SUBJECT:
Maple Valley City Council Meeting - Special session
BODY:
Maple Valley City Council Meeting - Special session
Notes from Maple Valley City Council Meeting, November 13, 2023.
Meeting was brought to order by Mayor Sean Kelly
He thanked the members of the community present (a half dozen from Water Gardens). He said the first item on the Agenda was code enforcement update, 21845 SE 272nd St, and he turned the meeting over to Tawni Dalziel
Public Works and Community Development Director, Tawni Dalziel:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to update you and the residents in the community about this code enforcement issue. You recall on September 11th, I provided a summary and update of where we were at that time. We were pursuing four code violations. The first one was illegal car repair activity on site; the second one was having a great number of abandon, dismantled or wrecked cars on the site; the third one was some possible contamination of hazardous waste on the site; and the final one was a home occupied gate business that was not meeting the requirements of our city code.
And then we did a little bit of a followup on October 16th, where a number of city council members did a site visit to the neighboring property, the property on the Water Gardens side [Pat Hickey’s residence], where you guys could see the perspective of that community, and the impact that those code violations had on that community.
Now I wanted to give you an update from the work that we’ve done since those meetings and those updates we’ve had with the city council. And I appreciate the Water Gardens residents working with us, sending us photos of the site conditions since our last update.
We had a meeting with the property owner, Carlos Mosquera and his agent to discuss all these violations, and we have provided them with a letter documenting our conversations with them, and what the time limits were on meeting the requirements of the code violations.
So the first one, with the illegal car repair activity on site and having any abandoned or inoperable vehicles on the site, that time has passed. And unfortunately the renters who are living on the site, are still having that car repair activity, there are still a number of inoperable vehicles on the site. So what we’ve done, our billing official worked with the police department to go out to the site with permission from the property owner, and they went out last week, and they were able to run registrations for all the vehicles on the site. And they were also able to identify six cars that very easily met the definition of inoperable vehicles.
So our next step with that is we are going to send letters to the registered owners who happen to live throughout the state. So we are going to send letters to them, and the same letters to the renters and to the property owner. And we give them ten days to request a hearing, or tell us that the cars are operational, and provide evidence to us about that. After that ten days we can tow those vehicles off the site, and there are ways in conversation with our city attorneys to recoup that cost that we would incur by towing those vehicles [from the property owner].
The other vehicles on the site, we can’t quite determine if they are inoperable, yet. We plan to send a notice of violation to them this week to the renter and the property owner this week, to give them 14 days to explain that they are not doing a car repair business, and they can request a hearing with our hearing examiner. But after that, we decide to pursue more legal action in court.
So that’s the first two violations. The third violation on the contamination, we were giving them, I think until the end of December to clean up the contamination. Basically, they poured some kind of car fluid into a catch basin which goes into a perf pipe which doesn’t go anywhere except into the ground. They’ve done a soil test that said that, yes, the ground is contaminated. What they need to do is over-excavate the soil around that perf pipe, and excavate it all out and remove it and bring it to a hazardous waste site. We’ve given them until the end of December to do that work.
And then the last violation was on the home occupied business not meeting any of the criteria for a home occupied business, they are manufacturing gates at that residence. That is run by the property owner, and he is in the process of trying to find another location for his business, and we’ve given him until December 3rd to do that. And that is what he has indicated to us that he is trying to do at this time. He does employ two people at that business, and he wants to make sure that they continue to be employed.
But we will be ready December 3rd to issue another notice of violation, giving them an opportunity to plead their case in front of the hearing examiner, and then if nothing is done, we can pursue further legal action through the courts.
A couple of things, the property owner is also wanting to remove those inoperable vehicles and he’s hired an attorney and our attorney and his attorney will be talking. He has motivation to do that because it is his property and he is violating these codes for inoperable vehicles. We got a screen shot of a text message exchange he had with his renters where he said he would give the renters $3,000 to move off the property and the renter said no. So he needs to start the eviction process, that’s why he’s hired the attorney. That process [eviction] is a significant process timewise for those renters to be able to move out by court order. But he has given us every indication that is his goal, to get those renters out.
I think I’ve captured most of the work that has been done on this property.
The Mayor, Sean Kelly said, An outstanding job to you and your team, this has moved fast. This started in June when I started getting calls from John Graham. Two questions, were any of the vehicles on that property stolen?
Tawni Dalziel: No, we not informed that any were stolen
Mayor Kelly: That’s a good sign. And when we have to start doing the soil removal, who is going to pay for that? Is it going to be the property owner?
Tawni Dalziel: It would be the property owner if they do it. That would all be done through the courts.
They discussed setting up a charge line number that would be billed directly to the property owner.
Council member Victoria Schroff: Thank you so much for the update, and as Mayor Kelly has said, thank you for all the work. As you can see, lots of folks behind you [from Water Gardens], what are the communications avenues are you employing right now, so that they are up to date, other than having to come to the meetings? Are you guys talking to them and giving them information, how can they get more information?
Tawni Dalziel: I did send an email last week to let them know that I was speaking tonight, and also where we were in some of the violations. It wasn’t comprehensive. There may be ways that we could further improve communications, and I can certainly reach out to them how they’d like that.
Deputy Mayor Dana Parnello: I have an immediate concern that I don’t trust the tenant to responsibly handle toxic excavation, and I would like to know who and where we would find somebody to oversee that. What’s the legal extent possible that we can be sure that’s done in a responsible manner? Because I think that we all recognize that they would take a bucket of dirt and throw it in a ravine somewhere in south King County, being completely honest, and we don’t’ want that.
Tawni Dalziel: We actually documented to them the specific steps that we wanted them to take to remediate. There are companies that are certified, and they will document and bring to a lab to test the soils that are around the area, and the depth that they go down to make sure that they are fully removing all that soil.
There was more discussion about fine points, but the major substance of the issues were all covered above.
Concluding comments from John Graham, who connected to the meeting via Zoom: I just wanted to thank the Mayor and this council for addressing this issue, I know there’s been a lot of time put in on it, and it’s too bad that we had to go down this road. But the way this has been impacting our community has been nothing but a big issue. A big shout out to Tawni, she has been so helpful with keeping us informed on what’s going on, and her staff, and I know she will continue to do the same. I hope that with all the work that the Mayor and the council, and Tawni and her people have done, that we all have a happy ending with this for everyone. Most everyone, I should say. But I just want to thank you guys for continuing your work, and hopefully we’ll see the end here shortly.
Mayor Kelly: Thank you, Mr Graham for checking in.
If you are interested in a link to a video of the full city council meeting, please send a request to Roger Matthews at lovesmtns@gmail.com.
These notes were transcribed by Roger Matthews, and any errors are mine and mine alone. I have endeavored to be accurate.