An apparently new resident, or part-time resident, Marty Albertson, in a letter to the editor in the other paper this past week, asserted that I had objected to “an affordable housing duplex intended to serve the Valley’s essential workers” because I apparently didn’t want to look at affordable housing while riding my bike or playing golf. This is pure bunk. I invite you to read my own words in this dropbox folder: https://bit.ly/3cgq3xK
Blaine County has many laws that apply to development, like a lot must be one acre per residence or larger for a septic system and R-2 zoning means one residence per two acres of land.
However, one day in February 2018, with no notice or process, Blaine County Planning Director Tom Bergin issued a building permit for a duplex (two residences) on a .61-acre lot that had no building envelope on it because it was a Public Use Open Space Recreational Use parcel in a Planned Unit Development. Any other developer would have had to go back and amend the PUD through an extensive process to change the use of this lot for a building, and would have had to defend, through a conditional use process, why two residences on .61 acre, a substandard lot in R-2 zoning, should be allowed and why a septic system should be allowed on .61 acre for two residences, and where the water source should come from. Tom Bergin, although he has written that “community housing per se is not public use,” has asserted that the county can do anything it wants on any parcel labeled “public use,” changing the use from recreational open space to privately owned buildings indiscriminately.
I challenged the legality of the issuance of this building permit by the county with no plat amendment process. A county administrator does not have the sole ability to change the definition of public use to whatever he wants and disregard the plat agreement. The PUD developers had given this Open Space Recreational Use parcel C to the public to use and recreate on, in exchange for higher density in the subdivision lots and a dense community housing parcel with 12 houses on 2.5 acres next to it, Agave Place.
ARCH and BCHA asked to be included in my legal action challenging the building permit. I did not sue them. I and my neighbors have lived quite peacefully with that well-designed Agave Place community housing in my neighborhood now for 15 years. I am not against affordable housing. I am against the county and its administrator feeling like they are above the law and not being answerable to the public.
Kiki Tidwell
Candidate for Blaine County Commissioner