News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
City Attorney Steve Bryant told City Planner Pauline Hardie she could decide whether or not to enforce code requirements on the Wild Mountain food stand - but, he says, he was just kidding.
Bryant wrote to the city council last week explaining his contradictory advice regarding code enforcement regarding Wild Mountain. The stand has been a point of contention between its owner and the city for a year and a half.
During the Thursday, February 14, city council meeting, Bryant advised that, "The planning director can't simply say 'I am not going to enforce the code.' The planning director has to enforce the code right up to the point that there is a pending change to the code ... then she can stop issuing citations simply because the code may be changing."
That statement, however, is at odds with advice Bryan offered to Planning Director Hardie in September 2011, before the planning commission or council took up the question of revising the code.
In that email exchange, discovered by Wild Mountain owner Ky Karnecki after a public records request, Hardie asked Bryant, "Should we give them (Wild Mountain) a year since we haven't been enforcing Richard's this entire time?"
Bryant responded: "First, you can decide if you want to enforce the code provisions or not." Bryant went on to note that "if it is a temporary building that the city did not require to be removed and someone gets hurt in or around the building ... the city would likely have some liability."
According to Bryant, the September email was "facetious."
"My statement to Pauline was not a recommendation about an acceptable course of action (if it were, then that would have been my recommendation to council a few weeks later - though my recollection is that I did tell the council they could order that the building remain in place but that they would probably be sued)," Bryant wrote to the council on February 21. "Likewise, the first paragraph of my email to Pauline was a facetious statement followed by a potential consequence for taking such action."
For Council President McKibben Womack, Bryant's response begged the question as to why the city attorney would respond to the planning director's request for advice on a course of action with a statement that "was not a recommendation about an acceptable course of action."
"I was very disturbed by Mr. Bryant's admittance that he was being 'facetious' in response to a direct question for advice," Womack told The Nugget. "Mr. Bryant's comments go against the expectations of serving our citizens with excellence, integrity and thoroughness. The city council expects to receive 'best practice' counsel and advice from its attorney, and not smart
remarks."
Bryant explained that such a "facetious" statement "would not have been a part of a formal legal opinion or brief, it is a part of my interaction with staff (primarily because I believe people learn and remember better with humor)."
In a separate note to City Manager Eileen Stein, Bryant expressed some chagrin:
"I guess I should not try to be funny in an email," he wrote. "Lesson learned."
On Thursday, February 21, Karnecki applied for a new temporary-use permit for the food stand located on the southeast corner of Highway 20 and Locust Street at the east end of Sisters. The building was to have been removed as of Sunday.
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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