Judge denies Yachats businesswoman’s appeal to keep yurt/travel trailer development in forest zone • YachatsNews.com

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

A Lincoln County circuit judge has denied an appeal by a prominent Yachats businesswoman seeking to keep a development of four yurts and a travel trailer on 20 acres of property she owns off Starr Creek Road just north of Yachats.

Judge Marcia Buckley ruled last week that Lincoln County is correct in saying the dwellings erected by Linda Hetzler and her husband, Thomas Smith, are not needed to do forestry work on the property and that a septic system for the development violates health rules.

The county is now preparing an order for Buckley to sign to remove the structures. Hetzler and Smith own the popular Drift Inn restaurant and motel and related businesses in Yachats.

Hetzler and her attorney, Russell Baldwin, had appealed a February decision by Judge Sheryl Bachart, who ruled that the development violated zoning ordinances. Hetzler represented herself earlier this year but retained Baldwin for her appeal and Bachart subsequently assigned the case to Buckley because of previous conflicts with the attorney.

Baldwin and assistant county counsel Douglas Halbrook filed pages of arguments over the summer for the appeal. Buckley heard 45 minutes of oral arguments Sept. 20 and in a four-page ruling Wednesday upheld Bachart’s rulings from February.

“It appears that defendants seek to relitigate the declaratory relief previously granted by Judge Bachart,” Buckley wrote in denying the appeal. “This court is not going to modify that previously ordered by Judge Bachart.”

Buckley also denied a motion by Hetzler and Baldwin to prohibit county inspectors from going on to the property and told the two sides to designate a time to do that. If they can’t, Buckley said she would do it for them.

Hetzler and Baldwin had argued that the county could not regulate forest practices that Hetzler’s employees are performing and that temporary structures like the yurts and RV are allowed under state rules. The county’s attorney argued zoning for the land – timber conservation — allows for just one structure and that Hetzler expanded the septic system to handle the development without county approval.

Issue started in 2021

The dispute between Hetzler, Smith and the county started when they erected housing on a 20-acre parcel they bought in 2021 and connected the structures to a septic system serving a former manufactured home.

There were six people living on the property in August, Hetzler said in an appeal affidavit. She said the thinning work of the property’s trees would take about 15 years which is “the approximate useful life of the temporary structures providing eating and sleeping quarters for workers at the forest camp.”

The 20-acre property where the work is being done is zoned as “timber conservation” meaning it is allowed one residential dwelling under county zoning ordinances and state land-use rules. Hetzler and Smith also own an adjacent 15-acre parcel also in a timber conservation zone.

In her ruling last February, Bachart said her decision focused on a “very narrow legal issue” as to whether the complex violated zoning and septic rules. The judge said it was clear to her that the complex was not a temporary forest camp and that the county’s exhibits showed the yurts and trailer “meet the definition of a dwelling, clearly.”

Previous stories on the issue:

August 2023: Go here

October 2023: Go here

February 2024: Go here