PORT TOWNSEND — Following a second wave of Marrowstone Island homeowners calling for keeping public access where West Nolton Road used to be, one of two property owners defended his private property rights granted by the court.
“I don’t recognized any people here asking for permission as being declined to go down there,” said Dean Straub, who since 1967 has owned the property on the north side of what was once designated as a county road.
Calling his former neighbor “a good old boy,” Straub said the ex-neighbor allowed other residents to cut across his property to reach the shellfish beach at Kilisut Harbor.
Straub said he and his current neighbor, Dennis Dille, and their wives went through the Superior Court process in 2002, “and the property was duly deeded over to us.”
“This has all come as a result of that,” he said.
Contrary to what other neighbors say, Straub said he believes the lawyers involved in the process did a good job.
Before commissioners
Straub made his statement Monday morning after his neighbor to the north, Rita Kepner, again pleaded her case before the county commissioners.
Kepner and several other neighbors contend that West Nolton Road is the last public access to Kilisut Harbor’s tidelands between Mystery Bay and Fort Flagler state parks.
They believe the county should have protected the public access.
County Deputy Civil Prosecutor David Alvarez says it is too late now that the road is closed, blocked off and marked as private.
Kepner said that neither she nor her neighbors ever saw the legal notice published in the newspaper, not even signs posted on Flagler Road at the top of the road.
She has amassed documentation on the proceedings that led to the loss of West Nolton Road, and hopes to further fight the public access issue. How that will be done, she said, is uncertain at this point.
County commissioners, however, said the matter appeared to be civil, now that the county has not been involved for three years.