PORT TOWNSEND – Joe D’Amico, president of Security Services Northwest, filed an appeal Friday in Kitsap County Superior Court contesting a recent decision that limits the security business to three employees.
“We don’t think it’s legal,” D’Amico said Friday.
The decision was delivered by Jefferson County Hearing Examiner Irv Berteig.
“We don’t think the county has the right to limit the number of employees a nonconforming business has,” said D’Amico.
A November 2006 decision by Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Jay B. Roof overturned an earlier Berteig decision that stated the business was completely illegal because it didn’t have permits for three buildings.
Roof concluded it was a legal nonconforming business, but remanded the decision back to Berteig to determine the “scope and nature of SSNW’s noncomforming use as of Jan. 6, 1992.”
That is when Jefferson County adopted its zoning laws.
Berteig’s Jan. 22 decision upholds Roof’s ruling that Security Services employees can undergo shooting training.
However, Berteig found that the operation could not train those who are not Security Services employees – such as those trained in gunfire and counterassault tactics during the summer of 2005.
That year, D’Amico expanded his operation to include third-party training for governmental operatives.
Those include the Department of Defense, the Navy and Seattle Police Department’s bomb squad.
Now employing about 100 people, D’Amico said he is most concerned about the three-employee limitation, saying it would effectively shut his business down.
“The Hearing Examiner erred in determining that the scope and nature of SSNW’s nonconforming land use as of Jan. 6, 1992, is somehow defined by the number of employees,” said a court document.
Berteig’s decision also limits the use of 22 acres D’Amico leases from the Gunstone family to office administration, supplies and equipment storage, security dog training, payroll, new business promotion and management.
D’Amico’s leaseland is just a part of the Gunstone family’s Discovery Bay Land Co., a managed timber and shellfish harvesting operation on 3,700 acres extending from the Western shores of the bay into the Olympic foothills.
Roof also ruled that the company can conduct security guard services, but not as Fort Discovery Training Center, which included shooting ranges, bunk and bath houses and classrooms.
The unpermitted structures that supported Fort Discovery’s training operation were “red tagged” by county building officials in 2005 and prohibited from use.
D’Amico has said he is looking into obtaining permits from the county Department of Community Development for the unpermitted structures to bring his business into total compliance.
