PORT TOWNSEND — The protracted legal battle between Gardiner-based Security Services Northwest and Jefferson County is a closed case now, as far as Al Scalf’s county Department of Community Development is concerned.
But company president Joe D’Amico said he and his attorneys are considering another appeal.
For the past four years, D’Amico has fought for the right to train Navy and Department of Defense personnel at his shooting ranges south of U.S. Highway 101 near the western shores of Discovery Bay.
“In order to get clarification, we may need to do a very narrow appeal,” D’Amico said of county Hearing Examiner Stephen K. Casseaux Jr.’s decision late last week.
“We’ve essentially done a 360-degree, four-year circle. We’ve gotten back to what we were doing originally.”
D’Amico said he also plans to seek the building and septic permits the county requires on structures he built that the county said were illegal in 2005 and shut down for training use, including a bunkhouse, latrine and showers and a classroom building.
He leases 22 acres for the shooting range he calls Fort Discovery from the Gunstone family. He lives there with his family in a former farmhouse with the business offices upstairs.
The court fight has come at a cost of more than $700,000 in legal fees, D’Amico said, while the county pays for similar private legal expenses through a state risk pool.
At issue is the intensification of uses on the property beyond the scope of county codes that came into being after 1992.
Casseaux ruled against the key element of the case, which has gone from former Hearing Examiner Irv Berteig to Jefferson County Superior Court to Kitsap Superior Court and the state Appeals Court back to Hearing Examiner Casseaux.
Casseaux’s decision leaves D’Amico and Security Services in much the same position they were in the summer of 2005, prior to Discovery Bay residents’ complaints about escalating and reverberating gunfire from automatic rifles heard across the pristine bay.
One decision that caught county officials by surprise was that D’Amico was granted an “unlimited increase in the number of off-site employees.”
Saying that D’Amico’s business was a “grandfathered” use that predated county planning and zoning laws, Casseaux also granted an unlimited increase in the number of on-site administrative and monitoring employees who do not engage in security guard activities or weapons training.
A limit of 21 security personnel working on or from the site was allowed in the decision.
Use of D’Amico’s home was allowed for offices, conferences, dispatch communications to security patrols, restrooms, kitchen for food service and for sleeping overnight.
Firearms training
Firearms training will be allowed at one of D’Amico’s two firing ranges on the site but only for his security guards.
The decision allows D’Amico to train his existing security services staffers, who are required to practice shooting to qualify for state certification.
In addition, D’Amico can use a helicopter landing pad for guard dog transportation and other emergency uses, such as Airlift Northwest landings to pick up area car crash victims to take to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Also allowed in Casseaux’s decision is use of the training center’s pier on Discovery Bay, where D’Amico can train security employees who do boat patrol and protect Navy vessels moored in Puget Sound.
Scalf said Casseaux’s decision was “consistent” with the position his Department of Community Development took back in 2005 when it inspected Fort Discovery and banned the use of the structures, also opposing use by personnel outside the company’s security business.
“It was the Navy that we were concerned about,” Scalf said.
Under the decision, D’Amico would be required to obtain a county conditional use permit to train any military personnel.
“It’s not a win or lose, it’s a clarity thing,” Scalf said. “We recognize his business and now he’s gotten it identified by the hearing examiner.
“The case is closed in our minds.”
Gabe Ornelas, an east Discovery Bay resident who helped form a group opposing D’Amico’s military training uses, Discovery Bay Alliance, said he saw Casseaux’s decision as succinct.
“I personally feel it was based on evidence and testimony as to the legality of that company as to what it was doing in 2005,” before there was any military training taking place, Ornelas said.
Contrary to what D’Amico’s attorneys stated at the last county hearing examiner hearing on the matter, Ornelas said, “Not one of us said we wanted to destroy the company. We have never said that.”
Ornelas added, speaking for himself, “This most recent decision has allowed us, the community, some security in regaining our quality of life on the bay.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
