Homeowner paying price for project

If something bad can happen to a homeowner when development goes up next door, it has probably happened to Mary Pollard.

Her 104-year-old farm house near the corner of Baldwin Avenue and Flora Road in Greenacres is surrounded on three sides by half-built subdivisions. For more than a year now, she has listened to construction noise up to 14 hours a day.

A weed-covered wall of dirt taller than she is runs along her side yard and will soon hold houses so tall they will end her view of Mica Peak and much of her privacy. Vibrations from machines used to compact soil have knocked down pictures in her house, given her headaches and, she’s afraid, may have caused cracks in her foundation.

“I’m the voice of every crap thing in this community,” she said.

Last week, though, the effect of development seemed to spill onto her property in a way that goes beyond the community planning, road work and design standards that the Greenacres activist pleads for at just about every public meeting in Spokane Valley.

The road in front of her house, which was torn out and replaced to accommodate two of the projects, now sits about two feet higher than her yard.

A few years ago, the property around her was mostly flat, open farmland. Now, man-made hills created to ensure sewer lines flow downhill from the new houses make her yard a low point on the block. And she says the road in front of Tomlinson Black’s Flora Meadows development basically turns her yard into a basin for storm water.

The city’s public works director, its storm water engineer and two city councilmen visited her last week and agreed that the road shouldn’t be paved until the developer answers a few more questions about the project’s runoff.

“My first reaction is that it’s very poor development practice,” Councilman Bill Gothmann said.

The city’s first task will be to see if the road conforms to city code. If not, he said, city leaders should take a hard look at how the city checks subdivision permits for potential problems.

“Our residents should not have to bear the brunt of poor development; that’s just wrong,” he said.

His sentiment could change building regulations later this month when the Planning Commission and then the City Council begin to rewrite the development code the city inherited from Spokane County.

One change, he said, could be additional rules for subdivisions with new roads that empty onto another road directly in front of someone’s house.

Pollard said she is afraid headlights from traffic leaving one of the subdivisions will point directly into her living room, and cars on the road could slide into her yard when the roads get icy.

“I’m watching this thing very carefully,” said Councilman Rich Munson.

He said neighbors should have been notified that the street would change so drastically and said that the runoff problem is obvious.

“This is the kind of situation that we want to avoid at all costs,” he said.

Although not the case in Flora Meadows, engineering firms are allowed to inspect and sign off on their own projects – a practice Munson said he would like to see end.

The city has asked for more specific data on the project’s grade that wasn’t included in the original permit applications to see if the project complies with the law, said Public Works Director Neil Kersten.

Todd Whipple, of the project’s engineering firm, said he was unable to comment on the development.

The project could be built to code, Kersten said, but if a drainage problem appears, the city will have a storm drain installed.

The builder also voluntarily will take measures to ease the road’s impact on her property, he said.

“Why are they approving vague plans?” Pollard asked.

Earlier, the project engineer offered to build a pipe on her property that would send water on to someone else’s land, which Pollard said she refused. On Thursday, the contractor said she had about 24 hours to decide if she wanted part of her yard raised to the level of the road before the equipment left.

During one conversation last week, Pollard said, someone from the company handling the project yelled at her, saying he was sick of her neighborhood.

“These people come in here, and they’re bullies; they push people to the point of endurance,” she said.

Had the city not stepped in, she said, she probably wouldn’t have had much recourse.

Taking legal action to stop a project costs thousands of dollars, and Pollard said, it is difficult to find a local land-use lawyer, hydrologist or engineer that doesn’t work for developers.

Even if regulations are overhauled, Pollard said her neighborhood will be mostly built out before any changes take effect.

In the meantime, reams of city, state and federal guidelines regulate home building down to the type of dirt used for a yard. But Pollard, and many people who have testified about Spokane Valley’s planning policies to date, say the rules often leave homeowners in a lurch when it comes to the impact a development will have on their property.

“People need to understand that this could happen to them,” Pollard said.