PORT ANGELES — Clallam County has rescinded a junior taxing district that was set up five years ago to pay for safety improvements to Striped Peak Road.
County commissioners voted 3-0 Tuesday to rescind a September 2010 resolution that created the Striped Peak Road Improvement District west of Port Angeles near Freshwater Bay.
Commissioners said they would find another way to improve the treacherous gravel road shared by residents, recreationalists and log trucks.
“That road is a huge access point to public lands,” said Commissioner Mike Chapman, who voted with former Commissioners Mike Doherty and Steve Tharinger to create the original district.
A majority of property owners in 2010 supported a road improvement district to fund a $664,500 project to pave and widen a half-mile portion of the lower road.
A subsequent lawsuit that challenged the validity of the district’s formation stalled the project in its tracks.
“It’s tied up in court, so nothing’s happening,” Chapman said in a Monday work session.
“This allows the county to get back to more of a legislative process instead of a legal process. I think that’s always better.”
New county policy
First-year Commissioner Bill Peach, whose western District 3 includes Striped Peak, said the first step should be a new county policy for road improvement districts.
Clallam County would have taken ownership of the private road — and responsibility for its maintenance — after it was brought to county standards.
“Citizens followed the policy that was put together by the commissioners that resulted in a lawsuit and no further action being taken,” Peach said before the vote to rescind the district.
“The people that were involved in that, they need to have what they originally requested: a road that does provide safe transportation.”
Blind turn
Dan Phillips told commissioners that he and his cousin were nearly killed by an oncoming log truck on the “infamous blind turn” on Striped Peak Road last August.
Phillips was able to evade the skidding log truck by moving his vehicle into a neighbor’s driveway.
“The [log truck driver] just simply could not make the turn and used the entire road,” said Phillips, who added that the gravel surface has the “effect of marbles.”
Phillips thanked Peach for his commitment to improve Striped Peak Road. He said the county’s existing process for road improvement districts is “broken and it needs to be fixed.”
In a complaint filed by Fred and Ursula Ross in Clallam County Superior Court in October 2010, Port Angeles attorney Craig Miller argued that his clients would receive no special benefit from living in the Striped Peak Road Improvement District.
Property owners within the district would have paid $13,561 over 20 years for road improvements.
Similar lawsuit
Although the 2010 complaint was dismissed in April 2012, a similar lawsuit has continued to paralyze the project, county officials said Monday.
“We don’t seem to have a cost-effective way forward in this case, except to first take this step and dissolve the RID [Road Improvement District] and get it gone,” County Engineer Ross Tyler told commissioners Monday.
“And that leaves the board with a plethora of different options that they can exercise at their own discretion. But until we get this out of the way, we can’t really do that.”
Rescinding the RID would allow the county to “take a step back and
get back to the work that we can control,” Chapman said.
“The court is clearly not going to be the right way to go and wasn’t the right way to go and hasn’t been the right way to go,” Chapman said.
Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols agreed.
“I do share the belief that the litigation route is really going nowhere,” Nichols said.
Former success
Peach volunteered to help draft the new county policy for road improvement districts, using language from counties with successful RIDs such as Spokane County.
“We’ve got access issues, safety issues,” Peach said, “but at the end of the day, the citizens that entered into this relied on county government, and it turned out a lawsuit resulted.”
“I like the idea that we’re not going to spend our money on lawyers,” Peach added.
“We’re going to simply look at that RID [policy].”
“Time is somewhat of an essence,” Chapman said.
“I don’t want to have a group go through this again, ever. None of us do.”
Commissioner Jim McEntire agreed.
“It’s never good to have a process that just gets stuck,” he said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
