The Vancouver City Council was set to embark on a first-of-its-kind hearing Monday evening and consider an appeal of its Jan. 8 decision to purchase the former Washington Fish and Wildlife building at 2018 Grand Blvd. for $4.3 million.
City officials plan to use part of the 26,578-square-foot site to house a new 5,000-square-foot day center for the homeless.
Instead, the council voted unanimously to send the application back to the hearing examiner after discovering an error that made its way to the council and hearing examiner Sharon Rice. Rice approved the city’s proposal to build the new day center at the Grand Boulevard location Jan. 8.
Brent Boger, an assistant city attorney for Vancouver, is representing the city in the appeal. Boger said they discovered an error last week. The full versions of about 10 emails and attachments was not included in the documents sent to Rice.
City Manager Eric Holmes said the error occurred because the city’s email archival system truncates longer emails. To view those longer than the preview cutoff, the emails need to be individually opened. For those 10 or so emails that surpassed the cutoff length, the printed versions given to Rice for review were incomplete.
“We discovered this Friday,” Holmes said. “After being reviewed by legal staff, the recommendation was for the city council to remand it to the hearing examiner so the hearing examiner could consider the complete emails in the context of the record.”
What happens next is entirely up to Rice. She could uphold the decision or reopen it for further discussion.
Appeal was expected
In January, Maplewood and Rose Village neighborhoods filed an appeal of the decision. The appeal came as no surprise to the council, which was warned of the potential appeal during an earlier public hearing by neighbors and City Attorney Bronson Potter.
The appeal signed by 36 residents and business owners alleged Vancouver’s application was improperly filed and argued that Rice failed to consider all arguments made during the review process.
The appeal also stated the building should be classified as a Class I or Class II facility, not a Class III as stated on the city’s application. In addition, neighbors argued the city has not been transparent about its intentions for the site.
“Residents find discarded needles and beer cans in the immediate area nearly every day,” the appeal read. “People are sleeping in cars, searching through dumpsters, aggressively panhandling and openly using drugs. The notion that locating another homeless facility in this already high-crime area will not increase crime defies common experience and common sense. Build it, and they will come. Don’t make a struggling neighborhood worse.”
The day center cannot move forward until the appeal process is complete. Vancouver closed on the purchase Jan. 24.
In preparation for the appeal hearing, the council had to adopt rules to establish a hearing format Feb. 12. No rules were previously in place set by the current council. When the hearing occurs at a later date, appellants and the city each will have 20 minutes to make an argument and no new evidence will be allowed. Public comment will also not be accepted.
For now, the fate of the day center once again rests in the hands of the hearing examiner.
