PERMIT AND ZONING AMENDMENTS

April 9 letter to City of Blaine:

INTRODUCTION

[I am submitting this as formal public comment and request to be included as a party of record for all proceedings related to SEPA File No. 2024019 and the proposed BMC Title 17 amendments.]

DISMANTLING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

The proposed Permit Process and SEPA Zoning Text Amendments by Blaine Community Development Services (CDS) are designed to eliminate public participation in land use decisions. These amendments remove public hearings for most subdivisions, triple the size of developments completely exempt from environmental review, and double the financial barriers to citizen appeals of city decisions. New developments would proceed with zero environmental protection and zero opportunity for public appeal. This new system is not designed to evaluate environmental risk, but rather, to prevent that evaluation from happening by excluding the public. 

These posterchild amendments of environmental injustice build on the outdated standards and complete absence of enforcement of the City of Blaine Shoreline Master Program (see attached Water Planning Matters report), SEPA Forgeries by CDS for East Maple Ridge (2019-21), Ordinance 21-2970 stripping the planning commission of veto powers and removing early citizen oversight (November 2021), the 2023 council approval of Creekside PUD without a legally-required Environmental Impact Study (EIS), and now the complete dismantling of public accountability.

CONFLICTS WITH STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS

These amendments conflict with WAC197-11-680,WAC197-11-450, RCW43.21C.030, RCW 43.21C.075, RCW36.70B.110, the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine (RCW42.36), the Growth Management Act (RCW36.70A), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. They are also vulnerable to challenge under Washington Supreme Court precedents in Friends of Sammamish Valley (2024), and Chandrruangphen v. City of Sammamish (February 2026).

The Washington Supreme Court's September 2024 decision in King County v. Friends of Sammamish Valley established a stringent "meaningful engagement" standard for threshold SEPA determinations on non-project actions —specifically requiring that agencies not defer analysis of potential downstream impacts to future project-level review. A DNS issued for code amendments that will govern all future development review in Blaine —including development in Critical Aquifer Recharge Areas (CARAs) —without analyzing the real-world environmental consequences of reduced appeal access fails this standard. 

PROCEDURAL BARRIERS VIOLATE CIVIL RIGHTS

Procedural barriers that prevent substantive environmental challenges from being heard enable approvals that would otherwise face scrutiny, and that enabling effect is itself an environmental consequence. The Friends of Sammamish Valley court further stated that agencies must consider the likely environmental impact at maximum land use under the new regulation —a presumption that, applied here, would require analysis of what development would occur in CARAs if the expanded categorical exemptions and compressed timelines operate as designed. As a disabled, low-income senior, the $5,000 barrier to appeal CAD/SEPA fraud by CDS violates my civil rights under Title VI.

On October 25, 2024, I participated in a video conference with the EPA  external civil rights legal team concerning the procedural violation of my civil rights by the City of Blaine. I am a party of record to EPA Complaint No.04X-24-R10.

HEARING EXAMINER AS KING

By making the Hearing Examiner the final administrative decision-maker on SEPA appeals rather than the City Council, the revised code forces an unsuccessful SEPA appellant to go directly to Superior Court under the Land Use Petition Act (LUPA), RCW36.70C. LUPA proceedings are more expensive, more complex, more time-constrained (21-day petition deadline), and require strict procedural compliance —as reinforced by the February 2026 Chandrruangphen ruling. This change is particularly consequential because the Blaine Hearing Examiner (Phil Olbrechts) is a contract examiner paid directly by the City whose recusal decisions rest entirely with himself, with no independent body to adjudicate bias claims, and a seven-day recusal request deadline that bars challenges based on ex parte contacts discovered after that window.

The practical consequences are severe: Persons adversely affected who missed the comment period —due to inadequate notice, geographic distance, or lack of awareness —are locked out of the appeal process entirely. Agencies, tribal governments, or downstream jurisdictions not formally included as comment recipients lose administrative standing. Environmental groups that organized after the comment period closed cannot participate. The Hearing Examiner may summarily dismiss an appeal within 14 days without a hearing if the appellant is not an "Aggrieved Party" or otherwise lacks standing —placing a pre-merits gatekeeping function on the appeal before any environmental evidence is heard. 

