SEQUIM — Last spring, www.SequimSense.com appeared with lavender-edged pages, calling for community activism and “common sense” in city leadership.
After some meetings, with city Planning Commissioner Mike East, City Council member Walt Schubert and real estate broker Mike McAleer discussing what to do with the Web site, nothing much transpired.
Then on Monday, three City Council candidates together announced they’re about to turn SequimSense.com into a go-to site for information on their views and values.
A visit to the site, meanwhile, reveals a redesigned, lawn-bright green home page with the declaration, “Common sense is growing!”
The candidates, East, Schubert and Bill Huizinga, are all running to either gain or keep a seat on the council in Clallam County’s Nov. 3 election.
They will use SequimSense.com to explain themselves, East said, and to invite voters to voice their concerns.
The three candidates will host “neighborhood meetings” to listen to those concerns and answer questions, added Schubert. The first will be at 4 p.m. July 29 at the home of former council member Patricia Kasovia-Schmitt at 742 Spyglass Lane in eastern Sequim. After that, meetings will be held “on demand,” said East, whenever Sequim area residents want to host them.
In the November election, Schubert, in his 10th year on the council, faces attorney and Sequim planning commissioner Ted Miller, who also has a Web site — a blog — at http://WinwithTed.wordpress.com.
East is running against Don Hall, a former City Council member and current Citizens Park Advisory Board panelist. And while East and Schubert have abundant campaign signs up around Sequim, Miller said he’ll wait till September to put up his placards.
Hall, known for his daily walks across the city, said he’s running on his record as an advocate for seniors, parks and basic infrastructure. He said he will post no signs now or later.
Huizinga has no challengers, but his efforts to promote lower-cost housing in Sequim have met with opposition among sitting City Council members. Erik Erichsen, one of the so-called “new four” members elected in November 2007, has questioned the need for more affordable homes, though the rest of the council did vote to hire a consultant to develop an “action plan” to bring in builders of such homes.
Huizinga, East and Schubert share similar goals for Sequim, and Schubert boils them down to four: setting “reasonable” development fees for builders, encouraging planned development inside the city, supporting Sequim’s seniors and Boys & Girls Club and furnishing “housing opportunities for all.”
“The crux of the election,” Schubert said, “is about growth or no growth” and how to stimulate Sequim’s economy. This city’s building-permit fees are among the highest on the North Olympic Peninsula, and he believes that’s “forcing development out of the town.”
Miller, for his part, thinks Schubert, in his years on the council, has flung Sequim’s gate too wide for housing developers. “If anything, the building permit fees are way too low,” Miller said, adding that he strongly favors impact fees, the charges developers pay to help defray city infrastructure costs.
The Sequim council has yet to adopt official impact fees to pay for city facilities. But a majority, including Mayor Laura Dubois, have moved to hire consultants to study how high the city can raise such fees.
Schubert believes that during this deep recession — which has sent Sequim’s sales-tax revenue plummeting — the city can ill afford such contractors.
“We’re spending way too much money studying stuff,” he said.
Dubois responded that the developer impact fees, once enacted, will pay for those studies. “We will be poised for when the economy turns around,” she said, with fees to fatten the city’s purse and pay for improved roads and parks.
Some years ago, building permit fees were low “and that fueled the housing boom,” Dubois said, adding that since developers didn’t pay the costs for needed infrastructure, Sequim’s taxpayers and utility ratepayers were left with that burden.
Hall, for his part, would put a stop to all consultant studies. The city is facing a deep revenue shortfall, and staff layoffs loom in the 2010 budget since no one is predicting an upswing in sales-tax or building-permit income. So Hall believes it’s high time to rein in spending and lower permit fees, if that will bring builders back.
Dubois doesn’t believe permit fees or other development costs have driven business away from Sequim. Hers is still the fastest-growing city on the North Olympic Peninsula, with 5,715 residents as of April 1, according to the state Office of Financial Management. That’s 105 more than lived here in 2008; Sequim’s growth rate puts it at No. 68 among Washington’s 279 municipalities.
Schubert figures that growth will go on. “People that want to come here are going to come here. Our job is to make it possible for them to come” instead of pricing them out of the market. His mission, he added, is to keep Sequim “a viable place, with jobs” and a strong tax base.
Schubert acknowledged that while he was mayor from 2002 through 2007, he was targeted as the bringer of big-box buildup on the city’s western edge. Those chain stores supply sales tax revenue and jobs, Schubert said, and he doesn’t regret welcoming them.
“When you look at the tax base,” added East, “this town would be in real trouble without Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Costco.”
East, Huizinga and Schubert agree that some of that revenue should be shared with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and in particular the teen program in Sequim.
“It saves lives,” Huizinga said of the club at 400 W. Fir St.
Hall, however, said that in these times, the city of Sequim can’t afford to help even the worthiest of organizations.
“I hate to say that,” he added. But “I’d rather not give to the Boys & Girls Club than have a city employee lose his job.”
The City Council has been divided on such issues and reduced its funding for the club from $100,000 in 2008 to $60,000 this year. And the first half of 2009 has been rife with disagreements between longtime members and the newer four. Developer fees, building-design standards and how to budget for 2010 have fueled hours of debate.
Dubois, finally, emphasized that while Schubert and others may blame Sequim’s economic struggles on higher development fees, “we haven’t driven anybody out. The housing market [slump] is nationwide,” she said, “and not anything the four council members did.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
