Guemes Island Planning Advisory Committee
September 5, 2023
Meeting Called to Order 6:30 pm
Board Members Present: Michael Brown, Allen Bush, Steve Orsini, Kathy Malley, Gabe Murphy.
Members of the Public Present: Mike Murphy, Dustin Stephens, Barb Ohms, Phillis Bravinder, Lisa Charnock, Jon Petrich
September Meeting Agenda Approved
August Meeting Minutes Approved
Treasurer’s Report:
GIPAC General Fund = $8365.96 including donations of $1205 and payments to Kyle.
Roz Glasser Fund =$9135.10
Public Comment:
Mike Murphy gave a brief history of how the Community Club in the early 90’s allowed the telephone company to use a small space of Schoolhouse Park for communications equipment. In return, the Club was given $5000 which they used as a down payment to purchase the other property currently owned by GICCA, part of which included the ball fields and North East parking lot. He explained how many members of the community volunteered their time and cleared, cleaned, and planted grass and made it into usable park space. At that time, the North East parking lot did not exist and so the Club negotiated with Skagit County, a verbal agreement to develop a parking lot that the County could use to store gravel for road work. He expressed his frustration that the previous agreement had changed and as a result that Young’s Park was cleared and developed for that same purpose. He expressed that this was an unnecessary change that was a detriment to the community and needed to be fixed.
Updates/New Business:
Board election/nominating: Gabe Murphy nominated Dustin Stephens to run for one the board positions up for election. He is an architect by trade and is well versed in building codes and the permitting process. He has interest in some of GIPAC’s goals and is excited to get involved if elected.
GIPAC budget fundraising efforts: GIPAC raised ~$1205 to support the legal fund for the appeal of the hearing examiner’s decision.
GIPAC PO Box: Steve mentioned that he had researched the cost of a PO box. A PO Box is ~$180 per year at the Post Office in Anacortes. Gabe mentioned that we cannot use a USPS PO box as “physical address” for the purposes of GIPAC’s 501c3 corporate physical address. It was mentioned that “The Mailbox” in Anacortes might be a good option for this same service. Steve will research if we could use that as a physical address as well as a mailing address.
Eden’s Road/beaver dam article in the Skagit Herald: The board agreed that the article outlined an interesting situation with regard to liability for damages. Gabe mentioned that the County had taken a similar stance on a similar situation in the Big Lake area and that there were some interesting letters exchanged between property owners and the County. Gabe will send copies of those letters to the Board.There was lots of commentary on liability and what could happen if the beaver dam failed. Jon mentioned a former colleague of his had some knowledge of legal issues and previous case law about things like this. Allen brought up that there is a lot of history about the valley that isn’t being taken into account. As well, the county isn’t really keeping track of the overall cost of the road projects to keep Edens Rd. from being under water. It is notable that the county has improved drainage into the valley on both the Edens Rd. side and the Guemes Mountain side. The county does have a drainage and management plan but not sure how this fits in. Kathy posed the question: “what is our role as GIPAC?” Michael thought it would be good to bring it up at our annual meeting as a current issue, and give people what information we have and try to answer questions.
Update on the Young’s Park Appeal – Outreach to the GICCA board regarding Schoolhouse Park Parking
The GIPAC board has unanimously authorized and filed an appeal to the Board of County Commissioners in opposition of the Hearing Examiner’s Decision to grant Skagit County Public Works a Special Use Permit at Young’s Park to stockpile road gravel and ditch spoils. The board noted that the people of Guemes appear to be against this use of Young’s Park according to the number of signatures on the petition that Yadi Young started.
It was noted that the GIPAC board would like to work with the GICCA board to find a storage solution at Schoolhouse Park that would satisfy the needs of Skagit County Public Works while stockpiling road gravel in a centrally located place. Lisa, as a member of the GICCA board, offered to talk to the rest of the board to see if she could pull together a working meeting with both of the board’s to discuss the matter. She offered to host at the Community Hall in order to easily facilitate a Zoom option. There was a small discussion about logistics and Michael thanked Lisa for helping facilitate.
Barb voiced the desire to work together on an alternative use for the recently cleared part of Young’s park. She proposed that something could be done to honor veterans in the upper park clearing. Barb thought it would be nice to see trails developed and possibly other commemorative artifacts placed in that area. Barb and Phyllis talked about another veterans memorial site in Skagit County that could be a good model to reference. Most folks in the room thought that could be a nice alternative to gravel stockpiling. There was a bit more discussion about how to honor veterans there.
Gabe then brought up his exercise in measuring out the existing parking area at Schoolhouse Park and how he thought that enough parking could be provided in the existing area, using a different layout than the existing one, that could accommodate the stockpiling of gravel there. He explained trying to fit the same number of parking spaces as is currently accepted in the Schoolhouse Park SUP (17) by moving some of the log barriers to free up a small amount of additional space. There was discussion on the feasibility of his proof of concept layout. There will be more layout work necessary to come to a solution.
The opportunity may exist for GICCA to negotiate with the County to give them additional space to the East of the existing lot to expand the area, but it is unclear yet if that is necessary. The option appears to be on the table, but the two boards must get together and come up with a solution to present to the County.
Steve brought up some of the procedural things with regard to the appeal and how GIPAC needs to proceed, wanting to make sure we had discussed anything time sensitive.
Topics to discuss at annual meeting:
USGS Report: still waiting on dates of availability.
Recap of Young’s Park Appeal and Status
Possible Valley Beaver Information and Discussion
Other Business:
Michael talked to Joan Palmer regarding the Roz Glasser Fund. GIPAC will wait to transfer funds to Skagit Land Trust until Joan has a chance to talk to Molly Doran/SLT. Kathy will reach out to SLT in the meantime.
Meeting was adjourned 8:45pm
Submitted by Gabe Murphy, substitute for Secretary Patty Rose
Guemes Island Planning Advisory Committee 