The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Anyone who's done construction updates on their home knows the permitting process can at times be tedious, but permits exist for important reasons, including safety, environmental concerns and legal requirements. Permits are a necessary evil for everyone, no matter the size of the project or the income level of the owner, or are they? Today on the show, KLCC's Zac Ziegler joins me to talk about his feature story about a property along the McKenzie River owned by a former timber baron that seems to have skirted permitting requirements that would apply to average citizens, and also showcases how county staff expert recommendations were repeatedly ignored by elected officials who received huge campaign donations from the property owner. It's quite the drama, pitting neighbor versus neighbor and involving actors at the highest levels of Lane County government. KLCC's Zac Ziegler. Zac, always great to see you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Zac Ziegler: Yeah, sure thing.
Dunne: You had a large feature piece that I'm sure a lot of people have heard or read online. Let's start with this: Let's start with the very beginning. Tell the audience who Kathleen Jones-McCann is.
Ziegler: Kathleen Jones-McCann is a second-generation timber company owner who owns a property right along the McKenzie River, just a bit downstream from Walterville, and has been, among other things, looking to do some building on that property for a while.
Dunne: Yeah, and then tell folks about that property, and specifically what have been seemingly long-standing issues on the property.
Ziegler: Yeah, so it does sit right down by the river. It's pretty close at hand, and the big issue is there's a side channel that kind of wraps around part of it. That has been causing issues for builders, because it's actually two parcels that sit next to each other. This property has been causing issues for people who've been trying to build there since really the late '70s. That was the earliest documents I saw of someone trying to build and getting permits denied because of its location, or getting requests to do stuff like raising a house up on pylons, things like that.
Dunne: Okay, and is that for environmental sensitivity reasons, or is it flooding issues, or both?
Ziegler: It is a bit of both, actually. Doing something like putting it up on pylons helps in case of a flood, but then there's also worries because of what's called being in the floodway, which requires a setback of a certain amount. It's been a bit of an issue, and there actually ended up, because of these issues, Jones-McCann originally wanting to build on this around the COVID-19 pandemic and having issues getting hold of planners, was what she said to commissioners, and just kind of went ahead with things on the advice of, as she put it, a friend who works in construction.
Dunne: So take us through what she built on the property.
Ziegler: Yeah, so the Eugene Weekly dug a little more into this aspect than I did. What they found was roughly 5,000 square feet of structures that had been built. That includes an accessory dwelling unit and sheds to cover up things like the external propane tank. This is a property that's off the grid for just about everything but electricity. And so that became a bit of the issue: a storage shed, things like that, that totaled a pretty good amount, as well as a nearly 100-foot retaining wall at one point.
Dunne: So under normal circumstances, that kind of construction would require a permit.
Ziegler: Yes.
Dunne: She didn't get one, right?
Ziegler: No. She said she had tried getting one, but it was the pandemic. The office was not open. That was something that during a recent Board of Commissioners meeting, staff said, yeah, there were a couple of days we closed to the public to figure out how we were going to do remote work, but after that, we had a system for people to drop off paperwork. We could talk to them via email or phone. She claimed that she had two visits about two weeks apart, and both times it was closed. Hence the decision to just start building and do the best that she, or whomever did the building, possibly could to basically document the whole process so that you could hand something to an inspector when you go through this retroactive process to say, hey, you can look here, you can see behind the drywall, everything's to code. So that was kind of the crux of the argument: that there was an attempt, at least.
Dunne: Okay, this is an environmentally sensitive property. I think in your reporting you talked about the fact that, because it's so close to the river, there could be issues of damage to the river, and there could be issues involving very sensitive species living in the river. Talk a little bit about that.
Ziegler: Yeah, that was one thing. Early on looking into this, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who oversees projects in this area, and gives the environmental assessment, initially found two aquatic species: the western pond turtle, which is in the process of being added to the endangered species list, and the Oregon chub, which was actually the first fish to come off the list. Now, in a more recent visit that happened last month, he also found spring chinook in this small waterway, which is a listed species, so there is concern about that aspect of it. But there's also the concern that if this construction is within the 100-year floodplain, and let's say next winter is worse than this winter was on the McKenzie, all of a sudden the water comes dumping down and this stuff gets washed away. Now it's in the water, it's a hazard for people who are boating, and it's possibly causing some environmental damage to the water infrastructure just down the river that feeds a lot of water to the city of Eugene.
Dunne: Yeah, I'm wondering too about the idea of precedent: If she didn't get permits to do this, well, there are a lot of properties in that area, and I think one of the concerns from the county's perspective is that permits are there for a reason. If people bypass the normal process, we could have a lot of construction that could be quite damaging, right?
