Landowners in uproar over property rights
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 6:29 AM PST
By Tony Lystra
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe consultant from Portland stood at the front of the room in a pair of dress slacks. The rural landowners, a long beard here, a pair of work jeans there, lined up in chairs.
"It's called socialism!" a man in the crowd shouted.
"Vote Republican!" crowed another.
Yet another man said the government is run by "overeducated idiots."
"We're getting awful tired of it," he said.
The flyer said the meeting would be about Cowlitz County's critical areas ordinance, the local environmental regulations that govern where people can and can't build on their own property.
But, really, it was about much more.
The landowners said they didn't like laws being shoved down their throats by educated elites.
The consultant said the state's Growth Management Act required that the laws be updated.
And so the standoff continued during a meeting Monday night at the county government building in Kelso.
Jason Franklin, who works for Parametrix, the firm hired to help update the ordinance, said the "best available science" would be used to determine what's a wetland, what isn't, where it's OK to build, where it isn't.
"I don't agree with coming out of college, reading best science and making decisions unless you've been out there," said Bob Janisch of Castle Rock.
"We have some higher degrees between us," Franklin acknowledged. "Those smarty people that read all those studies and write all those books --- that's us. ... We have a lifestyle that we choose and you choose yours and we try to meet in the middle."
In a county typically feisty about property rights, those were fighting words.
"These laws that they want to make today is just a screw down on you," another landowner, Jerry Reagor called out to his comrades. "It's not about protecting the environment. It's about controlling your life."
Cowlitz County passed its first Critical Areas Ordinance, which governs flood zones, wetlands, slide areas and more, in 1996.
Mike Wojtowicz, who oversees the county's building and planning department, said last week that officials held off on updating the laws last year because voters had yet to decide Initiative 933, which would have repealed land-use restrictions unless government compensated landowners.
The measure failed statewide, but voters here approved it by a 12 percent margin.
Now, the county is hustling to update the laws before the state imposes sanctions for missing a December deadline. Franklin said Monday that officials hope to approve the new laws by June.
But Mark Andrews, of Kelso, wondered whether the public could have a true say in a process that is moving at break-neck speed.
"Is this timeline going to be realistic?" he asked, pointing out that the ordinance is "dealing with very complex social, economic and legal issues."
Landowners also questioned whether the building department, which has been widely criticized as slow and clumsy, has the staff to take on the job or enforce the laws.
Gwen Heuer, who said county officials were far too slow in processing permits to build her house, called the department "a train wreck."
"We've had it," she said.
"We're able to regulate and enforce our existing ordinance," Wojtowicz said in an interview after the meeting. But he added: "It's impossible to predict what the future might bring while we don't even have a draft ordinance in hand."
Asked if he was surprised by the crowd's reception, Wojtowicz, decidedly weary, said, "No, I assumed it would be very controversial."
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