Blaine: Define Front
The Blaine City Council did a nice job with a closed record appeal last week. Blaine’s height restrictions rely upon the building having a “front.” In this case, though, the lot had three street edges. Since the code did not define the front of the building for corner lots, the Director (Administrator? The decision is unclear.) had the duty to select which part of the building was the front based upon the information in the application.
The tricky issue here was the city’s internal division of authority. The council worked with an entirely closed record, but the planning commission was also working with a partially closed record. The discretion to review the application and select the front of the house is an administrative decision outside the public process. Working with an unclear code, as was present here, its hard for the different layers of review to establish what parts of the project are reviewable.
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