Ziegler: Yeah, and there was a little back-and-forth among commissioners, kind of the angel and the devil on opposite shoulders: By doing this, are we encouraging more unpermitted construction? Or if we OK it, are we going to get people trying to come into compliance and see, oh, they're willing to listen, they're willing to talk, and we can maybe get things going? That was something that was definitely debated.
Dunne: Okay, let's talk politics. Let's talk about this property, this person, and some of the county commissioners. Take us through that part of the story.
Ziegler: Yeah, that's something that's been brought up multiple times here at KLCC. When Rebecca Hansen-White was doing reporting on campaign finances early in the primary races, she spotted some donations by Kathleen Jones-McCann. It's something the Eugene Weekly and Lookout Eugene-Springfield have also brought up. It's significant amounts of money. David Loveall received around $42,000 from Jones-McCann, and Ryan Seneca received around $48,000 in campaign donations. Actually, the biggest one is someone who's not yet in office: Jake Pelroy has received around $57,000. All of them, it's a significant chunk. It's between 11% and around 19% of their total fundraising. It's quite a bit, but this isn't too unusual for Jones-McCann, who has been a very routine giver to political groups. If you go through and look at her campaign finance donations, there are donations to Republican candidates for governor and other offices. This was not just this one thing. This is something she does.
Dunne: Okay, perhaps people listening, maybe with a cynical bent, would think: Okay, but the difference is that these are commissioners who have now voted to allow her to continue, to retroactively get permits. Is that correct?
Ziegler: Yeah, that is the case. This went before county staff twice: once at the initial planning stage, where the initial county planner denied it based on the issues with the waterway, a handful of issues around the waterways in the area. Then it went to an appeal, and it was shot down there. Now it has moved through the commissioners, though that's probably not going to be the end of it.
Dunne: Okay, so just to track this: Staff, the experts, said this should be denied. The politicians, the elected officials, said OK, she can now retroactively get this permit. Am I hearing that right?
Ziegler: Yeah. And her lawyer, Mike Reeder, in pushing for this, talked about a 1990s Supreme Court case, Lewis v. South Carolina, where that case was about what's called an illegal taking, basically when the government makes it so a property has no value, or at least not the value it previously had, because of changes it made. In this case, South Carolina changed its laws about building on the coast, and a real estate developer had already bought a large lot. He still had a few properties to develop when a rule change went into place, and all of a sudden he couldn't do the building he had planned. The Supreme Court said no, that's an illegal taking. So the thing that was said is: If the government removes the value from the property, it has to buy it. In this case, it was: You can't make this change because that would be an illegal taking. There was never any discussion of whether the county could do this and buy the property from Jones-McCann, some kind of eminent domain situation, or anything like that.
Dunne: Okay, in your story there are some comments from the commissioners about this. In fact, I think there was a question about campaign donations. Talk about that. Talk about what they said about Jones-McCann giving them campaign contributions.
Ziegler: Yeah. So in this instance, the commissioners were acting in a quasi-judicial role. There were questions about interactions with Jones-McCann. The nonprofit Land Watch Lane County brought this up, basically saying, hey, you guys all swore that you don't have any conflict of interest. Here are your campaign donations. Do you have anything else to say? Ryan Seneca, the board's chair, then turned and asked county counsel, “Do we need to recuse on this?” And the answer was, no, unless you feel it causes you bias. That's kind of what you see with judges all the time. A judge has to admit their own bias in a legal case. It's not something you can challenge and get anyone but the judge to really rule on.
Dunne: Interesting, interesting. Let's bring in another actor in this drama, Mark. Is it Shaffer?
Ziegler: Yes, Mark Shaffer. Mark is the neighbor, basically. His property is on the other side of this channel. If you talk to a lot of people, fish and wildlife biologists, environmentalists, Mark himself, this is a side channel. If you talk to Jones-McCann, her attorney, and others, they call it a pond. So there is that debate. But Mark lives on the other side of this body of water. He has had some routine interactions that have been rather unpleasant with these neighbors, dealing particularly with the ingress and egress easement. Basically, they need to use his property to get to the house. There is a certain thing where, yes, you can get that right, but they basically only have a right to travel it. What Mark has said is they're doing more than that: They're building on it, treating that property like it's theirs, for the most part. They've built a small structure where they can put a trash can, so it's not as long a haul out to the main road. There have been some questions he's had about where they put their main gate for the entrance. He says that's on his property as well, and that he's had surveyors come out who have said that. There was also an issue where he had a truck he used for spare parts to restore another vehicle that, at one point, was towed off the property. Jones-McCann claimed it was in the area they had access to, and so they had the right. In the police report from the incident, because Mark, at one point, either, according to some accounts, punched or, according to him, tripped and put his hand into the tow truck and left a small dent, there was some concern about that. But that at least led to a police report, and the deputy said the truck was probably partially on, partially off. That became the resolution, and they advised the tow truck company to bring the truck back the next day.
