SEQUIM — Hiring a temporary hearing examiner to handle appeals concerning a proposed medication-assisted treatment facility never came to a vote before the Sequim City Council during its meeting this week.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has applied for a permit for the 16,720-square-foot medicine assisted treatment (MAT) clinic planned on 3.3 acres of the 18.19-acre parcel the tribe purchased last year on South Ninth Avenue.
City staff decided to consider the application through an A-2 process in which city staff review and approve the project. Three appeals of that decision have been filed by people who want the city to use a C-2 procedure which would require more involvement by the City Council.
Mayor William Armacost on Monday asked for a motion to hire Phil Olbrechts and Associates to hear the appeals, and after a moment of silence, council member Dennis Smith made the motion. The room went quiet again until Armacost said the motion failed due to lack of a second.
Prior to the decision, or lack thereof, City Manager Charlie Bush and City Attorney Kristina Nelson-Gross said the city’s code requires the hiring of a hearing examiner for this portion of the appeals process.
Deputy Mayor Ted Miller said he felt Olbrechts would be an excellent hearing examiner, but he questioned if the city needs to have one.
“It doesn’t matter what we decide because it’s going to get appealed to the Superior Court,” Miller said. “That way we can save a hearing examiner fee.”
Nelson-Gross said because residents are appealing the city’s A-2 process, a hearing examiner is required.
Earlier in the meeting, she said this is an area city staff look to clean up in the code, and that there are few instances where a decision would go to the council because of issues of fairness.
Decisions
Council member Troy Tenneson said he’s been upfront with his opposition to the proposed MAT clinic since last year and that he feels city staff have drifted to exclude council members from the decision-making process.
Nelson-Gross disagreed, saying the hearing examiner process isn’t about any specific council member or his or her beliefs.
“It’s about the interactions with the public; everyone is tainted in that sense,” she said.
She said the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine is “what tries to get council out of some of these decisions” and is “not something we are trying to do except to protect you and the city.
“No one can say they are neutral because of what they’ve gone through the (last few months),” Nelson-Gross said.
“We’re not disparaging anyone’s beliefs. It is just the law. When the council sits in a judicial manner it is expected to act like a judge.”
Tenneson said after reviewing city code that he thinks it isn’t right to appoint a hearing examiner.
Earlier in the meeting he said he understood Bush’s effort to seek out a hearing examiner because of the appeals, but said he felt that if the classification process was overturned from an A-2 process to a C-2 process the decision regarding the clinic would fall to the City Council.
“I anticipate the City Council being the appeal authority for the MAT appeal,” he said.
Tenneson said with Bush and former council member Jennifer States stepping down and other vacancies to fill, “I think hiring a hearing examiner is a serious position and it would behoove us to wait.”
At the beginning of the presentation, Robert “Bob” Bilow, one of the appellants, said Bush cut through the process of appointing a hearing examiner and that the city manager simplified the criteria qualifications for the hearing examiner.
In his presentation, Bush had told council members they must consider if Olbrechts is qualified or not.
“There’s nothing that needs to be done until June,” Bilow said. “You’re getting railroaded on this.”
Bilow offered to research the practices of other cities and states because there’s “no necessity to get it done tonight.”
Bush said the process was delayed because he was out about seven weeks between Nov. 1-Feb. 1 dealing with a medical family emergency.
Nelson-Gross said city staff have looked at other request for proposals in other governments and “nothing we are proposing is unusual.”
She said they aren’t sure when action will be taken on the application but that the city must be ready 21 days afterward for the appeal process.
“Whenever that happens, we need to be ready to get those appeals ready and before a hearing examiner and have any meetings scheduled … we’re trying to be diligent with our time and council’s time,” she said.
“We are trying to work best through this,” she said.
Nelson-Gross said there are also some limitations to who will come to the North Olympic Peninsula as a hearing examiner, so they need enough time to reach out to people who may not be as inclined to travel if they have a low turnout for a request for proposal.
Toward the end of the discussion, Tenneson sought assistance from Bilow but council members remained quiet.
Said Pat Johnson, a Sequim lawyer: “My take is that City Council hires a city attorney for a reason. The City Council should take city attorney’s opinion as to the law that applies and accept it because that’s her job.
“If they don’t and feel they need a second opinion, they should hire a lawyer to give them an unbiased opinion. You don’t hire someone from one side and ask him for a legal opinion. That makes absolutely no sense.”
Later, Tenneson said he trusts Nelson-Gross on many issues but not on the MAT and Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.
After the meeting, Bush said staff will discuss next steps on what to do with the process in the coming weeks and consult with the mayor and deputy mayor.
Virus, tension
City staff limited seating in the City Council chamber on Monday to prevent spread of COVID-19, but about 75 people filled the room, with some in the foyer.
Leaders with Save Our Sequim (SOS) said they asked the council to postpone the meeting. Jodi Wilke, SOS chairperson, said that about 100 people emailed in letters saying that they would have come but for concerns about the virus.
Prior to the meeting, about 30 representatives with the group Voices for Health and Healing rallied outside the Civic Center in support of the MAT clinic.
At the public comment session, three Sequim residents — Nicole Clark, Vicki Lowe and Shenna Younger — asked for civil discourse and a public resolution from council members to denounce allegedly racist behavior on SOS’s Facebook page. They held up poster boards of quotes from SOS’s Facebook page.
Wilke said in public comments that any racist comments on the page do not reflect the group’s opinions and she questioned why the comments weren’t reported to moderators rather than shared in public.
For more city information, see www.sequimwa.gov or call 360-683-4139.
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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.
