Housing Bank won't make November ballot

Much to the dismay of an ad hoc affordable housing group that has been working for some time to place an excise tax for a countywide Housing Bank funded by real estate sales on the November ballot, the plan will have to wait.

Members blame San Juan County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Gaylord and Deputy Prosecutor Karen Vedder for the delay.

Paul Losleben, who is heading up the affordable housing committee, told The Sounder that the problem could have been avoided if the Prosecuting Attorney had informed county commissioners of their role in the process, and well in advance of an Aug. 19 deadline. It had to be met if county voters were to be able to decide in November whether to create a tax, the funds from which would be used to provide more affordable housing countywide.

Aug. 19 was the last day to publish a proposed county ordinance that included an explanation as to how the tax dollars would be spent. It had to be published twice in a local newspaper prior to a a public hearing of county commissioners on Sept. 6, or 60 days prior to the November election. The hearing has since been canceled.

Gaylord said the required spending plan must come from county commissioners, not the Prosecuting Attorney's office, because it involves policies, not legal language. The prosecutor also suggested that the commissioners may have dropped the ball because they were distracted over the past month by efforts to appoint a new commissioner from Lopez Island.

But the commissioners insist that they hadn't been told of their role prior to the deadline. Alan Lichter said he was under the impression that the Prosecuting Attorney, not the commissioners, was responsible for drafting the resolution. Lichter also said that when he contacted Vedder several weeks ago to see if things were progressing well, he was assured that the deadline would "probably be met."

It was just one day before the Aug. 19 deadline when Lichter said that he first heard a very different analysis of the situation from the Prosecuting Attorney, namely, that a spending plan would have to be drawn up by the commissioners, and that it could not be completed prior to the deadline.

As for Commissioner Kevin Ranker, he too assumed that all was well after several meetings with Losleben. Ranker, who was out of town for four days last week, said, "I first heard of the problem after the deadline had passed."

But Ranker acknowledged that the commissioners deserve some of the blame for the failure to get this on the ballot. "The buck stops here," with the commissioners, he said, promising he and Lichter will "bird-dog" the process from now on, because this is both "timely and critical."

As for Losleben, it was back on June 28 when he personally hand-delivered to both county commissioners and the Prosecuting Attorney's office a copy of a proposed ordinance that was drawn up by the ad hoc affordable housing committee, and which included a spending plan. Over the past two months, Losleben said, he contacted the Prosecuting Attorney's office "repeatedly" to make sure things were moving along. On every occasions, Losleben was told that "they're working on it". We received no information from that office that there was a problem with the ordinance or that the spending plan had to come from the commissioners, he said.

Had he and the commissioners been told earlier that there was a problem, "We definitely would have dealt with it," Losleben said. But it would be Aug. 21 before he first learned that the spending plan put forward by the ad hoc group could not be used.

Gaylord admitted that his office was partially to blame. "There was a breakdown in communication," he said, adding that he was sorry this had happened.

But he refused to take the entire blame, reiterating that only the commissioners can decide how to spend the tax dollars.

All the parties are now committed to moving forward and getting the Housing Bank on the ballot next February. Commissioners were expected to assign the spending plan to the Department of Health and Community Services when they met Aug. 23, after The Sounder went to press. John Manning, director of the department, told The Sounder Monday he was confident that work on the plan could be completed in time to get the Housing Bank on the ballot in February.

Nevertheless, Losleben remains angry about what happened. "The sad part of this is not only that a great many volunteers have been poorly served, that scarce funding has been wasted, but that the lost time will result in the failure to provide housing to working families who deserve better service from their government. With the cost of real estate continuing to increase at record rates, the opportunity to provide houses is forever diminished."

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