Developing the latest update to our Renton Shoreline Master Program has been a very involved, busy, controversial, and expensive project. The update– which we must complete in order to comply with state law– has cost over two-hundred thousand taxpayer dollars and thousands more in private-sector funds, and has taken over two years. During this time we have held numerous public meetings and hearing in such public forums as the Renton Planning Commission, the Renton City Council, and in our Renton Council Planning and Development Committee. We have also received countless letters from citizens and their attorneys, as well as phone calls, emails, and virtually all other forms of communication. ( For further background on this work, see my previous journal entries on this topic by clicking here.)

The result of all of these public meetings and hard work to date has been that Renton produced a 334-page ordinance , that you can see by clicking here

I was personally never fully satisfied by this ordinance, and joined my colleague Marcie Palmer in voting “No” on it after a lengthy, highly-attended public debate (which included testimony from a representative from the State Department of Ecology). I was particularity concerned about the ordinance provisions that mandated removal of river bulkheads, many of which protect our city’s downstream bridges and other critical infrastructure. This bulkhead removal is already putting our city at risk and costing Renton taxpayers dearly, as can be seen in journal entries and letters here.

While I voted “No” on this ordinance, the ordinance was nevertheless approved by Renton City Council on a 5-2 vote. And though I wasn’t thrilled about council moving ahead with this compromise, I accepted this result. In summary, the council majority was ready to “split-the-baby” on the remaining issues that our citizens and DOE could not agree on, and simply be done with this ordinance– a decision I can understand after two years of hard work. So while Marcie and I were ready to keep working the bulkhead issue, the rest of the council was ready to make some final compromises and move on. After ending up on the losing side of this vote, I thanked the council for affording us the time to debate the topic, and I reported on it in my journal here.

With the council capitulating to Department of Ecology (DOE) on so many areas including the bulkhead issue, this should have cleared the way for a DOE approval. Especially since DOE was with us on the floor of the council in the public meeting where we developed the final wording for our ordinance. Except now the DOE informs us they are not satisfied with the compromise that council approved on a 5-2 vote, and they have unilaterally decided that Renton needs to narrow our dock width standard.

The dock width standards are sensitive, because they pit clear safety and access issues against theoretical fish issues. Federal ADA access guidelines recommend a minimum of five feet and preferably more where people of limited mobility are trying to get into a boat or trying to turn around a wheel chair. On the other side of the issue, DOE officials say that predator fish like to hide in shadows under docks and ambush baby salmon, and that limiting the dock width to four feet helps reduce this threat. Renton’s ordinance had balanced these concerns by requiring that new and rebuilt docks be surfaced in light-transmitting metal or plastic screening instead of wood (so that 70 percent of the light penetrates the dock and prevents shadows). The limitation to a six-foot width along with increase in light transmission would give improved protection to baby salmon, meet the Army Corps of Engineers Standards, and meet guidelines associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act which state in part:

“Accessible boat slips must have clear pier space at least 60 inches wide and as long as the slip. Providing more than 60 inches wide clear space will improve safety for people with disabilities, especially on floating piers. This space is the minimum necessary for individuals with disabilities to have sufficient space adjacent to their boat slip to use a chair lift or transfer device for getting on or off their vessel and provide a turning space for changing directions. Every 10 feet of linear pier edge serving the accessible slips must have at least one continuous clear opening that is at least 60 inches wide. ”

While Renton Council reached it’s final SMP compromises in some highly public meetings, the State DOE testified to council last Monday that they subsequently held some private meetings of their own in which they decided that Renton’s standards for dock widths were not acceptable.

Specifically, they have decided that in the future all cities need to adopt standards limiting the dock with to four-feet in the first (near-shore) 30-feet of dock. But docks may reach their maximum length before they reach 30 feet long, since they can not got out further than the point where the water depth is ten feet. The only provision for a wider dock that would allow disabled access in the first thirty feet would be if the homeowner has state disabled status at the time of dock permitting. This has a couple problems: (1) it does not address the problem of the homeowner having extended family or friends that may boat with them, and need safe access, (2) it does not address the fact that it can take one to two years to get a dock permit, and cost tens of thousands to widen a dock, and it is therefore highly impractical to build it too narrow for ADA access and then widen it if the need arises.

Adding fuel to the controversy is the fact that two years ago the State DOE approved Redmond’s Shoreline Master Plan, which outright allowed six-foot dock widths. Many other cities on the lake are still working their SMPs, and are not as far along as us. If Renton agrees to a four-foot dock width limitation, and the council commits it to an ordinance, will we find by this time next year that we are one of the only jurisdiction that limits our docks to this potentially dangerous width?

The State DOE’s response to this question was that as a result of their (private) meetings, they intend to start demanding that all the cities limit their dock widths to four-feet within 30 feet of the shoreline. My view, which I expressed at the council meeting, was that if the State of Washington wants to limit all dock widths to four feet, then the State of Washington should follow a proper legislative process, including notice of new regulations, hearings, testimony before the legislature, public comment, public legislative debate, and a public vote by the state legislature. They should NOT try to limit all dock widths in the state to four feet by going to every city council and demanding it, especially when they have already approved a different standard for Redmond.

But what happened next put me on my soapbox about the legislative process and open public meetings. The State DOE implied that if Renton did not capitulate on their DOE dock-width desires, then the state DOE might just go back into Renton’s Ordinance (which again was the product two-years of public meetings and legislative action), and perhaps arbitrarily change other things they don’t like. This was a threat–pure-and-simple– to try to make Renton lawmakers fear that the private policy-making of one of our state agencies would trump our public meetings and our elected-representative role, and leave our citizens with no meaningful way to apply for a dock permit. In short, the DOE threat amounted to EXACTLY what the state legislature wanted to PREVENT when they wrote the Open Public Meeting Act:

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.
The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide
what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people
insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they
have created.” Washington State Legislature, 1971, Statement of Purpose in Open Public Meeting Act (42.30 RCW)

Near the end of our Monday discussion on this topic, I reiterated that if the State of Washington wishes to uniformly restrict dock widths, the State should use their own legislative process for making a new state-wide law, and give all cities a chance to weigh in at once, as well as give citizens an opportunity to contact their state legislators. In the meantime, the State DOE could do whatever they thought they had the power to do to limit dock widths in Renton, but they could not get me to agree that we should arbitrarily change our ordinance because of their DOE threat to impose other arbitrary (revenge-motivated) hardships on Renton if we didn’t.

If the state changes anything that we did not publicly discuss in our legislative hearings, I will contact the State Attorney General and ask for an investigation of State violation of Open Public Meetings Act. If the state DOE changes only the dock width, I will follow the issue to make sure that Renton has been treated fairly when compared to other jurisdictions, and if other cities are given permission for six-foot docks within thirty feet of shore, I will fully expect the DOE to give Renton the same consideration.

This topic will be back before Council Committee of the Whole tomorrow evening at 5:30.