COER, Navy agree on lawsuit`s dismissal

Vol. 126,
No. 33
News-Times
Whidbey
SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 2016
WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM | 75 CENTS
Your hometown newspaper for 126 years
FilmSlam
highlights
reserve
COER, Navy
agree on
lawsuit’s
dismissal
Pot grower likely
to gain permit to
keep growing pot
Lack of penalty leads to
questions about fairness
By DAN RICHMAN
drichman@whidbeynewsgroup.com
Island County Hearing
Examiner Michael Bobbink is expected to issue a
permit within a week, giving marijuana harvesters
in Oak Harbor’s industrial
area permission to do what
they’ve been doing for two
years.
The Board of Commissioners Wednesday
concluded it will take no
action to halt the pending issuance of a land-use
permit to the large Oak
Harbor recreational marijuana-growing and -processing operation.
As long as two years ago,
By JESSIE STENSLAND
jessie@whidbeynewsgroup.com
A federal lawsuit brought against the
U.S. Navy by a Central Whidbey antinoise group is officially over.
Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve for a
Healthy, Safe & Peaceful Environment,
or COER, and a top Navy official agreed
to a stipulation of dismissal of the 2013
lawsuit in U.S. District Court earlier this
week.
The lawsuit was dismissed without
prejudice, meaning that it can be refiled
at a later date.
SEE PERMIT, A14
SEE SUIT, A12
COER takes jet
noise complaints
to Health board
Photo by Dan Richman/Whidbey News-Times
Speakers at Monday evening’s housing forum included (left
to right) Oak Harbor Public Schools Superintendent Lance
Gibbon, Oak Harbor Development Services Director Steve
Powers and Oak Harbor Mayor Bob Severns.
Severns: Island housing
shortage an opportunity
By DAN RICHMAN
drichman@whidbeynewsgroup.com
The expansion of Naval
Air Station Whidbey Island
— already underway, and
projected to increase dramatically by 2018 — poses
a housing challenge to
Oak Harbor, Mayor Bob
Severns said while addressing an April 18 meeting of
about 85 Realtors, developers and city and county
officials.
page 10
“I would never call this
a crisis,” he said. “I would
call this an opportunity.”
The “opportunity” is to
house 3,747 additional Oak
Harbor residents by 2036,
said Steve Powers, the
city’s development services
director.
The city’s population,
including Navy personnel
and their families, is projected to grow by that numSEE HOUSING, A13
By JESSIE STENSLAND
jessie@whidbeynewsgroup.com
Several times a year, Naval Air
Station Whidbey Island’s Search and
Rescue team performs water exercises. Their rescue swimmers leap
Members of an anti-jet-noise group
took a somewhat new tack this week by
taking their fight to the Island County
Board of Health.
Ultimately, however, they weren’t
successful in convincing the majority of
board members to take any action.
Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve, or COER,
rallied the “victims of jet noise” to speak
to the board of elected officials about
health problems allegedly caused by the
exposure to the EA-18G Growlers that
practice touch-and-go landings at the
Outlying Field Coupeville.
The citizens presented the board
members with studies on health effects
of jet noise; several people spoke about
their personal experience with such
things as hearing loss while living under
the flight path.
SEE TRAINING, A12
SEE COER, A13
Photo by Debra VaughnWhidbey News-Times
The Naval Air Station Whidbey Island Search and Rescue unit practices water
rescue exercises at Campbell Lake Wednesday evening. North Whidbey Fire and
Rescue attend the exercises as a precaution.
Need a lift?
Navy SAR conducts training
By DEBRA VAUGHN
dvaughn@whidbeynewsgroup.com
I
n order to save you, Adam Trump
has to practice throwing himself
out of a helicopter.
Page A12
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SUIT
CONTINUED FROM A1
File photo/Whidbey News-Times
Members of Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve and other residents
protest Navy jet noise at OLF Coupeville a couple of years ago.
COER’s lawsuit against the Navy was dismissed this week.
COER’s attorney David
Mann, of Seattle, said the dismissal of the case is largely
a housekeeping matter
because all of the issues cited
by the group in its lawsuit
were dealt with.
COER originally filed a
lawsuit against the Navy in
2013 to force it to prepare
a full environmental impact
statement, or EIS, for the
then-new Growler.
The group maintains that
the Growler is much louder
than its predecessor, the
EA-6B Prowler.
The lawsuit also alleged
that the number of practice
flights at Outlying Field
Coupeville was much higher
than the Navy had previously
promised.
