Neighbors’ development concerns come at a price

Alan Harbine is finding out that asking your neighbors for a cup of sugar is one thing and asking 200 or more of them for $100 each is quite another.

The Northwood resident and others are passing the hat, hoping to create a $20,000 legal fund to fight a nearby housing development, Valley Springs, a 369-home project proposed by Bryan Walker. They fear their home values could suffer if they do nothing.

“Think of it this way,” Harbine told a leery crowd of 180 neighbors at a recent town hall meeting. “A 5 percent loss of market value on a $200,000 home is a lot more.”

Organizers pass baskets around the meeting room in Sunday-service fashion. Some checks are deposited, but most people, who five minutes earlier nodded their heads in agreement with everything Harbine said about more houses and more traffic, seem reluctant to buy in.

It’s a tough bill to swallow, but more and more neighbors are finding that in the planning arena, where subdivisions are born, simple petitions and emotionally charged public testimony aren’t enough to sway the debate.

It takes experts to counter the experts presented by builders and developers. Traffic engineers, biologists, attorneys and paid witnesses all can cost neighbors a bundle. Residents from a half-dozen neighborhoods in Spokane, Spokane Valley and Spokane County are currently spending $6,000 to more than $20,000 to have a say in what goes up around them

Neighbors who pony up frequently grumble that they’re paying for services that local government should be providing, like independent traffic studies and biologists to scrutinize self reporting by developers about how construction will affect the environment.

Local officials, on the other hand, say their job is to shepherd development projects through the process, to make sure the rules are followed and everyone gets a chance to weigh in. They’re not in the counterpoint business.

“We really don’t go down that path,” said John Pederson, head planner for Spokane County. “We provide the framework and the background. The rest is up to them. It seems almost commensurate with the process that if there’s a traffic engineer on one side and a biology expert, you almost need an expert, too.”

Homeowners in Linde Hackett’s neighborhood on the eastern edge of the South Hill paid more than $6,000 last year for an attorney and biologist to challenge a nearby housing project, the 161-home, 99-apartment Southridge Development proposed for acreage with traffic concerns and year-round wetlands.

The work in Hackett’s neighborhood group is done by five people, who contribute $50 to $100 each whenever they meet. Other neighbors contribute less regularly in response to fliers for help circulated by the core members.

For the middle-class neighborhood of homes that sell well below $200,000, the investment yielded some results. Southridge was approved, but with the caveat that several of the neighborhood’s environmental and traffic concerns be addressed. A street that frequently floods beside the project will have to be properly drained. And soil and water studies not perused by county planners are required as a result of expert testimony paid for by Hackett’s neighbors.

But now the county’s ruling on the project is being appealed by the developers Cliff Cameron and Lancze Douglas. Hackett and her neighbors are scrambling to find money to defend the outcome they fought for.

“We already paid our attorney. The latest one was $6,300 and we’ve already paid him once before,” Hackett said. “Plus, we paid a traffic engineer, who usually charges $2,500, but charged us $500, plus the biologist. We’re probably already in this 10 grand and that’s not including the cost of the appeal.”

Despite the neighborhood-requested conditions attached to the project’s approval by a Spokane County hearing examiner, Hackett said some neighbors still felt they lost because the overall project received a green light.

That attitude, of neighbors preferring no growth along their property lines at all, has a lot to do with the friction and the litigation surrounding developments currently being proposed, said Roger Flint, Spokane’s public works director. And that assessment is one echoed by the building industry.

“This issue goes back a long ways. We all want things to be status quo. A lot of times it’s called the NIMBY syndrome – not in my back yard,” Flint said. “That’s not a new thing.”

Flint was one of those neighbors opposing the would-be housing project a few years ago. At his city office, he still has photographs taken from his back porch in the Five Mile area of sunsets setting over a vacant field where the development he challenged eventually took place. It was a nice meadow, one neighbors used as an informal park, assuming it was somewhat theirs; the name of Flint’s street was Meadowview Lane.

“I told my neighbors, ‘This is not our land. The other property owner has rights, too,’ ” Flint said.

His neighbors challenged the location of some of the building lots, which were close to a cliff. They also pushed to protect a small stream running through the property. The homes went in, but Flint and his neighbors did get their concerns addressed.

Knowing the rights of the developer and the rights of the neighborhood made the outcome much easier, Flint said. Local government should be making the rules as clear as possible. Homeowners should take the time to know what the rules for development are in their neighborhood. Many don’t bother to find out.

But local government needs to enforce existing rules, said Mirna Tohmeh, also a Five Mile neighbor. Tohmeh’s household and a half-dozen others are in court now, contesting Spokane’s approval of a housing project with a disputed street access.

“We have spent more than $20,000,” Tohmeh said. “And we’re not against development.”

What Tohmeh’s neighbors are against is the traffic from the development flowing onto their street and the small lots that were approved for the 57-home project. The lots on her street are much larger than what was approved.

In fact, most of the building lots being carved out of the landscape today are smaller than lots created even 10 years ago. The change is part of a state mandate to stem urban sprawl. David Bauer, executive officer of the Spokane Home Builders Association, said the battles over growth aren’t going to tone down until neighbors, government officials and members of his own industry become more flexible.

“For this to get resolved, it’s going to take some real compromise and charity,” Bauer said. “People are going to have to be willing to accept some sort of development. I think the county and the city have to update some of their zoning regulations. And the charity on the developer’s part is to say, ‘OK, I’m not going to try to get every swinging cent out of this thing.’ “

In north Greenacres, Mary Pollard and other homeowners are collaborating with an area builder who has donated a consultant to their efforts to create a blueprint for growth in their neighborhood. Had the neighbors paid for the consultant out of pocket, Pollard said, it would have cost $10,000.

And Harbine’s Northwood neighbors have negotiated a road change with the developer working in their area.

It’s positive, but still part of the process. It still takes money to participate.