Please contact Graham Simon or David Grimes with questions, phone 667-6225

The proposed Building Code Resolution

The permit would – (more)

Here is a copy of a strikeout draft of the proposed code.  The strikeouts are not changes from the existing code, but simply markups from an earlier version of the draft.  Many of the stakeholders in the process are concerned about some of the effects of the proposed changes. 

This is one of your last chances to take a look and express your thoughts to:

Lilith Yanagimachi 
Planner  II
Chelan County
509.667.6586
lilith.yanagimachi@co.chelan.wa.us

Last year, a home on Pelton Place was destroyed by an avalanche and there was damage to neighboring homes.   The order is to remain in place until the homeowners, at their expense, undertake avalanche protection measures that could cost as much as $2 million.

The homeowners have hired an attorney and filed an appeal with the Chelan County Hearing Examiner.

Here’s an excerpt of a Wenatchee World story on the issue:

The order is the first of its kind in the county, where officials have deemed residential homes uninhabitable for part of the year. In addition, two vacant lots in the area will not be eligible for building permits because of the order, county planning officials said.

The restriction would remain in place until avalanche protection measures are taken by property owners, which could cost up to $2 million.

The county issued the order last month in response to a powerful avalanche that destroyed a home on Pelton Place on Feb. 7, 2008. The slide knocked a two-story home about 45 feet off its foundation. The destroyed home is included in the eight affected by the county order, even though it was not rebuilt. The foundation is still there. – Wenatchee World

You’ve probably already heard folks worried about the costs.  But you probably haven’t heard about the details of the 300 page amendment introduced by the Democrats at 3:00 a.m. that could not be read before voting.

How do these details grab ya?

Beyond what it will do to our economy, at the end of the debate House GOP Leader John Boehner took to the floor and started reading from the 300 page amendment that the Democrats drafted and dropped on the legislatures at 3 AM, there was literally hundred of items to impose federal control over your life. Here are some highlights.

Want to replace a window? Not so fast. First you must pay for an appraisal of your house to measure its energy efficiency and receive calculations of both before and after the proposed change. Hey, it may be a great excuse for those guys trying to avoid putting in that big bay style window that the missus has been bugging you about.

Are you having a new house built? Back up, Skippy. This bill includes language that tells you exactly where you can put your electrical outlets.

Did you know that for one sort of appraisal service related to determining energy efficiency there is only one company you can use? Yup, it is right in there along with the name of the company. How is it that this one company managed to land the only contract to service 300 million Americans? Who is this company?

I wish I could answer those questions, but all of those provisions and more, Rep. Boehner went on for almost an hour citing them and still didn’t get through the whole 300 pages, is not available. You see because of when the Democrats dropped this amendment at 3 AM the text of it is not available. So much for that transparency. The total bill runs on for more then 1500 pages and it controls every aspect of your life, from what type of car we will be able to produce and buy to what type of appliances you have in your house.

Under some of these provisions you won’t be able to sell your house. Got your eyes and a quaint little place out the way and off the beaten path? Forget about it. By the time you went through the time and expense to get it up to the new code proposed in this legislation that little place in the woods will resemble something out the Jetsons. –JammieWearingFool

Are these the same folks you want deciding if you get health care when you need it?  If you’re mad, please do something about it.

From Wednesday’s discussion, there are many changes from the previous preliminary draft that came out.  Some are great, like easing some of the maintenance restrictions on docks, etc.  But, there are still provisions for public access requirement across private developments.  Apparently Washington’s Shorelines Managment Act has requirements that are driving some of the more controversial sections of the local Shoreline Management Plan update.  Also, attempts were made to reference appropriate Washington Administrative Code (WAC) and Revised Code of Washington (RCW) that are the rules that the plan is required to comply with.  So, you should be able to compare what the rule requires to what has been written.

Now, the draft Shoreline Managment Plan is available.  I will have further comments next week when I’ve spent some time with it.  The county would like to have all comments by August 7th.

A hard copy of the Draft SMP will also be available (starting next week) to look through at each City Hall (Cashmere, Chelan, Entiat, Leavenworth, and Wenatchee), Chelan County Natural Resource Department, Chelan County Community Development Department, and the North Central Washington Library in Wenatchee.   

How to submit comments:

• Comments can either be submitted electronically (e-mail) or through the postal mail (see addresses below)
• Comments referencing the section (not the page) of the document first would be extremely helpful
  For Example: Section 4.4.2.1.a; then comment.

Submit comments to:

Erin Fonville
SMP Project Manager/
Natural Resource Specialist
Chelan County Natural Resource Department
316 Washington St. Suite 401
Wenatchee, WA 98801
E-mail:  erin.fonville@co.chelan.wa.us

Couple that with the local desire to burden home buyers with even larger shares of the tax burden with impact fees, and a post was born!

The local political lexicon that justifies extortion of development for  impact fees, SEPA fees and other fees that create high housing costs is “Development should pay for development.”  What a sound byte for a politician!  The problem is, development already does pay for development, and much more. – Chelan Real Estate Blog

May 20, 1:30 PM, Leavenworth Fire Hall, Chumstick Highway, Leavenworth, WA May 21, 1:30 PM, Chelan Fire Hall, 232 E. Wapato, Chelan, WA.

When  the agenda is available, I will post it.

After hearing the questions and concerns from the County Commissioners, I felt much better about the direction they would like the process to go.  The draft of the SMP Update that was on the web sites and we linked to, was apparently not meant to be widely distributed to the public, although it was on publicly accessible web sites.  It was a draft to the various groups and stakeholders who have been working on the project before a draft for public review.

That “public” draft is scheduled to be out sometime in May, although that could be delayed.  I will let readers know when it is available and get links to the documents for your review.

There will be a lengthy public review process and adoption of the plan is not scheduled to occur until sometime in 2010.

Great comments were made in both meetings I attended about the public access, particularly from private property, that was in the preliminary draft.  While it is clear that additional public access is desired, the approach that was written into the early draft was not well received by the attendees to the meetings.

In spite of the document getting a bit more attention then may have been originally planned, good feedback was given and received about dimensional, structural and other issues within the preliminary draft.  A variety of approaches to addressing the likely lack of concurrency of the final SMP to  changing of other permitting agencies was also discussed including not having standards in the Chelan County document that are already covered by other agencies.

There were other meetings in Leavenworth and elsewhere in the county.  Please add comments if I missed something or with your thoughts.

That is unfortunate with the draft SMP coming before the Chelan County Commissioners for Public comment on Monday at 2:00 p.m.!  The City of Chelan Planning Commission is discussing it at their meeting Wednesday night. 

I had several links to the 375 page document in this earlier post.

The time frame for appropriate public review on this large and very technical 375 page document was already quite short, with April 20th being the cutoff date from the County. 

I have e-mails in to Erin Fonville to get a copy of the document which we will post on our servers as soon as I can get it.  I will see of other folks actually saved a copy I can get as well.

This is a huge document that was just recently made available.  I suggest that people let the County Commissioners and City of Chelan know that proper feedback on this document cannot be given from the public by the county’s April 20th cutoff date, especially when the county does not make the document available!  I believe this draft SMP is horribly flawed and requires a major overhaul!  We cannot let this document be slid through an approval process without public scrutiny.