Greetings Grassfire, I’ve sent this request for help to our AG & Governor of WA State and would like you to look at it and if you can please give me some advice on how to best proceed… Our rights were unconstitutionally violated by our city in a permit process for building a Gas Station in our residential neighborhood that negatively impacts us all on our dead end street and especially one house facing the entrance & exit that’s less than 50’from the front door! We believe that we have the solution and that is to move this Gas Station from our residential neighborhood to the exact sized and shaped parcel that the city owns just across the street in a commercial area. The city misrepresented our efforts to try to appeal this permit to the public via our local media. Our public records request and the after the fact notification we received from our city shows how we were misdirected and how our city excluded us from the Permit Appeal process. Now we the people, who are most severely impacted, find this to be a fraudulent permit process that is, “null and void” and we request this permit process to start over again and allow our concerns to be taken into account and then we believe that the obvious solution will be taken. We have acted in good faith ever since we became aware of this plan & permit process on 27 September of 2018 and we have sought to work with our city but none of our property and safety concerns, Appeals, input and alternative solutions were taken into account and none of our questions were ever answered. Furthermore, we believe that the City of Port Orchard violated the doctrine of substantive due process and we ask for the recognition that the social compact upon which our government is founded that gives us the protections beyond those that are expressly stated in the U.S. Constitution against the flagrant abuse of government power as was established in Calder v Bull, 3 U.S. 386 (1798). The city had a zoning restriction on this property that allowed for a commercial building that would service the hospital across the street and not severely impact the neighborhood and that included not allowing a Gas Station and when did this change? Did this change occur as part of a deal to use this property as it was extensively used as an equipment staging area for the last 2 years for the road construction project that was just completed? If the city wanted to permit a gas station why not do it as we have proposed across the street? Why didn’t the city answer any of our questions or help us in this process and why don’t they try to work with us for solutions? We were prepared to pay the $450.00 Permit Process Appeal Fee because our small neighborhood will be permanently oppressed in all the many ways we listed in our Appeal requests. We were especially shocked to see the plans that showed that there was no real mitigation possible with the entrance and exit facing a house less than 50’ away that didn’t even have a buffer zone fit for a Salmon! Everyone in Washington State should be equally alarmed if our government at any level in any neighborhood uses its power to only work with businesses and developers and can leave the citizens out of the process! Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide and rest assured that it will be greatly appreciated and will save our Tremont Place residential neighborhood in the City of Port Orchard WA.
