Board of Adjustment versus Hearing Examiner - sour grapes

On Tuesday, January 13, the council passed an ordinance greatly reducing the scope of work for the Board of Adjustment and increasing the work assigned to the Hearing Examiner. I voted against that ordinance, because I believe that the Board of Adjustment (disclaimer - I sat on the Board of Adjustment for about four and a half years before I was elected to the Council) has served us well, at least while I was on it.

I believe that the argument that swayed the majority concerned primarily the legal liability that the city was incurring by have regular citizens deciding potentially very complex legal issues. (The Hearing Examiner is either an attorney or a land use professional with much more and better experience dealing with land use law.) Several of the councilmembers had apparently had less than wholly satisfactory experiences dealing with the Board which didn't help matters.

There were two alternatives that were offered to us. The first (and recommended by staff) version actually eliminated the Board of Adjustment altogether. The second (and the one we eventually adopted) left the Board to review decisions of the staff when a resident disagrees with that decision. Board Chairman Pat Pressentin, who was at the meeting, recalled only two cases in the last 14 years that he has been on the Board, which concerned overturning staff decisions. I don't think we had any in my four and a half years.

It seems to me that there is almost no purpose in having a Board of Adjustment which would meet so infrequently. Furthermore (as I unsuccessfully argued against the ordinance that was passed), I think the staff decisions should be overruled only if they are contrary to law, and the right venue to hear that argument is the Hearing Examiner who is more knowledgeable in the law than the citizens on the Board.

Councilmember Brant suggested, what I thought was a superb idea, that we have the Board of Adjustment hear variances (as it used to before the new ordinance) but have appeals go to the Hearing Examiner (rather than the City Council as the law was.) The Hearing Examiner would weigh the decision on its legal merits and could hopefully keep us out of the next level of appeal which is to the Superior Court. Our City Attorney did point out that this concept would make Normandy Park unique in that he knew of no other city in the state that had such an arrangement. Nevertheless, he could see no reason that it would not be legal.