PORT ORCHARD — A Kitsap County Superior Court judge said that Discovery Bay’s Security Services Northwest should be allowed to conduct the same business today that it did in 1992, prior to Jefferson County zoning laws.
Judge Jay B. Roof, in a decision released Thursday, supports the argument that Security Services Northwest constituted a legal nonconforming use of the land prior to 1992.
Roof remanded the case back to the Jefferson County hearing examiner “solely to determine the scope and nature of SSNW’s nonconforming use” since 1992.
The case had moved to Kitsap County after the firm’s president, Joe D’Amico, appealed a Jefferson County hearing examiner decision last year, and after Jefferson County Judge Craddock Verser ruled in the county’s favor.
The Jefferson County decision in effect shut down Security Services’ training operations, trying to silence gunfire that stirred complaints from Discovery Bay residents.
Roof’s decision was good news for D’Amico and his attorney.
“He’s back in business. He’s a legal nonconforming use,” Seattle attorney Glen J. Amster said of his client D’Amico on Friday.
“We now have to go back to the hearing examiner to sort it out.”
Roof disagreed with Hearing Examiner Irv Berteig’s ruling last year that Joe D’Amico’s Security Services Northwest operation was never lawful.
Roof called that interpretation “erroneous” because it was based on illegal structures built on the property.
“As an aside, the county has a variety of mechanisms for addressing illegally constructed buildings other than compelling lawful land users to dismantle their businesses or leave the property entirely,” Roof said.
The judge concluded that Security Services’ use of the property today is not consistent with its use prior to 1992 zoning laws.
He also states that D’Amico’s informal lease agreement was not defined beyond the 20 acres he originally used pre-1992 and gave the hearing examiner no basis to find that there was an expansion of land use beyond the original 20 acres.
“Because this court finds that not all of SSNW’s activities were illegal, and because SSNW presented sufficient evidence that its operations on the property date back to 1988, a limited nonconforming use did exist prior to the 1992 (county) zoning laws,” Roof said.
“This use is limited to the nature and scope of the activities at that time and could not be unlawfully changed or expanded outside what is permitted” in Jefferson County.
