Volunteers, homeowners clash at Washougal’s Mable Kerr Park

Earlier this year, Brett Tarnet walked into Washougal City Hall for the first time and laid out her vision for Mable Kerr Park to city of Washougal leaders during their March 11 workshop. Tarnet, a 70-year-old Washougal resident, told the Washougal City Council members that the park has not been maintained since 2019 and is overrun with blackberries and other invasive plants, but still had — in Tarnet’s view — unlimited potential. She expressed her desire to help the park reach its potential by forming a work party, consisting of like-minded local residents, to meet weekly and clear debris from the area. “Why am I so excited about this? Because I have been walking through this park, thinking, ‘What a jewel.’’ … I want to do something,’” Tarnet said, adding that she thought the City’s public works department “does a great job” maintaining other Washougal parks. “I’m just hoping that we continue to get support from the City,” Tarnet told city leaders in March. Seven months later, Tarnet’s vibrant enthusiasm has morphed into disillusionment. And when she recalls the March workshop before the city council, Tarnet says she does not believe City officials supported her vision but have, instead, hampered her efforts and effectively banned her group from the park. Meanwhile, a series of disputes have ignited at or near Mable Kerr Park in recent months, with several community members accusing each other of trespassing and sometimes even threatening physical violence. “When I tell people about what’s going on,” Tarnet said, “they all look at me like, ‘This sounds really crazy.’” ‘A park in name only’ Mable Kerr Park is located just north of the Washougal School District’s administration building and George J. Schmid Memorial Fields, and across Campen Creek from the Orchard Hills Golf and Country Club. The 13.7-acre property dates back to the mid-1900s, when it played a role in the regional prune industry, according to the City’s website. “After a decline in the prune orchards, many properties like this were left to revert to natural landscapes and grew wild for decades,” the City states on its website. “Because the Kerr family wanted this land protected from development, the Columbia Land Trust purchased this property in 1997 on behalf of the city of Washougal.” The City’s parks department began a site-restoration campaign in 2007, with the Parks Foundation of Clark County providing grant funds in 2008 and 2011 for trails and native plants. Service groups, students and residents planted trees and built trails and bird boxes, resulting in “a popular site to take a short hike.” “The park features trails through woodlands and along Campen Creek, and opportunities to observe wildlife and enjoy songbird melodies,” according to the City. The natural beauty attracted Tarnet, who visited the park for the first time in 2022, two years after moving to Washougal with her husband, John Tweto. “My husband and I hike every day, and we were looking for somewhere new to hike,” she said. “One day we discovered (Mable Kerr Park), which is a lovely paradise and completely abandoned. There were logs and sticks and debris, and a giant blackberry briar in the middle of the park. It was a mystery why this particular park was abandoned. At the time, I thought, ‘That’s very strange. It would be so neat to find a way to unearth from under this debris, this beautiful park.’” A few months later, she ran into Brenda Hatten, a resident of 45th Court, a neighborhood street on the western edge of the park. “I said, ‘Isn’t this the most gorgeous park you’ve ever seen?’” Tarnet recalled. Hatten agreed that it had potential to be a lovely place, so Tarnet asked her new friend if they should try to adopt the park or do something to improve it. The two women, along with seven other community members, gathered at the park in February to discuss their plan of attack. They were joined by Washougal Mayor David Stuebe. Tarnet and Hatten approached Washougal leaders with their proposal during the March 11 workshop and received approval to hold their first cleanup session on March 17. The group, which was recognized as a part of the City’s Adopt-A-Park program, worked together during the next several months to clean the park, putting in more than 250 hours’ worth of work from March to August, according to Tarnet. “I think, overall, we were pleased that they were cleaning some things up,” Washougal City Manager David Scott said. “They were putting in the sweat equity for the community, on behalf of the community, and that’s what these volunteer programs are all about. We’re always very excited when we have members of our community want to step up and pitch in to make a positive difference.” It didn’t take long, however, for the first hint of discord to pop up between the group and the City. “Every time we cleared part of the front of the park, we would ask the City, ‘Please mow after we have cleared because otherwise everything that we just cut down will come back.’ And the City did not do that,” Tarnet said. “We found out that the City not only did not respond with, ‘Let’s get the lawnmower out here and cut this stuff back again,’ they told the public works department guys not to mow the part that we cleared. That was a head-scratcher to us.” Tarnet said she approached City leaders multiple times with her concerns, but was given a variety of reasons why the City wasn’t taking care of the park to her satisfaction. “The big question is, why doesn’t the City want to take care of that park?” Tarnet said. “(We’ve put in) 250 hours, actually more, of volunteer time in this park, and the City has denied us the satisfaction of supporting our efforts.” Later in the summer, Tarnet collected petition signatures from 100 Washougal-area residents asking the City to “maintain and repair Kerr Park in the same fashion as all other parks in the City” by cutting down hazardous trees, clearing invasive species and debris, and regularly mowing grassy areas. She presented the petition to the City. “We presented 100 signatures, only because I thought 100 is a nice round number,” Tarnet said. “I mean, I could’ve gotten 1,000, but I’m not going to take the time. Every person I asked signed the petition.” In the City’s parks plan, the Mable Kerr Park is classified as a “natural park,” which it defines as “undeveloped lands primarily left in a natural state with passive recreation use as a secondary objective.” The plan defines “community parks,” such as Hathaway Park, which Tarnet has repeatedly referred to as a comparison to Mable Kerr Park, as areas “planned to provide active and structured recreation opportunities, as well as passive and non-organized opportunities for individual and family activities.” “Kerr Park is a park in name, I guess,” Scott said, “but it is an open space, and that is definitely different from, say, a community park or a neighborhood park in terms of its purpose and therefore what it looks like on the ground.” Scott pointed to Hathaway Park, a community park, as an example of a park the City maintains more frequently. “(Hathaway Park) is groomed and mowed, there’s a picnic shelter, there’s restrooms, there’s a pickleball court,” Scott said. “I believe that Brett has made some comments along the lines of, ‘Look at those parks — there’s so much potential at Kerr to be like that. We should up our game there to make it like that.’ It’s fair for her to have that advocacy, but Kerr is an open space area, and so it’s not by design intended to be like (our community parks).” Scott said the City has conducted a variety of maintenance activities at Mable Kerr Park in the last two years in partnership with the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership (LCEP) and the Washougal School District, including: • October 2022: LCEP begins treating blackberries and other invasive species. • August 2023: The City closes Kerr Park to assess falling trees. • September 2023: An arborist assesses “hazard trees” on the park’s main east/west trail between the Sunset View Road and the Gifford Liedtke neighborhood, traversing across City and WSD properties. • October 2023: The City and the WSD remove 52 hazard trees. • Oct. 31, 2023: The City reopens Kerr Park on the main east-west trail. • November 2023: A local high school senior completes their senior project at the park. • November 2023: Gateway Church uses the park’s main east-west path for its annual Run for the Hungry event. • April 2024: An arborist recommends the removal of 33 additional hazard trees. • April 2024: LCEP continues treatment of blackberries and invasive species in the open portion of Kerr Park. The City is also partnering with LCEP on a construction project, slated to begin in 2025, that will restore a 2,000-foot portion of Campen Creek within Mable Kerr Park. “(The fact that it’s not a community park) doesn’t mean that stuff doesn’t happen there,” Scott said. “A lot of stuff has been happening at Kerr. We mow on each side of the path. We do some trimming of blackberries and branches. We do some spraying and removal. We’ll add rock when necessary just to keep the path in good shape. We stock dog waste bags out there. Unfortunately, we’ll have to take care of some vandalism and graffiti once in a while out there. And we did some safety assessments around the trees.” Scott said that a bit of a disconnect exists between Tarnet’s vision for the park and the City’s plan for the natural park. “I certainly respect her opinion, and I appreciate and honor her passion. I think that’s all very positive,” Scott said of Tarnet. “But it is true that her advocacy (and) her ideas about what should be happening there, and what the level of improvement should be and the level of service, for lack of a better term, at that facility should be, relative to what it is classified as in our plan, are discrepant.” Scott said he believes Tarnet has a clear vision for the park. