A Clallam County judge has permanently dismissed a temporary restraining order and injunction for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s proposed medication-assisted treatment clinic.
Superior Court Judge Brent Basden issued his ruling Friday following a June decision that denied the injunction filed in May by Save Our Sequim (SOS).
The decision is another hurdle cleared for the tribe’s proposed MAT clinic, but the project still awaits a possible decision from a hearings examiner expected next month along with potential appeals through the Land Use Petition Act process.
Tribe attorneys LeAnne Bremer and Andy Murphy of Miller Nash Graham & Dunn requested the dismissal because Basden wrote in his previous ruling that appealing the application “(falls) squarely within the types of decisions covered by (the LUPA),” and that the plaintiffs “haven’t exhausted the city’s review processes.”
Representatives from SOS and Jon Gibson, owner of Parkwood Manufactured Housing Community, filed an injunction May 5 to halt construction and the application for the proposed 16,806-square-foot facility that treats patients with opioid use disorder.
SOS attorney Michael A. Spence and Michael McLaughlin, Gibson’s attorney, previously stated the city wrongfully placed the clinic under an A-2 process — under which city staff approves the project — instead of a quasi-judicial, C-2 city council-made decision.
The attorneys also stated other issues with the proposal, including that it should be classified as an “essential public facility” and holds “broad public interest.”
Project on hold
Barry Berezowsky, Sequim’s director of community development, said the city issued the tribe a building permit for the clinic June 29.
However, when and if the tribe can build the clinic depends on Phil Olbrechts, the city’s contracted hearing examiner.
Berezowsky said the tribe is appealing the city’s conditions regarding a Mitigated Determination of Non-significance (MDNS) environmental review, and that “they can’t start until those issues are resolved.”
In the appeal, Murphy wrote some of the tribe’s complaints say there is no evidence the clinic will cause adverse environmental impacts to public services, that community concern is not an environmental impact, and the city’s land use authority doesn’t include clinic operations.
In this process, construction could have begun after the tribe’s contractors received the site construction permit approval and building permit, Berezowsky said, but he’s unsure if the site construction review will be issued until after the hearing examiner process.
A pre-hearing meeting with Olbrechts and stakeholders to potentially resolve issues hasn’t been set yet, but Berezowsky said it could tentatively happen in August.
If no resolutions are made, a hearing date would be set for the six appeals made against the MAT clinic application.
Brent Simcosky, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s health services director, said they applied and received a permit to take down a barn on the property because some individuals had broken in to live there.
Tribal officials also are awaiting an invoice from the city for the clinic’s impact fees and general facility charges, which Berezowsky estimates to be in the six figures.
Request denied
For their relief request, Spence and McLaughlin asked Basden to deny the dismissal and grant a temporary restraining order until appeals against the clinic can be resolved.
They asserted that a July 10 letter from Murphy admits he erred in saying all permits were on hold, and that Sequim city attorney Kristina Nelson-Gross didn’t refute it.
In his letter, Murphy said his statement was incorrect about permits issued being on hold, and he doesn’t feel the error influenced Basden’s decision.
In the city’s response, Nelson-Gross wrote that the court already determined the plaintiff’s claims must go to LUPA because “(it) provides the exclusive remedy for plaintiff’s claims and essentially pre-empts alternative remedies.”
The tribe’s attorneys wrote that a temporary restraining order and injunction are incorrect because they fall under LUPA and “no immediate invasion of these rights given that they are subject to review.”
The attorneys added that the plaintiffs didn’t establish prerequisites for an injunction.
________
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.
