— from Mindy Kayl —
How do you protect your own sanctity at home on Orcas Island? Mindy Kayl will address the county council on Tuesday June 18th at the Eastsound Fire Hall. She will read a prepared statement during the public comment period, currently on the agenda at 10 am.
Any of you that are able, please attend to be witness. She has been extremely negatively impacted by the county road project, and will be addressing the council with her concerns about the county staff and elected officials lack of respect for and response to a “neighbor” in distress.
San Juan County Public Works did not conduct an impact study for this road project, and did not notify the adjacent property owners of the potential negative impacts to their homes. The project has affected her property with a disruptive flow of gravel trucks running from 6:30 am to 5:30 pm, sometimes one every 5 minutes. She is also on the detour route which affects her once peaceful farm 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
The county did a poor job of notifying the adjacent property owners of the potential impacts. Specifically, Mindy was never warned that her farm would be the detour route for summer traffic. She is preparing a brief statement to appeal to the council and county manager to be good neighbors.
There is no affordable or realistic legal course of action so, political pressure seems to be the only option. In a small community like ours, the 16 adjacent property owners should have been notified of the potential impacts in advance so they would have time to prepare. It seems that much of our community was taken by surprise, by the scope and scale of the project, and many question the engineering behind elevating the road bed so much – wait until you see all the guard rails.
It is difficult to quantify the “cost” of the disruption for Mindy, her family and her farm. She has missed work, canceled volunteer commitments, put gardening on hold for the year – what is the value of working your land and growing your own food? What is the value of a daily walk with your donkey down the road to visit the neighbors?
Can we demand better communication between our residences, elected officials, and the county staff? Mindy would like to start here – please join her if you can. You can email Mindy with questions or support at mindy@mindykayl.com
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Based on our experience with the Haven Road sidewalk project last year, the County Council members, engineer, and public-works staff don’t seem very interested in including genuine public input in their plans and projects. Perhaps they regard it as a nuisance or just don’t care.
The County Council members are doing the best job they can for all the people of our County! There are still big trees to hug, more than in the last 100 years. And they’re not inches from a very busy, narrow road!