In 1990, I had sold my first business – M & W Building Supply Company of Canby, Oregon and had retired to the city of my birth Spokane, Washington.

At the time of my return, Spokane County had enacted an ordinance which greatly restricted the ability of home owners to use their own property as they best saw fit.

The Spokane area gets its water supply from an aquifer. Much of the county is rural, so in order to minimize possible contamination of the aquifer, most areas were restricted to only a single dwelling per five or more acres of land.

To the casual observer, this might not seem to be big too great of a hardship. Great way to encourage the “gentleman farmer”, well there was a catch….

From sometime in the 1960’s on, there were many starter homes built on these five acre tracts. Among popular designs were small split-entry, three and four level homes. Many of these homes had footprints of under a thousand square feet.

Well, in their infinite wisdom, the elected leadership of the county decided to limit detached accessory building to one per property, and the size to no more than ½ of the house footprint. In many cases this meant a five acre property could have a barn/shop or garage maxed out at under 500 square feet. Considering even a small two car garage should be at least 24 foot square (576 square feet), this was highly prohibitive.

A coalition of concerned property owners, as well as a significant number of area post frame (pole) builders challenged the ordinance and spoke against it in an open meeting. The ruling was overturned.

Some Planning Departments have the appearance of being onerous towards the abilities of property owners to maximize their utilization of their own property. If you feel this is your particular case – others might as well, and grass roots organizations can indeed get those they have elected to listen to the voice of reason.