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s different from what is in the City’s plan for that asset right now,” Scott said. “She’s an advocate, kind of pushing on (this topic), and that’s a healthy thing, generally speaking. We’re a community, and we discuss these things and we engage on these things.” Scott added that the City’s park maintenance efforts are hampered by a “very small team and limited resources.” “We do the best we can with the resources that we have, and so we have to triage and prioritize,” he said. “That’s something that we would like to improve, but that’ll have to be a broader community conversation in order to enhance our levels of service. I don’t want to say, ‘(Tarnet’s) wrong, we’re doing all kinds of great stuff.’ We have a great team, and I’m so proud of our team and the work that they get done, taking care of our assets.” Washougal resident April Schuckman, a member of Tarnet’s group, suggested that the City hold a public forum to discuss the future of the park during the Council’s Aug. 26 workshop. “Kerr Park isn’t just a park,” Schuckman said. “(It is a) place for respite, residents and wildlife alike, but it has gone downhill since 2020. Since COVID struck, the blackberries have become overgrown, and the trees are now overtaken by noxious weeds. I feel the new City officials I’ve spoken to may assume that this is the way the park has always been, but it is not. This is not what (it was like) when we moved here.” Schuckman said she hopes to keep communication with City officials open and “improve transparency before the volunteers are prevented from improving the park.” Volunteers, homeowners clash over trespassing During her park-improvement group’s first work session, Tarnet noticed a “riparian, beautiful, cut-grass, open space bounded by a giant blackberry barrier,” piled with debris and wood on its west bank. “There’s play equipment, barbecues, swing sets and lawn furniture and all this stuff in there,” she said. “I just thought, ‘That’s unusual, but these people seem to be making an effort to clean up at least part of the park. I guess that’s nice.’” The group, however, ran into trouble as it meandered further into the area. “A couple of the people had raced out and accosted Brenda and me, shouting and screaming,” Tarnet said. “They didn’t want anybody to see the part of the park that they had cleared and turned into a little private reserve. When we cut down all of the brush in the front of the park, they started rolling these giant, 200-pound logs up to the edge of ‘their property’ to keep us out.” Tarnet accused eight homeowners along 45th Court of using ropes, logs and other items to effectively “barricade” about 4 acres of the park for their private use, and said they had erected personal items on the park site, including children’s play equipment, sheds, above-ground pools, and a gallows-like structure. “(That) is really strange,” Tarnet said of the gallows-like structure. “It’s big. You could hang an elephant on (it). I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe it’s for me.” Several of the homeowners have accused Tarnet and her group of suspicious behavior, trespassing, illegal surveillance and defamatory “attacks,” and have expressed concerns for their safety, according to public records obtained by The Post-Record. One of the 45th Court homeowners accused Tarnet’s group of “stalking (and) prowling (their) backyard, disregarding ‘no-trespass signs,’ taking pictures of the back of (their) house and publishing them on their website,” according to an email sent to the Washougal Police Department. The homeowner wrote that, on May 1, they observed “a lone, middle-aged female,” later identified at Tarnet, “in (their) backyard, prowling about.” “Uninvited visitors to our backyard (are) highly unusual,” they wrote to Washougal police. “I went outside and confronted the female. She exhibited body language that I immediately identified as defensive, so I withdrew my approach. I could telI that she had not expected to be seen and was, indeed, aware that she had been caught doing something wrong.” The homeowner wrote that she asked Tarnet if she “lost her dog or something.” “She said ‘no’ and was clearly nervous, unable to make eye contact,” the homeowner wrote in their complaint. “In