harbor-Works Development Authority board. — “These are solutions in search of problems that do not exist.”
Woolett — “The county is kind of economically constipated, and we are feeding it cheese.”
Mike McAleer, member of the Permit Advisory Committee — “Now is not the time to impose additional costs on the third largest [employment] sector behind government and health.”
Kevin Russell, a member of the North Peninsula Builders Association, said the group has reached out to DCD but to no avail.
“We’ve gotten no response and been denied access,” he said.
Russell said after the meeting that Miller had refused invitations to meet with the Builders Association board.
Miller responded that he and Smith had attended two breakfast meetings with the group but have not done so since 2007, the year after Miller was elected to his first term.
“In my estimation, they were making unreasonable demands for lax interpretation of the county’s building code,” Miller said.
“I did not think it was productive for Leon Smith and myself to continue to meet with them,” he continued.
Miller said he and the Builders Association have worked together on projects including the KONP Home Show, the county’s “BuiltGreen” efforts and a water recycling education grant.
The proposals reviewed Tuesday are at www. clallam.net under board of commissioners agenda.
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Senior Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
