Adjacent and abutting

The vague and ambiguous language of Title 18 of the Saratoga Municipal Code took center stage during the October 6 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council.

The definition of “adjacent” was also heavily discussed as Councilmember Jon Nelson defended his approval of a building permit for Memorial Hospital of Carbon County (MHCC).

For more than a year, MHCC has pursued the construction of a clinic in Saratoga. Originally announced in July 2019, MHCC announced the purchase of property during a livestream held on June 18 at the Platte Valley Community Center (see “Memorial Hospital of Carbon County to build clinic in Saratoga” on page 5 of the July 8 Saratoga Sun). Just a few weeks later, plans for MHCC Health Center - Platte Valley were approved by the Board of Trustees (see “Plans released for clinic” on page 29 of the August 12 Saratoga Sun).

“I reviewed the MHCC building permit on September 11. (Councilmember) D’Ron (Campbell) participated in that review with me here in the planning and zoning office,” said Nelson. “I will go through the list here of what I reviewed and what I found.”

Nelson read from an email sent to Wally Shephard, owner of Shepard Construction and the company hired to build MHCC’s Saratoga clinic. In that email, which was made available to the Saratoga Sun, Nelson presented both Shepard and Kaye Mullaney of MOA Architecture with a bulleted list of what did and did not conform to the Saratoga Municipal Code. Of those, three did not conform to code and were; minimum yard requirements, screening and off-street parking.

According to Nelson, following the email, he had talked with both Shepard and Mullaney via phone to explain the two options that MHCC could pursue to move forward with construction of the Saratoga clinic; adjust their site plan or request a variance. 

“We had a conference call on the 17th, Thursday the 17th. So a week after I sent out that email. I sent out that invite to (the) planning commission chairman, the council members and the folks on that call included the engineers, architects, several members of the MHCC board, myself, (the) planning commission chairman and D’Ron,” Nelson said. “On that call, they informed us that they were going to revise and resubmit their plan, which they did, and I reviewed that on Saturday the 19th, Sunday the 20th. Kicked out my comments back to Judy and to Jim Beckmann (planning commission chairman) and subsequently approved the plan because I found it to be in conformance with the code, that the changes they had made and their revision process brought them into compliance.”

Nelson stated that he understood there was frustration that the public was not involved with the discussion surrounding the building permit, but added that it was because the variance process had not been triggered. Indeed, according to 18.72.010 of the Saratoga Municipal Code the request for a variance “shall be made only after the denial of a building permit by the zoning officer”. That same code states “the purpose of any variance shall be to modify the strict application of the requirements of this title (Title 18).”

“Because they were in compliance with the code, there’s no mechanism to force a variance process to take place or for a petition process to take place because there’s nothing they’re asking for leniency on,” said Nelson.

The main point of contention surrounding the building permit appears to be in regards to the requirements of off-street parking. According to 18.45.010(C) of the Saratoga Municipal Code, a medical office building is required to have a minimum of one parking space per 150 square feet of gross floor space. 

“The required parking spaces for a 5,963 square foot building would, therefore, be 40 spaces. The current plan shows 26 off-street parking spaces,” Nelson said.

Under 18.45.010(D) of the Saratoga Municipal Code, however, it reads “public parking spaces, one-half or more of which are immediately adjacent to a property, shall be counted toward satisfaction of the number of parking spaces required in subsection C of this section.”

“They cited and kind of invoked that subsection D and pointed out that, between the off-street parking spaces they were providing in the revised plan plus the fourteen spaces that were available immediately adjacent to the property, that they met the provision of that section of the code,” said Nelson. “I’ve obviously thought a lot about what that code means and why it’s imperfect since then.”

Nelson added that a clarification under 18.45.010(D) along the lines of “except when abutting a residential district” would have triggered a variance process.

“I understand the concern and I’m sympathetic to the concern, I really am, but that’s not what it says and we have to apply what it does say,” Nelson said. “I know that hasn’t been a popular position but that’s where I stand on it.”

Randy Raymer, owner of Raymer Construction, stated that he disagreed with Nelson’s interpretation of adjacent. Following the approval of MHCC’s building permit in September, Raymer’s wife, Ellie Dana-Raymer, created a GoFundMe campaign to contest the approval of the permit on behalf of Linda Smith, who lives directly across from the property.

“Adjacent to me would still require the 40 off-street parking spaces, not on-street parking spaces. We can all go to court over that. I think that probably could have had a little more consideration. Certainly, the people in the neighborhood were never informed of any of those goings on or conversations,” said Raymer. “I think the process is very flawed and I’m sure a comma and a word could have helped that but I don’t agree with your term of adjacent parking being on-street. It doesn’t say ‘adjacent off-street parking’ but it does not say ‘adjacent on-street parking’.”

As discussion continued, Raymer raised a historical precedent set by the construction of the Corbett Medical Center. According to Raymer, the current clinic was required to move their clinic to allow for more off-street parking spaces and conform to setbacks. 

Nelson stated that he had a conversation with a member of the Corbett Medical Foundation and compared it to the current issue surrounding MHCC’s building permit. Raymer, however, stated that the exception was that the Corbett Medical Center did not abut a residential area while the MHCC clinic did.

“When you abut the residential district, I think it’s inherent on all of us to be good neighbors and compliant to the Nth degree in the study of that,” said Raymer.

“There’s no good neighbor policy. There’s only what’s in there for parking requirements and screening and setbacks and building area and all the things that I mentioned,” Nelson said. “I acknowledge, and we talked about the fact that it was imperfect, that there are people who are unhappy about it but, man, somebody was going to be mad at me no matter what and so I tried my damndest to play it straight down the middle and view everything as black and white and I think I did.”

The next meeting of the Saratoga Town Council will be at 7 p.m. on October 20 at Saratoga Town Hall.