Whidbey Island Naval Air
Station uses the small runway south of Coupeville to
simulate aircraft carrier landings.
After the lawsuit was filed,
the Navy announced that a
Saturday, April 23, 2016 • Whidbey News-Times
full environmental impact
statement will be conducted
for the addition of new squadrons coming to Whidbey; the
report is currently scheduled
to be released this fall.
The Navy also reduced
significantly on the number
of the touch-and-go flights at
OLF Coupeville and started
communicating with the public about the flight schedule.
As part of its lawsuit,
COER filed a preliminary
injunction against the Navy
to halt the flights until the EIS
was completed; a judge ruled
against COER.
“At this point, it doesn’t
have a lot of relevance,”
Mann said, adding that the
lawsuit probably should have
been dismissed after the
judge’s decision denying the
injunction.
Mann said the lawsuit will
probably only be re-filed if
the Navy increases the number of flights at the OLF
Coupeville, which he speculated is unlikely to happen.
Once the EIS is released,
COER
members
will
undoubtedly take a close
look at it.
Mann said that any legal
action that may come in
response to the EIS would be
in the form of a completely
new lawsuit.
Photo by Debra Vaughn/Whidbey News-Times
Daniel Ismay of Naval Air Station Whidbey SAR hands a
dry bag full of barbecue to his colleague Zach Delcorte, a
rescue swimmer.
SAR
CONTINUED FROM A1
out of one of the unit’s three
MH-60S helicopters.
On Wednesday, the SAR
team had an opportunity to
practice those skills at Lake
Campbell in warm, sunny
almost summer-like conditions. They teamed up with
members of North Whidbey
Fire and Rescue, who kept
a boat on the water as a precaution.
“Our role is if something
happens, we are there to rescue the swimmers or the people in the helo,” said North
Whidbey Fire and Rescue
Capt. Jim O’Connor.
Wednesday, Trump stayed
in the bird as a crew chief,
managing the hoist that lowers rescuers up and down.
He’s qualified for water and
over land rescues.
“I get them in safely using
the rescue device,” he said.
“I have to be one step ahead
of them once they’re in the
water.”
And he’s also in constant,
close contact with the pilots
up front.
The two organizations
started working together on
this training exercise several
years ago, O’Connor said. It’s
beneficial for both groups.
They may have to work
together in a rescue situation,
he said. Some of the newer
fire and rescue volunteers
need to become accustomed
to potentially working around
the spray kicked up by the
helo’s powerful rotor blades.
“We’ve learned what to
expect and do everything we
can to accommodate them,”
O’Connor.
And that includes some
good old-fashioned brotherly
love.
The North Whidbey folks
throw a barbecue and since
the SAR team can’t exactly
set the bird down at the
county boat launch, they find
another way to send food.
They packed a dry bag full
of hamburgers, hot dogs and
the like.
A SAR rescue swimmer
swam to the powerboat to
retrieve and send it up to the
helo.
A little more work than the
McDonald’s drive-thru, but
effective.
SAR operates as search
and rescue platforms for
EA-18G Growler as well as
for other squadrons and personnel at NAS Whidbey. The
base has an agreement to
help the state with medical
evacuations and search and
rescue activities.
They can be called on
to operate anywhere from
Mount Hood in Oregon to
the Canadian border. NAS
Whidbey’s SAR team is
unusual — only one of four in
the country — that is trained
to not just pluck distressed
people from the water but to
handle anything in the mountains too.
Saturday, April 23, 2016 • Whidbey News-Times
HOUSING
CONTINUED FROM A1
ber to 25,822 in 2036, up from
22,075 in 2010.
Using 2016 as a baseline,
the number of military and
civilian personnel, plus their
families, associated with
NAS Whidbey is projected to
increase by 1,320 people, or
7 percent, to 19,560 by 2018;
and by 3,740 people, or 20
percent, to 21,980 by 2019,
the Navy has said.
About 70 percent currently live in Oak Harbor, with
Coupeville and Anacortes the
next most popular cities, said
Capt. Geoffrey Moore, the
base’s commanding officer.
To accommodate the
additional 3,747 people, Oak
Harbor needs 1,629 more
housing units, either apartments or houses, Powers said.
The city’s Urban Growth
Area, land contiguous to the
city limits, has enough space
COER
CONTINUED FROM A1
Residents reported experiencing noise past 130 decibels, which is well above the
level considered safe.
