County asked to fix zoning change

Spokane County commissioners should fix a zone change they recently acknowledged was granted without the necessary public review, according to a formal complaint.

The Neighborhood Alliance of Spokane and Tina Wynecoop, who lives in the vicinity of the zone change, have petitioned the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board to force commissioners to act.

Going through the zone-change process now would be purely a matter of principle because the approximately 260-unit apartment complex in question has already been built.

“I think we absolutely need to go through the right process, and I applaud the Alliance for making sure we do,” said County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, who directed the Neighborhood Alliance before she ran for commissioner last year.

One of the reasons she ran for office was to hold government accountable, Mager said.

She called for stronger action last month, when Commissioners Todd Mielke and Mark Richard decided to discipline Building and Planning Director Jim Manson with only a “letter of correction.”

Richard said the Neighborhood Alliance petition seems politically motivated in view of its campaign support for Mager.

“The county has already stepped up and accepted that (Manson’s action) was not the proper process,” but the decision can’t be reversed without bulldozing an apartment complex.

“To spend taxpayer money and go through this arduous process to satisfy a matter of principle, I don’t find to be in the public interest,” Richard said.

Mielke couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

All three commissioners ruled April 25 that Manson improperly granted a zone change simply by redrawing a line on a map.

It was one of several mistakes with which commissioners tagged Manson after an investigation of a “whistleblower” complaint by one of Manson’s planners, Bruce Hunt.

Commissioners outlined a number of steps to prevent future problems, including a prohibition on granting zone changes under the circumstances in which Manson accommodated developer Richard Vandervert in May 2005. But they didn’t rescind the zone change for Vandervert’s Forest Creek Apartments at 13110 N. Addison St., just north of the Wandermere West strip mall at Hastings Road and U.S. Highway 395.

Public records show the apartments were built on a 9.19-acre parcel that was split between two zones: “low-density residential,” which allows only one house or duplex per 6 acres, and “mixed use,” which allows apartments among other uses.

Wynecoop and the Neighborhood Alliance, represented by the Spokane law firm Center for Justice, say Manson improperly shifted 8.26 acres into the more intense zone without environmental review or public notice.

“It is a very undemocratic method of making land-use determinations,” Center for Justice attorney Rick Eichstaedt said. “What’s been done in response to this has simply been insufficient.”

Manson agreed with Vandervert’s attorney, Margaret Arpin, that the split resulted from a “mapping mistake” when a new comprehensive land-use plan was implemented.

“As was reiterated by (then) Commissioner Phil Harris at the public hearing on the 2004 comprehensive plan amendments, it was not Spokane County’s intent to give a single parcel two different comprehensive plan designations,” Arpin stated in an April 2005 letter to Manson.

But a committee that investigated Hunt’s whistleblower complaints said the zoning split actually was created by an October 2004 “lot line adjustment” Vandervert requested.

Lot line adjustments may be granted administratively when land owners want to shift the boundary between two parcels without creating a new parcel.