Man’s bark saves Ebey Island dog park

Published 10:51 pm Friday, October 31, 2008

EBEY ISLAND — If you’ve been to Ebey Island in the past six months, you might know about this year’s bumper crop of wagging tails.

In May, Christopher Newman fenced off a few acres of pasture on the flood-prone agricultural isle east of downtown Everett and called it Ebey Island Dog Park.

Word about the private off-leash park quickly spread, helping it blossom into a regular destination for dozens of doggies and their grateful owners.

“We need a lot more dog parks in the county,” said Newman, who owns a malamute-German shepherd, Buddy, and a Rottweiler named Dagger. “It’s good for the people and good for the dogs.”

After a few months in operation, a Snohomish County code enforcement officer ordered the donation-supported park just north of the U.S. 2 trestle closed.

A dog park, the officer said, is not allowed under Snohomish County code, which deals with activities allowed on rural land. While the code lists community clubs, kennels and public parks as permitted uses, it does not specifically identify dog parks.

Newman was outraged.

Before opening the park, he said he first cleared the idea with county agriculture and planning officials as well as with his neighbors.

After wrangling for a month over the code’s interpretation, Newman’s landlord was served with an order to stop all dog park activity on his farmland by Halloween or face fines of up to $100 per day.

Newman appealed the order and opted to keep the park’s gate, a wooden pallet with hinges, open until his date in front of a county hearing examiner.

“On the face of it, it’s just nuts,” said Newman, who faced thousands of dollars in fines if his appeal was rejected. “It turned into a no-holds-barred death match.”

Newman launched a letter-writing campaign, pleaded for help on his Web site, www. ebeydog.org, and prepared to picket a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning at a new off-leash area at Snohomish County’s Willis Tucker Park.

He also placed a call to County Executive Aaron Reardon’s office, which he credits for taking swift action to withdraw the order.

Mike McCrary, county inspection and enforcement manager, had the order and hearing date rescinded earlier this week.

He said the question of a dog park is an “oddity” and the county’s land use code is not crystal-clear.

Instead of putting Newman through a formal hearing, McCrary said he has asked the county’s chief planning officer to review the law and make a determination by the end of the year.

In the meantime, Newman and the volunteers who take care of Ebey Island Dog Park will be allowed to keep it open.

“We’re not walking away from it,” McCrary said. “We’re just looking at it and making sure we’re doing the right thing.”

In the center of the field, chew toys and flying discs sit under a canopy weighted down with cinderblocks. Plastic bags for dog waste hang from fence posts and a 50-gallon drum of water with a spigot sits by the entrance.

Donations to keep it open are collected in an old Yuban coffee can with a slit cut in the plastic lid, or given electronically through the park’s Web site.

Mary Park, 28, of Lake Stevens, loaded her vocal basset hound, Toby, and great Dane-German shepherd, Taco, into the cab of her pickup truck Thursday afternoon.

“We needed a park in this area. It’s kind of cool that one opened up,” she said. “It’s not the same as it was 20 years ago, when you could let your dog roam around your neighborhood.”

Park said she previously took her dogs to off-leash parks in Redmond or Clearview.

Rita Pollardo brought Elvis Aaron, Priscilla Marie and Lisa Marie to the park Thursday afternoon. Elvis, she said, is a Bohuahua – half Boston terrier, half Chihuahua – and the females are pugs.

The Community Transit dispatcher, who had just ended an overnight shift, said she especially likes the “low-impact zone” set aside for small or shy dogs. Elvis hasn’t been himself since a recent move, she said.

“This is really good for helping him socialize,” Pollardo said.

To advertise his venture, Newman placed a large painted sign facing the often-congested U.S. 2 trestle.

By spring, he plans to open a farmers market, dog kennel and organic farm on 14-acres that he leases next to the dog park at 1923 55th Avenue SE.

Cora Cunningham, who raises cattle with her husband on Ebey Island, said the couple doesn’t mind the dog park, provided stray dogs don’t start harassing their livestock.

“If people let their dogs loose and chase our cattle, we have the right to shoot them, and we don’t want to do that,” she said.

Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.