Dunne: Okay, and then there was a text exchange. Talk a little bit about that. It's a family radio program, so I know you can't use all the language, but talk about what happened there.
Ziegler: Oh boy, yeah. So during the time Mark was going through these legal issues, he received one night some rather nasty text messages challenging him to a fight. That was from a number that belonged to Jones-McCann's son. He later, in the text chain the next morning, said, hey, someone else got hold of my phone, they'd been drinking, and they sent these texts challenging him to a fight. I will say Mark is in his late 60s. This happened in the last couple of years, so he was, at most, in his mid-60s, and he's a disabled veteran.
Dunne: Okay, all right. So what exactly happened on July 7, the most recent hearing with the commissioners on this property?
Ziegler: Yeah, so that's where we heard some of the arguments I was talking about earlier, with the Supreme Court case, and we got the idea that there's an actual endangered fish in this waterway that wraps around the property. But there were also other details mentioned, like the fact that this is an area where the setback is 100 feet because it has zoning that's more akin to farm property. If you go just a little way away to rural housing-zoned property, it's a 50-foot setback. That was another thing that caught the commissioners' attention. It seemed they had some questions about it after that. According to Mike Reeder, Jones-McCann's attorney, these structures were about 90 feet back, so they were within the 100 feet, but if this property were zoned differently, they wouldn't be. So that was one thing that was talked about.
Dunne: Okay, and what was the vote?
Ziegler: The vote was 3-1, with Heather Buch as the dissenting vote. Laurie Trieger was not present for it.
Dunne: Okay, and we should say the two commissioners who did receive those hefty campaign contributions voted in favor of what Jones-McCann wanted to have happen, correct?
Ziegler: Yes, correct.
Dunne: Okay. She got her way.
Ziegler: Yes, as far as could be done, it seems. In the process of that, there was some concern. Heather Buch did bring up something in this hearing about one of the things they were OK'ing, which was changes to the floodway rules around this. The county commissioners were saying, we're waiving these. She pointed out that wasn't on the public docket. I have had the folks from Land Watch Lane County write to me and express concern about that, saying they are planning some sort of appeal because the waiver of this particular rule wasn't put on the public docket, so people didn't know it was coming. The thought then is that people who might object to such a waiver didn't have their chance to have their say.
Dunne: So this drama may not quite be over yet, is that correct?
Ziegler: No, not quite. I've definitely heard from Land Watch that they are planning some sort of appeal. And with the fact that there is a state- and federally protected fish in the waterway, who knows what that could bring, either from the state or the federal government. At this point, if that gets involved, there are plenty of options to say this isn't settled quite yet. But currently, what was told to Jones-McCann is: We're going to ask our staff to grant this. You will be paying the fees, doing whatever you need to do to get into compliance on other fronts. And from there, these properties that have been standing without permits for years will, all of a sudden, have permits.
Dunne: Interesting, Zac, before I let you go, I know how hard you've worked on this piece. Take listeners behind the curtain a little bit and talk about how you got this information, how you were able to piece all this together, including the campaign contributions, all that behind-the-scenes stuff to put together such an exhaustive piece.
Ziegler: Oh man, it's been a process. I found out about this story in early May. It was two months of work in the background as I was doing my other work on top of it, putting together stories for our daily newscasts and running Oregon Rainmakers. Keeping up on those things while doing this, it really came to my attention because I saw something that looked unusual in the May 12 agenda for the commissioners, and I was curious about it. I started reading. That docket had at least a few hundred pages of documents I had to read over a few times to get through. Then there was other digging. Luckily, I've done a lot of land-use reporting, and I come from a construction family, so I know about permits. I know about the documents that should be there that weren't there.
Dunne: Well, and I think it also undergirds your story that campaign contribution disclosure forms can really tell a story, can't they?
Ziegler: Yeah, it's very interesting to see what comes in on those forms, especially for someone who's used to... My previous campaign finance reporting was in a place with a little stricter regulation on that: Arizona. They're capped at around $5,500, I believe, in campaign contributions. I was not used to seeing these numbers, so that instantly caught my eye.
Dunne: Well, it's a fascinating story. Great job on it, Zac Ziegler, our reporter here at KLCC. Again, thank you so much for coming in and chatting with us.
Ziegler: Oh, yeah, no problem.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, we'll bring you an update on the continuing drama and problems involving the Lane Community College board and its president. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
