On Friday, March 28, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Murphy decided in favor of Tacoma Rescue Mission and Pierce County in the court appeal of the Good Neighbor Village permit by the Pierce County Hearings Examiner from the nearly two-week long hearing in May 2024.
After testimony from the attorney for the Spanaway Concerned Citizens, Pierce County and the Tacoma Rescue Mission, Judge Murphy took about40 minutes to deliberate before returning to the courtroom and issuing a verbal decision in the case. The written decision will be completed at a future date.
The hearing was both in person and on Zoom. The attorney’s with testimony were in the courtroom, but a lot of the interested neighbors from Spanaway were on the Zoom link.
After the Judge entered the courtroom and before the proceedings began, there was an interruption on Zoom from an unknown obscene participant. The operator removed the obscenity after several seconds and the Judge apologized, explaining those kinds of inappropriate scenes are a hazard of doing the hearings by Zoom. The County tries to remove the perpetrators as quickly as possible, but it is difficult to unsee the disruption. It was the last disruption thankfully.
As the court proceeded, the Judge was handed a stack of binders with the list of exhibits from the Hearings Examiner. From here I will try to summarize since I am not an expert on the case.
First up was the lawyer from Spanaway Concerned Citizens. He brought up the question, did the Hearings Examiner make a mistake? Most of his argument had to do with whether there was a problem between the Pierce County Code and the Comprehensive Plan. The determination of the number of dwelling units versus the density of housing in the type of zoning was his point. Pierce County was calling 4 sleeping units, one dwelling unit to decide the number of buildings that could be on the site. The point was overcrowding the sensitive wetland with too many units of housing.
Spanaway also brought up a one-hundred-year-old drainage district document and questioned the validity of the title to the land.
Next, the Attorney for Pierce County defended the decision of the Hearing Examiner and the department’s adherence to the Code and Comprehensive Plan, insisting there was no inconsistency.
When the attorney for TRM spoke, accusing Spanaway of wasting months before bringing their objections and disputing their concerns about the old drainage district easement affecting the title. They noted that would be a Title Company error, but that they were adamant that TRM help a valid title to the land.
Judge Murphy went out to deliberate and returned at 4:22 p.m. After some explanation she noted that Spanaway needed to show that the Hearings Examiner made an erroneous review.
The Judge found
- The Hearings Examiner did address the issues with completeness and that the title was vested. There was not an erroneous application of the law and the applicant was not required to do a thorough title search.
- The petitioner asserted the application was inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan, but the Judge found no basis for a direct conflict, not even the 4:1 sleeping to dwelling units. The application was vested and consistent with the Comp. Plan.
Judge Murphy then announced that she found the Petitioner had not met the burden of proof that there was an erroneous ruling by the Hearings Examiner.
Therefore, she denied the Petitioners petition.
[Here I will admit to scribbling quickly, trying to make it legible to myself while not being a legal professional, I may have missed or misunderstood some things. I will correct this if I made any egregious errors, but the just of the decision is here. When there is something in print, I will prey to make it available.]
Pierce Prairie Post 
This was entirely predictable. Once the property was paid for and deeded to TRM, and the county twisted and/or ignored all relevant law and ordinances to do so, I knew there would be no other outcome, but didn’t want to discourage anyone by saying so. Now our problems will be that the grant funding will run out so we’ll be assessed higher taxes to pay to run the facility, and the round-about planned for the entrance to the property will impede traffic on the Loop Road. We’ve gotten a taste of what the latter will be like from the closure for the sewer installation.
IF for no other reason, it certainly was good to see the community come together to stand up for itself!
Mark my words: this will most likely turn into another drug infested crime generator. The impact on me is limited; I will only have to redirect travel around this camp, much like I do for the sketchy government created Hausmer Street area. Lakewood and Tacoma are unwilling to deal with their drug and mental illness problems and are dumping it on the citizens of Spanaway – Out of sight out of mind. And the current County’s council is becoming equally less interested helping and protecting it citizens. In the unlikely event this camp is properly regulated it will do little to alleviate the cities’ illegal camping problem because ne’er-do-wells don’t follow rules and will continue to ply their trade on the streets of Tacoma and Lakewood.