News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Mountain Shadow RV Park has filed suit against the City of Sisters because the city has refused to change its rules to accommodate "park model trailers" at the recreational vehicle facility.
Sisters' city attorney Steve Bryant said the city considers the suit to be "without merit."
However, though the suit was filed in federal court on Tuesday, June 22, Mountain Shadow manager Tom Anderson said on Monday, June 28, that park owner A. Wayne Scott had no intention of suing the city.
"At no time did he (Scott) give any instructions to file a lawsuit," Anderson said. "In fact, quite the contrary, we don't want to fight with the city, we want to work with the city."
According to Anderson, Scott is seeking to have the lawsuit withdrawn and has asked Anderson to apologize to city administrator Barbara Warren for any inconvenience created by the suit (see sidebar, on page 6).
The siting of park model trailers has created controversy between Mountain Shadow and the City of Sisters for about two years. Scott originally sought a variance to Sisters' zoning ordinance to allow siting of the park trailers. When the variance was denied by the planning commission, Mountain Shadow asked the Sisters City Council to change the city's zoning ordinance.
While the park trailers are designated as recreational vehicles, owners have them hauled to the site, drop the axles off and build decks around the structures.
Mountain Shadow management has said that requiring the trailers to move every three months, as required by city rules, would make it impossible to host the trailers.
Sisters Mayor Steve Wilson has said that placing semi-permanent structures in the park violates the intent of the conditional use under which the park operates - to "serve the traveling public."
Wilson argued during the zone change debate that, by taking up RV spaces with park models, "we're displacing the very people targeted by the original condi- tional use."
That could force Sisters to find another place to accommodate RVers, Mayor Wilson said.
Mountain Shadow manager Tom Anderson said that the park needs the steady revenue provided by renting spaces to owners of the park trailers.
"We need that revenue stream in the winter for the RV park to hold its own," Anderson said.
According to Anderson, the park would lease spaces for $250 per month over a 12- or 24-month period. Anderson said that 10 trailers would stabilize revenue for the park, but the actual number of park trailers to be sited has not been determined.
"We have space to hold 50, but we don't know how many," he said.
According to Anderson, the number of trailers the park hopes for would not displace RVers except on major event days, when the park fills to capacity. He acknowledged, however, that siting 50 park trailers would cut the number of RV sites nearly in half, from 106 spaces to 56.
City officials have expressed concerns that people could end up staying in the trailers year-round, a possibility Anderson rejects.
"We don't want this to become a permanent housing place for these people," he said. "And as far as we know, the people that own park trailers don't want to use them permanently either; they're not built for that."
Anderson told The Nugget that, instead of suing in federal court to have the city's "duration of stay" provision declared unconstitutional, he plans to work through the land-use process to facilitate siting the trailers.
"We continue to want to work with the city to come up with a solution that is suitable to us both," he said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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