By Marcy Stamper
Okanogan County Hearing Examiner Dan Beardslee has rejected a request to reconsider his recommendation to keep a primitive road in the Chiliwist open to the public.
Gamble Land and Timber, the owner of adjacent property, had asked the county to vacate the road. Gamble did not make a persuasive case that Beardslee had applied an improper standard for road closure, said Beardslee in his denial of the request for reconsideration. His decision was issued Friday (May 22).
In addition, Gamble Land did not present any evidence that could not have been found before the April hearing on Three Devils Road, wrote Beardslee. He ordered that the additional information submitted by attorneys for Gamble Land be stricken from the official record, since he had closed the record after the April hearing.
In the memorandum asking Beardslee to reconsider his recommendation to keep the road open, Gamble attorney Nick Lofing said Beardslee’s conclusion that Three Devils Road could be important as an evacuation route was erroneous, since there are other roads Chiliwist residents could use in an emergency. In fact, the county “would be subjecting itself to great liability if it … promotes this unimproved and primitive road as a valid escape route,” wrote Lofing.
Three Devils Road leads over the ridge from the Chiliwist and connects with the Loup Loup summit and back roads to the Methow Valley.
In his recommendation against the road closure, Beardslee called testimony and a petition signed by more than 200 area residents about the utility of the road as an emergency evacuation route “compelling.” But Lofing argued that the number of opponents testifying had no relevance in “an administrative and statutory process, not one determined by public opinion.” Those opposing the road closure had not contradicted the historic record and documents presented by Gamble Lands, he said.
One of the two declarations that Beardslee barred from the record, submitted by a business associate who logs Gamble’s land, provided evidence of poaching of Gamble’s cattle, vandalism and trespassing. The other, from Cass Gebbers, a representative of Gamble Land, provided a point-by-point rebuttal of testimony by members of the public at the April hearing, some of whom he said had lied under oath or trespassed on Gamble’s property.
No date has been set for the county commissioners to consider Beardslee’s recommendation against vacating the road. The commissioners have the final authority in the matter.
