DDES' 100% reversal on blackberry clearing fees

6:21 PM, March 4, 2005

Item: DDES' 100% reversal on blackberry clearing fees (King County Department of Development and Environmental Services)

Subject: King County DDES' March 3, 2005 press release announcing (in full "spin" mode) a complete elimination of the fees for clearing blackberries - but still requiring a permit to do so... and a few days wait to get it mailed to you (so much for getting up any given day and thinking it's a good day for clearing blackberries and going at it...)

Press Release link: http://www.metrokc.gov/ddes/press/press_blackberries.htm

To: those concerned with King County's Critical Areas Ordinance and with private property rights (subject to sensible and reasonable land use restrictions),

Did you know the latest from King County on blackberry clearing? They've just eliminated the onerous and absurd fees ($500 to $1400) they were going to charge for a permit that would be required to cut blackberries. But not the requirement to still get a permit and, thus, report to "big brother" what you are up to. And it looks like if you happen to cut up a few native ferns, etc., while you're clearing those invasive Himalayan blackberries, you could be violating the terms of the relief from the fees. And it only applies to blackberries - it doesn't look like it applies to scotch broom, thistles, salmonberries, horsetails, and other plants that you commonly find occasionally mixed in with the blackberries.

Of course, they are "spinning" this as a "refinement to King County’s land use regulations" and making what they are now doing, in reversing the just passed onerous regulations, appear as though it's an enlightened act on their part. And they are making it sound like they had nothing to do with putting the permit and fee requirement into law in the first place. Instead, there's an implication this requirement was there for some time, in making the statement: "Land use laws previously required a permit with a fee based on an hourly rate for removal of more than 7,000 square feet of blackberries." Even that statement isn't true. The fees were based on a flat rate for different brackets of area of blackberry to be removed. DDES never told me anything about hourly rates when I researched the blackberry clearing fees for several articles I wrote in the Vashon Beachcomber and LOOP newspapers this past fall. And the "Land use laws" they refer to that "previously required a permit" were only just put into effect at January 1, 2005, under the newly passed CAO.

More spin:

"We are improving customer service and reducing the burden on property owners with this no-fee blackberry removal permit," said DDES Director Stephanie Warden. "This is a common sense approach to protecting the environment and meeting the needs of the individual property owners."

Why didn't Stephanie Warden and her boss, Ron Sims, exercise that common sense in the first place? Why is she bragging about "reducing the burden on property owners"? Aren't she and Ron Sims the ones who just placed the burden on property owners with the CAO ordinances in the first place? Isn't this a bunch of malarkey? For this we taxpayers pay Stephanie Warden $117,687.60 a year plus benefits (2004 salary, per www.lbloom.net )? It sounds like they are just playing word and "spin" games with us. (Assume Ms. Warden's total compensation is approximately $150,000 a year with a typical 30% allowance for the value of the medical/dental/pension plans and other benefits. Average for all 15,000 King County employees, per several King County Councilmembers, is approximately $110,000 per year, including benefits.)

The full press release is at:

http://www.metrokc.gov/ddes/press/press_blackberries.htm

I wonder if articles by yours truly and others, and those of us who ranted about blackberry clearing permit fees on radio, etc., had anything to with this reversal of policy?

Or, the anti-CAO folks' recent protest demonstration on Ron Sims' doorstep on Saturday morning, February 26, when we left him with a "bouquet" of weeds we aren't allowed to clear from our properties without violating the CAO or getting a permit?

It would be interesting to do a Public Disclosure Act request for anything and everything having to do with this all coming about (emails, meetings minutes, etc., discussing this to see the genesis of eliminating the fees, what programs wouldn't get the money from fees that now wouldn't be coming in, etc., the drafting of the press release and how to phrase this action, etc., etc).

Armen Yousoufian