CANYON CITY – Trying to mend a longstanding dispute between the City of Granite and a local hotel owner, the Grant County Court exempted part of the Granite Lodge from county zoning requirements, pending legal review.

In 1996, Granite Lodge owners Mitch and Pat Fielding built a deck on their rustic inn. The deck and a connected staircase, facing onto McCann Street, later were found to protrude into a public setback and right-of-way. On Nov. 14, 2000, the Grant County Planning Commission determined that the deck and staircase violated the Grant County Land Development Code.

On Sept. 17, the County Court softened the planning commission’s findings and voted to allow the Granite Lodge to keep its deck, even though the structure violates a county setback requirement. The County Court only required the lodge owners to relocate the attached staircase from the public right-of-way. The motion by Grant County Judge Dennis Reynolds passed unanimously.

The County Court’s unorthodox decision was lauded as a win by Martin Leuenberger of Baker City, attorney for the Fieldings. City attorney Scott Warner of Yturri Rose LLP, based in Ontario and Fruitland, Idaho, challenged the County Court’s ability to grant what amounted to a complicated variance. The Fieldings had not requested a variance (Leuenberger said they had opted for, but failed to receive, a broader zoning change). However, the couple had appealed the planning commission’s decision, and the County Court was sympathetic to their desire to keep their wooden deck. The appellants pointed out that McCann Street, a public right-of-way on paper, in reality is nothing more than a lightly traveled, primitive dirt road.

As 23 citizens, nearly the entire population of Granite, waited for a decision, the County Court struggled with a complex and tangled chain of events. This local history included Grant County’s original resolution in 1984 to designate Granite a rural service center, meaning the county accepted zoning and land-use oversight for Granite. City leaders, a year later, voted to recognize the county’s land-use planning authority, an unusual sequence of events which Leuenberger held up as proof that the county did not have jurisdiction over the land-use dispute. Then, there was a controversial city council effort to grandfather pre-1994 land-use activities in Granite and exempt them from the code – a vote which Reynolds called misguided and inappropriate based on the county’s own experience with trying to institute retroactivity in land-use decisions. And later there was a Granite-based effort to assert zoning authority independent of the county, an effort which stalled the Fieldings’ appeals process and ultimately languished without results.

During this six-year timeline, bitter divides emerged in the rural northeastern Grant County community. A standing battle between neighbors caused Granite Lodge to become a focal point of anger and what Trafton called “vindictiveness.”

“The people aren’t getting along up there,” Leuenberger said. He stated politely what he and Reynolds later would call a “p–ing match” between former and present members of the city council. Both the Fieldings and Pat’s son, Michael Heroff, continue to serve on the city council, Mitch and Michael as councilors, Pat as the mayor (they and others stand for re-election this fall). Complaints against the lodge and its setback violation came from former mayor Mike Hammer and former city council member Paul Schnitzer, as well as then and present councilor Bill Dobell.

Hard feelings accrued. In the Nov. 7, 2000, election, Hammer lost to Pat Fielding in his bid for re-election, and Schnitzer departed the council. Prior to this shift in the balance of power, the council’s majority passed a resolution to present a formal complaint to the planning commission asserting that the Fieldings’ deck should be removed from the city’s setback.

During the County Court appeals hearing, commissioner Scott Myers – a contractor by trade – acknowledged that the Fieldings’ deck represented an obvious violation of the land development code. However, he voted with the majority after Reynolds, with Trafton’s consent, sought a “more reasonable compromise.”

The conditional motion by Reynolds accepted relocation of the staircase from McCann Street and only sought removal of the deck itself years later once the deck had deteriorated beyond its useful life. Mindful of legal questions, Reynolds provided a caveat that the county simply would require removal of the stairs if the broader motion were considered untenable. In either case, the deck will remain in place into the near future. The only exception would be if the city won a reversal from the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

Trafton could only shake his head and wonder why this dispute lasted so long.

“I feel people in their own community should resolve their own problems,” he said.

He added to the citizens of Granite, “I think we’re making a mountain out of a big mole hill here.”

Another hearing will be scheduled to allow further deliberation and review of legal counsel’s advice.