Bed-and-Breakfast wakes up again

Like a recurring dream, La Conner’s bed-and-breakfast code governing home-based lodging establishments keeps coming up for replays.

The Town Council on Tuesday held a public hearing on a recommendation from the Planning Commission that some residents fear would allow more commercial encroachment into the town’s residential code.

This followed a public hearing before the Planning Commission last Tuesday, during which a last minute change in a fairly routine housekeeping item cleaning up the definitions of bed-and-breakfast and guest house establishments wound up allowing a person to buy a house next door and run it as a B&B.

After about 40 minutes of public comment and discussion, the council on a motion by Councilman Jacques Brunisholz seconded by Councilman Bill Stokes voted 4-1 to send it back to the commission for a do-over.

Town Administrator John Doyle made it clear to the council that the proposed code revisions were not in response to any particular application.

However, resident Allan Olson, who purchased the house on property next to his home and applied to turn it into a B&B, noted that the present code already allows the proprietor to live in an accessory building on the property. He said that in some cases, an accessory building could actually be farther away from the B&B than the house next door.

Resident Jim Airy, a neighbor of Olson’s, said he attended Tuesday’s council meeting to support Olson’s plan. “A bed-and-breakfast is typically better maintained than other houses in a neighborhood,” he said.

Madeline Roozen, spoke against the idea. “This is a residential neighborhood,” she said. “The code was designed to keep it a residential neighborhood.” She also said the house Olson hopes to turn into a B&B was one that her family was eyeing for a home for her son and it sold quickly.

Councilwoman MaryLee Chamberlain said she hears from people looking for places to live in La Conner, and turning houses into B&B’s is not good for the town’s availability of housing for people who want to live here.

Stokes said the Planning Commission’s proposed wording would cause encroachment of the commercial use in the residential zone. He said a provision originally intended to allow residents to earn a little income opening their homes to overnight guests could turn into a commercial enterprise with someone operating several B&Bs on property all around them. “I would have to vote against it,” he said.

Previously the town’s code stated that a B&B had to be operated by a person living in the home. In 2009, the code was amended to allow the owner to live in an accessory dwelling on the same property.

Then, in 2012, there was months-long brouhaha in town when a B&B owner asked for a code change to allow an off-site owner and on-site manager.

That controversy went to sleep after the owner gave the manager one percent ownership in the B&B, technically making the manager an owner under the town code.

This year, the Planning Commission sought to close that ownership loophole by including wording that the occupying owner must own a majority interest in the B&B property.

While they were at it, with two members absent and on a 2-1 vote, the commission proposed new wording that would allow the owner to live “in a house on the property adjacent to” the bed-and-breakfast.

Brunisholz said he would like the commission to strike out the new wording as well as the clause that allows an owner to live in accessory building when it goes back to them.

Two members of the Planning Commission, chair Mike Carlisle and Mary Wohleb, out-voted member Bob Skeele last Tuesday and added the wording. Two other members, Marna Hanneman and Linda Talman, who strongly opposes the wording, were on vacation.

Talman, who is in Italy, sent a letter to the Town Council stating that the proposed change in wording is faulty and essentially makes it so “I could, if I had enough money, buy all three of the properties adjacent to mine and turn those places into bed and breakfasts, too.” Like many town residents, she has neighbors adjoining her property on both sides of her home and one in back.

She also reminded the council that “the hardest thing in public service is disagreeing with people you like.”

Resident Bob Raymond also wrote a letter taking issue with the commission’s recommendation, pointing out that protecting the residential zones from encroachment by commercial uses is a purpose of the town’s comprehensive plan.

Also, he said the new wording will “reduce our residential housing stock and negatively affect the residential character of the neighborhood ... the prospective impact on a single neighborhood is frightening and a significant assault on our neighborhoods and our Comprehensive Plan.”