COER presented the board
with a list of things it can
do to educate and protect
the public, including closing
Rhododendron Park.
Coupeville resident Jerome
Squire said it’s not unpatriotic
to speak out against the harmful impacts of the noise.
“The Navy provided me
with a living,” he said. “I love
the Navy. I don’t like the OLF.”
Several people, including
former Commissioner Mac
McDowell, spoke about the
importance of the outlying field
to training and the Navy’s mission. McDowell urged the board
to allow the Navy to complete an
environmental assessment.
After the lengthy public
comment period — which
got a little rowdy at times
— the board members had
a lively discussion of their
own, but ended up heeding
McDowell’s advice.
Dr. Brad Thomas, county health officer, asked the
board for direction. He noted
that the studies provided
mainly focus on the health
effects of noise from commercial jets, which he noted is
longer duration but lower volume than noise from military
jets. He said military aircraft
are exempt from regulation
and questioned what a county
health board could do.
Still, he said he felt that the
board should have a response.
“I want to nudge you a little
bit,” he said. “Maybe we really
truly need to make a statement, one way or the other,
just to acknowledge a huge
community demand on us.”
Grethe Cammermeyer, a
for those units, he said.
A considerable amount
of new-home construction
is currently, or about to be,
under way, including:
n Island Place, 66 singlefamily homes near the intersection of Northwest Heller
Street and Northwest Crosby
Avenue, under construction.
n Marin Woods, 43 singlefamily homes off Southwest
Swantown Avenue near the
intersection with Fairway
Lane, is in preliminary review.
Four projects are being
considered, though no application has yet been submitted. They are:
n The Garry Oak subdivision, at the intersection of
Southwest 24th Avenue and
State Highway 20, with 59
single-family homes;
n Ely Terrace, at the
intersection of Southeast
Ely Street and Southeast
Barrington Drive, with 30
townhouses;
n Tanya Jean, at 300
Northeast Seventh Avenue,
retired military nurse and a
member of the hospital board,
suggested that the board put
together a work group to look
into possible ways to mitigate
the problem.
Commissioner Helen Price
Johnson said the complaints
have merit. She said the
Growlers are significantly
louder than the previous aircraft. She said the noise-related data that the Navy relies on
doesn’t reflect what the community experiences because
it’s averaged out over entire
days and doesn’t capture the
intense noise of the Growlers.
She suggested that the
board urge the Navy to make
the jets quieter.
“The same people who
make the Growler also make
stealth aircraft,” she said,
“so that they say it can’t be
done is very difficult for me
to accept.”
The three other members,
however, decided to leave the
issue to the federal government.
Commissioner Jill Johnson
said she’s more concerned
about job loss if the Navy base
closes.
She said being poor is a risk
factor for health problems.
She said some of the people
may have a legitimate concern, like the noise exposure
to children playing at the
Rhododendron Park. But,
she argued, much of the
rhetoric is overblown.
“A lot of what was happening here today was a HaightAshbury revival of people who
have an agenda, and they’re
using public health to accomplish it,” she said. “I’m not
going to participate in that.”
Oak Harbor Mayor Bob
Severns and Commissioner
Rick Hannold agreed, saying that a lot more people in
the community support the
Navy, jets noise and all.
WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM
with five townhouses; and
n AHA Investments, at 425
Southeast Barrington Drive,
with 26 apartments.
Those
developments,
which will bring a total of 229
units if all are built, won’t be
close to enough to meet the
demand, Powers conceded.
Ready to step in is Clayton
Homes, a Maryville, Tenn.
builder of manufactured and
mobile homes.
“The city’s definitely facing a housing crunch, obviously,” said general manager
Trevor Belch, who attended
the meeting. “We are starting
investigating what we can do
to bring our product into this
area.”
Clayton might start by buying up 4-5 lots and building on
spec, Belch said.
“We can do entire subdivisions,” if the demand is there,
he said.
Clayton Homes can build
a dwelling in 12-13 weeks,
Belch said. Permits are most
often the hold-up. Clayton carries the cost of construction,
so the buyer need only pay at
the end.
Because the units are titled
as real property, buyers may
qualify for FHA, USDA or VA
financing, Belch said.
Page A13
The housing shortage
is real, said Rick Chapman,
president of real estate
firm Coldwell Banker Tara
Bayview, at the meeting. On a
typical day recently, 110 houses were for sale and seven
were for rent in the North
Whidbey area, defined as the
region between Libbey Road
and Deception Pass Bridge.
