PORT ANGELES — A Clallam County Superior Court judge doesn’t have a date for announcing a decision on a Save Our Sequim appeal regarding a proposed medication-assisted treatment clinic.
Judge Brent Basden heard testimony in a Friday hearing on a Land Use Petition Act (LUPA) appeal. He said he wasn’t ready to rule because the record is extensive with several thousand pages.
He is also considering decisions on several other cases, including another land use appeal from Ruth Brothers Enterprises, LLC. against the City of Sequim over the developer’s access for construction into Jennie’s Meadows in Sequim.
“I’ll be done as soon as I can,” Basden said. “It may take some time.”
Michael Spence, attorney for Save Our Sequim (SOS), seeks to reverse an October decision by the city’s appointed hearing examiner Phil Olbrechts that SOS “lacks standing” and so their appeals were dropped against the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s proposed 16,800-plus-square-foot MAT clinic.
SOS leaders want city staff to review the application under the C-2, not A-2 application rules, which would require a city council decision rather one by city staff, and for discovery of testimony from city leaders.
Discovery sought
Spence said they seek discovery because they want to know if “there is something that happened off the record that influenced that decision (for choosing C-2 over A-2).”
He also wonders why Olbrechts advised parties of record Sept. 20 that he doesn’t have jurisdiction over consolidated permit hearings for a State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) appeal.
City council members later voted to change the ordinance 5-1 — with Mayor William Armacost opposed — to direct all appeals of Type A-1 and A-2 administrative permit decisions to a hearing examiner.
“We don’t feel the record tells the entire story,” Spence said.
Both attorneys for the city and tribe, Kristina Nelson-Gross and Andy Murphy, ask that the appeal be dismissed along with another LUPA appeal SOS filed on the MAT application’s final decision.
Nelson-Gross said Spence is misinterpreting the LUPA process because discovery isn’t allowed unless under “very limited purview” and their issues aren’t relevant to the hearing.
She added that SOS failed to meet its burden over the past year-and-a-half to establish its standing for Olbrechts and now Basden.
Murphy argued that SOS filed this appeal early prior to Olbrechts’ final decision, so it should not be considered. However, Spence said if they had waited the 21 days after Olbrechts’ decision then the city and tribe would have contested that timeline being late, so they filed both appeals.
Murphy said if the LUPA appeal of the application’s final decision is timely then the one on SOS’s standing is not and should not be considered.
He added that SOS has not shown how they will be specifically hurt by the clinic.
“It’s not presumed; it must be proved,” he said.
Basden asked how his decision will impact the project since construction has already begun.
Murphy said the building permit is final, and to authorize and stop construction cannot stand when the tribe has the permits.
“The Mitigated Determination of Nonsignificance (from Olbrechts’ decision) was issued with the design appeal. The MDNS was connected to the design review but not the building review,” he said.
Nelson-Gross said an administrative appeal of the building permit must’ve been filed within 21 days of the building permit to the city before it received final approval.
If Basden rules for SOS, Nelson-Gross said “it would not be of any necessary consequence.”
“We are talking use, not construction of the facility,” she said.
“We have building and site construction permits and the tribe is authorized to act on those,” Murphy said. “There’s no practical difference. That’s why (SOS’s) appeal is moot.”
Spence disagreed saying “if the building is built, the choices are to do something else (with the building) and change the land use in that building, or tear it down.”
On Jan. 11, Basden met with the attorneys in a special meeting warning their clients not to use perceived divisive language leading up to the hearing after a Jan. 7 Facebook post on SOS’s page asked supporters to “stand up and fight for what you believe in” and to “send the message to the court that this hearing is important.”
Basden said his decision would be based on law, and that he issued the warning to keep the courtroom safe. SOS leaders said the online post was taken out of context as they were looking to inspire the community.
“We are astonished to think someone could ever confuse this motivational language as a call to arms or a call to violence,” SOS board directors wrote in a statement.
The discussion was not mentioned during Friday’s hearing.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
