City, schools resolve building permit fracas

City of Sisters building inspectors made workers at the old middle school on the corner of Highway 20 and Locust Street stop work and put away their tools on Thursday, June 30.

Then inspectors padlocked the door to the school because crews were doing new construction without a permit. After a flurry of discussions, the school district obtained a permit on Friday and was expected to resume work this week.

A crew of workers, under authority from Sisters School District Facilities Manager Bob Martin, was supposedly doing demolition. On Thursday, a City of Sisters building inspector noticed a lumber delivery sitting outside the building, leading the inspector to believe that construction was going on, according to Development and Community Planning Director Bill Adams.

“We had allowed them to go in and do the demolition, but they went beyond demolition and they were framing for concrete footings and various other things,” said Adams. “The reason we put the red tag up … was because they did not have an issued permit. They were doing construction, which is in violation of state and local codes unless you have an approved permit.”

According to School Superintendent Ted Thonstad, an electrician had begun to install new wiring while removing the old wiring as part of the demolition work. The electrician reportedly acted without authority from district officials. Both Martin and Thonstad were unaware that the electrician was engaged in the violation.

Martin, Thonstad, City Manager Stein and Adams held a meeting Friday morning, which resulted in the issuance of a building permit for the school district to continue construction.

The district had actually applied earlier for a permit. The building department had not issued the permit by Thursday, the time of the stop work order, in order to resolve issues with the application.

Adams said, “The city was holding up their permit because of a condition of approval that they did not meet: the dedication of public right of way on Highway 20, which is a standard practice. But we have reconsidered that (as of Friday morning) and we’re removing that condition.”

Thonstad said that in order to finish the remodel project by the time school starts, he was “guilty of pushing” Martin hard to stay on schedule.

The city and school district had encountered another difficulty over classification of the remodel project. A change of use for the building would require more detailed plans than the district initially submitted to the city.

The school district challenged the building department when the city classified the project as a “change of use.”

The district contends that since the building was administrative office space previously, it is not a change of use to move administrative offices back.

Adams said, “Any time you have development, you review the use and this we viewed as a change in use, even though it was used in the past as an office building. In fact the interior of the building as it existed before the permit reflected three or four classrooms, some rest rooms. The building was not reflective of an office as they are proposing to do now ... I think that we were giving the school district a bit of a favor in that we didn’t make them go through modification of site-plan approval, which we could have, instead of just a building permit. I’m not sure that they’ve really acknowledged that.”

However, the district, according to Thonstad, isn’t viewing the waiver of a site plan as a favor. The district believed that a site-plan should have never been required.