Of those 110 houses, 52
cost under $400,000 — the
top of the range most military
families can afford, Chapman
said.
Those numbers held steady
over several days, he said.
The 52 houses represented
a one-month supply at recent
sales rates, he said.
“So coming here to find a
house seven months before
you get transferred here,
that’s about what you need to
do,” he said.
As for rentals, “we have
zero vacancies,” he said.
“Tenants notify us they’ll be
moving out and we get new
renters two weeks later, sight
unseen.”
Rents on North Whidbey
have increased an average of
25 percent, and in some cases
up to 40 percent, over the past
2-1/2 years, “and they’re still
going up,” he said.
Page A14
PERMIT
CONTINUED FROM A1
the owners of seven buildings, between 3143 and 3171
Goldie Road, without such a
permit, converted some of
the buildings from commercial retail use to marijuana
use. They ejected several
retail businesses in the process, and their own multiple
tenants have freely engaged
in the marijuana business
since.
The
facility’s
owners, Christina and Scott
Hensrude, of Woodinville,
filed for a land-use permit in
2014, but just had their requisite site plan review hearing
on April 15.
After discussing the situation, the commissioners on
Wednesday explained that, if
you want to undertake a lawful activity or project in Island
County, there’s no need to
get a county land-use permit
first. You may freely proceed
with your plans.
If someone complains —
and only filing an official
complaint will suffice — then
the county will give you 45
WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM
days to file for the permit. If
you do so, no penalty will be
imposed, and the permit will
not be withheld.
If nobody complains, you
are free to continue your
unpermitted use indefinitely.
“Our effort is to get people
to move toward the right
building permits and land-use
permits to get compliance,”
Hiller West, the county’s
director of current-use planning and community development, said at the meeting.
Punishment is not part of
equation.
Here’s where the confusion occurs. In past instances,
some residents failing to first
obtain land-use permits were
issued stop-work orders until
they obtained one. Others
waited to proceed until they
got their permits, out of fear
and respect for how they
believed the law is enforced.
For example, because she
lacked land-use and building
permits, recreational marijuana retailer Maureen Cooke
in 2014 was hit with a stopwork order while preparing
to open her South Whidbey
store.
Obtaining those permits cost Cooke $2,500 and
delayed her opening by four
months.
Lucas Jushinski waited
six months, spending more
than $6,000 in rent on an
empty storefront and $2,000
in insurance while waiting
for Island County to issue a
land-use permit for his recreational marijuana retail store
in Freeland.
“I didn’t want to live in fear
of the county coming in and
closing me down,” he said.
Jushinski just opened his
store.
It’s clear that some county
residents seek to find, understand and follow the law,
while others are ignorant of
the law or flout it, said County
Commissioner Jill Johnson.
The root of the problem
is that the county currently doesn’t treat those two
groups differently, she said.
“What do we do to distinguish between those types
of behavior?” she asked rhetorically during an interview
Thursday. “We need different mechanisms to deal with
them, because right now
people who follow the rules
are being put at a distinct
disadvantage, and we want
to encourage rule-following.”
Saturday, April 23, 2016 • Whidbey News-Times
Photo by Dan Richman/Whidbey News-Times
Kristiina Miller, founder and director of not-for-profit Garage of Blessings, gestures toward her
charity’s former home, now a marijuana operation. She moved into another building but will
have to leave when that one, too, is converted to marijuana use.
As to the outcome in the
current situation, with apparent scofflaws getting away
with it, Johnson said, “It’s just
lousy. It’s a lousy situation.”
The outcome “is frustrating, because (the law) is
inconsistent in its application,” agreed Commissioner
Helen Price Johnson on
Wednesday. “If one person
has a neighbor who complains and another doesn’t,
and they’re doing the same
activity — that’s the crux of
the problem in how we’re
going about this right now.”
Price Johnson said a discussion of rural land use,
scheduled for next year,
might lead to changes.
Surprisingly, one person
who followed the law said he
is happy others did not.
“I’m glad the Oak Harbor
guys just went ahead and did
what they wanted to do,” said
Jushinksi, the pot retailer.
“The county wants to get its
hands into everything, and it
takes forever to do anything.”
Enforcing land-use and
building laws by encouraging
compliance, rather than by
punishing non-compliance,
is probably common in this
state, said Josh Weiss, general counsel for the Washington
Association of Counties.
“My anecdotal sense is that
most counties would take the
compliance approach, at least
at first and probably only up
to a certain point,” he said.