Letter to Editor | Public Works moves forward with $1.2 million (and growing) storage yard on Shaw despite community resistance

||| FROM LYNN BAHRYCH, J.D., PhD. |||

San Juan County Public Works moves forward with $1.2 million (and growing) storage yard on Shaw Island despite community resistance.

Once every seven years, the twelve miles of county road on Shaw Island is chip-sealed. In the past, it has been successfully accomplished from the current Public Works site next to the Shaw community building. Normally, that work site is empty except for a pile of gravel. The photographs below show how it has looked for the last thirty years.

SJC Public Works has spent $1,069,455.92 to purchase a two-story house with a guest house and other outbuildings on 16 acres on Shaw Island as a new work site.

However, the purchase price is only the “sunk costs” of this high-end gravel storage site. Since the initial purchase, Public Works has requested a budget amendment to increase the budget to $1,200,000 for “improvements.” This
amounts to another $130,000 in Road Fund Expenditures, money not available for other work on other islands.

Existing Public Works building (empty)

Existing Public Works storage site

Instead, the money would go for development costs, including: 

1. Upgrading the well for between $30,000 and $50,000 (if it can be permitted at all);
2. Upgrading the septic system;
3. Driveway widening from the narrow residential driveway without interfering with the neighbors’ perpetual, exclusive easement for ingress, egress, and utilities over the west 20 feet of the property;
4. Multiple acres of forest removal to clear space for spreading contaminated soils and for a half-acre slash burn area;
5. Modification of buildings to make them safe and suitable for industrial activities;
6. Environmental remediation of existing refuse burn sites;
7. Annual maintenance of an industrial zone; and
8. Cost of defending the effort to designate the residential property as an “Essential Public Facility” (“EPF”).

At least 50 environmental requirements were not met in the Public Works application for a change of use, all of which will have to be addressed by consultants or other environmental experts in any future applications.

There is also the cost to Shaw Island residents living along the Neck Point Road. County documents show that if the use of the purchased property were to be changed from residential—which is the highest and best use of the property—to industrial, surrounding properties would lose 5-10% of their assessed value.

Estimates for the loss from this kind of “stigma” often exceed 20%, a loss that neighboring homeowners should not have to absorb.

Public Works paid top value for the 16 acres, paying for its highest and best use, so the county would also instantly lose a good portion of its investment by downgrading it to an industrial zone.

Everyone will lose if this unnecessary project goes forward. Instead, the property could be resold and the funds used to support other county needs in a year of budget shortfalls. Now that could be a win for everyone.