ELIMINATION OF SEPA APPEALS

This provision directly conflicts with WAC197-11-680, which requires that SEPA issues be raised through administrative procedures prior to judicial review and presupposes that such procedures remain accessible. By importing judicial standing requirements —including proof of comment-period participation —into the administrative tier, the City forecloses the very exhaust-first pathway that WAC197-11-680 mandates. A citizen who cannot satisfy the "aggrieved party" definition cannot exhaust administrative remedies. A citizen who cannot exhaust administrative remedies cannot obtain judicial review. The practical effect is the complete elimination of SEPA appeal rights for persons who did not participate during a 14-day window —a window that is frequently insufficient to retain technical experts on stormwater, aquifer, or wetland issues.

PRACTICAL EFFECTS

The tripling of the commercial building size threshold and the addition of a 20-unit multifamily residential exemption means a substantial portion of new development in Blaine will never undergo SEPA environmental review at all —no checklist, no threshold determination, no public comment, no possible appeal. In a city experiencing a doubling of population in three years, with documented stormwater, aquifer, and salmon habitat pressures, removing SEPA review for projects up to 30,000 square feet eliminates the regulatory backstop without any compensating mechanism. Under Friends of Sammamish Valley, the Court specifically warned against agencies assuming that deferring environmental analysis to future project-level review adequately protects against cumulative impacts.

The reduction of Type II decision timelines from 170 to 120 days compresses the window available to gather technical evidence, conduct environmental expert review, and mount a substantive SEPA appeal for the largest and most complex projects —precisely the projects where the environmental stakes are highest.

The revised Table 17.06.B moves preliminary plats under 100 residential lots into a Type I ADM/CC track where no public hearing is held unless a person files a written request within 21 days of the notice of application. In Blaine's Growth Management context, most residential subdivision proposals fall under this threshold. Residents who miss the 21-day demand window have no public hearing to attend, no opportunity to become a party of record, and therefore no standing to appeal SEPA determinations associated with those projects.

CDS declares a development application "complete" even when critical SEPA requirements are unfinished. The completeness declaration triggers vesting —the project locks in to the regulations in effect at the date of completeness, including older, less protective stormwater rules (e.g., the 2019 Western Washington Stormwater Manual rather than the 2024 version). CDS then has months to work privately with the applicant to prepare hearing documents while the public clock is frozen. By the time a public hearing occurs, the project is shielded by grandfathered standards and the public has only 14 days to review thousands of pages of technical documents.

Citizens formally objected in June 2025, documenting that the CDS completeness determination for Creekside was invalid because no SEPA checklist had been issued, no threshold determination had been made, and no public hearing had been held —all required under RCW36.70B.070and RCW43.21C.The objection also documented that "CDS has the benefit of ex parte communications and a review period from 2 months to over 9 months to prepare documents for Hearing Examiner public hearings...without meaningful edits from citizens or state regulatory agencies" while the public receives 14 days. 

The structural independence of the Hearing Examiner is essential to this analysis. Whatcom County's 2024 Business Rules state that the Hearing Examiner "shall not be subject to the supervision or discretion of any elected official, officer, employee or agent of any Department or other government body"—a structural firewall that Blaine's process lacks entirely. 

In Blaine, Phil Olbrechts is a contract examiner hired by the same administration whose decisions he reviews. Ex parte communications must be "publicly disclosed on the record," but the recusal decision rests with the Hearing Examiner himself. A recusal request must be filed at least seven days before the hearing, meaning appellants who discover ex parte contacts after that deadline have no remedy. In the Avista proceeding, community members had to invoke RCW42.36.060 in writing to ensure that CDS-to-Examiner communications were routed through the public record rather than privately.

ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE

The $5,000 combined fee barrier, undefined ad hoc fee authority, and judicially modeled "aggrieved party" standing threshold disproportionately burden Blaine's elderly poor (19.1% senior population, 15.3% poverty rate), low-income residents, and the Lummi Nation —all populations associated with Title VI protected classes. The City receives federal financial assistance through EPA Puget Sound Geographic Funds ($192,500 Shellfish SIL grant), Clean Water State Revolving Fund programs, and other EPA-administered channels, making it a covered recipient under 40 C.F.R. Parts 5 and 7.The fee and standing barriers impose costs on citizen challengers with no equivalent burden on applicants, and they do so in the context of a 2,000-hour documented citizen investigation that was operationally excluded from the Avista PUD proceeding by the same procedural framework now being codified.

CITY TRACK RECORD 2014-2026

The proposed amendments do not arise in a jurisdiction with a clean administrative record. They arise in a jurisdiction where the following facts are established by documentary evidence: 

1) The City has not issued an EIS for any CARA development in 15 or more years despite population doubling, multiple citizen requests, and Department of Ecology (DOE) best practice guidelines. 

2) City planners for East Maple Ridge and the Creekside Zone Text Amendment knowingly issued false SEPA determinations to accelerate project approval for developer benefit. 

3) The City Council approved the Zone Text Amendment on October 23, 2023 without being informed by Blaine planner Alex Wenger, CDS Director Stacie Pratschner, or City Manager Mike Harmon that an EIS was legally required. City Council members voted on multiple CARA developments without recusing themselves from documented conflicts of interest, in violation of RCW42.36. 

4) The City has no published Code of Ethics and has refused repeated requests to adopt one. 

5) The Motts Hill Landing PUD contained false statements discovered by citizens that CDS staff review did not catch. 

6) The City rejected the Blaine Water Coalition's SEPA appeal in 2025 for inability to pay the $2,500 fee —demonstrating that the financial barrier is operational, not theoretical. 

7) The April 2026 BMC revisions were published just months after the Avista proceeding demonstrated that the existing framework successfully excluded citizen environmental evidence, applying the exact deference and standing standards now being codified.

RECOMMENDATIONS

These amendments should not be adopted without at minimum:

(1) restoration of mandatory public hearings for all permit types affecting CARA, CRA, and shoreline areas;

(2) removal of the comment-period participation precondition to standing and replacement with the standard RCW36.70C.060 "aggrieved" standard;

(3) removal of ad hoc fee authority and replacement with fixed, published, proportionally calibrated fees with a low-income waiver provision;

(4) appointment of an independent third-party SEPA lead agency for all CDS-originated code amendments;

(5) restoration of Planning Commission veto authority for quasi-judicial decisions in critical resource areas;

(6) structural independence provisions for the Hearing Examiner equivalent to Whatcom County's standard;

(7) reduction of categorical exemption thresholds to WAC197-11-800 state minimums without the tripled commercial and new multifamily expansions. 

CONCLUSION

This letter is submitted as formal public comment and requests that it be included in the administrative record for all proceedings related to the proposed BMC Title 17 amendments, SEPA File No. 2024019.

Disclaimer

This document concerns potential violations, regulatory deficiencies, and unresolved source-water protection issues. It is based on the City of Blaine administrative record, hearing exhibits, transcripts, agency correspondence, and related public records as cited. All factual statements are derived from cited exhibits, hearing transcripts, and official public records.

This document is for public information and petitioning purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is not intended to disrupt lawful City operations but to promote compliance with public-health, safety, and environmental requirements. This document has been prepared in good faith based on publicly available records and reflects our best efforts to identify potential compliance issues. Nothing in this document states or implies a final or established finding of fraud, criminal conduct, professional misconduct, or any other wrongdoing by any individual or entity.

This content is a good-faith public-interest statement concerning potential violations of state and federal environmental, land-use, and water-quality laws by the City of Blaine and/or the project applicant. It is protected speech on a matter of public concern under the First Amendment, Article I § 5 of the Washington Constitution, and Washington's Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (RCW 4.105).