fact, throughout our brief interaction, she never made eye contact with me once. She kept trying to move away from me, head down, as I asked her what she was doing in my backyard. I informed her that she was on private property. Still refusing to make eye contact or face me, she said that she wasn’t on private property and that she was working with the City, which I later determined by speaking with (Stuebe) was a lie.” After Tarnet left, the homeowner said they were “still haunted by the incident” and “determined to learn more.” “I called both numbers on the cards (Tarnet and Hatten gave me), only to receive confusing and contradictory explanations from both women which did little to explain what business they had with our home and why Tarnet was observed prowling about our backyard,” they wrote. “Both women spoke over me, refused to listen to me, were hostile, overly evasive and kept informing me to ‘talk to the mayor’ and ‘bring (my) concerns to a meeting,’ as if they possessed some indemnity for their actions and had authority over me. Later I would learn why they were so evasive. They’ve been stalking our property for nearly a month and publishing it online.” Later that evening, the homeowner discovered that the group’s website, KerrPark2024.com, contained what they described as “defamatory and menacing content targeting our home and a neighbor,” and claimed Tarnet has “allegedly been conducting surveillance of our home for some time under the impression that we are somehow impeding the city of Washougal from managing the park.” “She accuses us of illegal logging, alludes to us dumping debris, and has presented this defamatory content at City meetings,” the homeowner told police. “Worst of all, on the website, in the section titled ‘Chaos In The Park’ is a photo of the most vulnerable part of our home that reads, ‘The park is not fenced and not maintained, so it’s easy to access the park and do whatever you want.’ This reads to us like an invitation to harm us or our home.” The homeowner told police that there “is a definite menacing tone to their website in regard to (my partner and I), as no other neighbors that I know of on the entire block (other than my immediate neighbor) have been targeted on their website.” “We do not know this group or anyone associated with it, nor have we ever been introduced in the past to them or had any contact in the past that we know of,” the homeowner stated in the complaint. “But we do know that they have been surveillancing us and publishing their surveillance photos online in an attempt to paint us as their nemesis. “We do know that their interest in us is personal, unprovoked and not circumstantial. We get the feeling that they may have been weaponized by someone else, although we have no idea who that may be or even why. Their defamatory attacks and prowling seem to be directly focused upon us and no one else whose backyards also face Kerr Park.” The homeowner told police she “fears for the safety” of her home. “I, personally, find the defamation and prowling frightening,” the homeowner stated. “I feel that something is very wrong here — malevolent, even. This isn’t normal behavior for a ‘grassroots group’ trying to improve city life. This is also not a misunderstanding. That scares me the most — not knowing why or what is compelling them.” The homeowner told police they were “in the process” of filing cease and desist orders to Tarnet and Hatten, asking the women to refrain from publishing photos of their home, cease making “defamatory” statements online, and to stay off their property. On June 22, another homeowner called 911, stating, “there’s a lady on my back property … telling me that she’s going to cut a trail through the back of my property so that people can come and look at my beautiful backyard” during a “Sleeping Beauty adventure walk” event Tarnet had planned to hold at the park on June 29. “I asked her not to (cut), but she isn’t leaving and continuing to cut,” the homeowner told the 911 dispatcher. “It’s terrifying, absolutely terrifying.” A few seconds later, the homeowner told the woman with the cutters that they have “no idea what’s going through your brain or why you think that you get to come into my property.” “What you’re doing here is not public. You don’t get to create a trail to my backyard,” the homeowner told Tarnet. “If you want to clean up the park, go do that. The park is out there. This is not the park. Are you understanding that?” On July 27, the homeowner from the May 1 incident called 911, complaining about a man and a woman entering her backyard. “They say that we have encroached on the property, (but) we have not done that,” she told the 911 dispatcher. “(They say) that we’re the reason why the (park) is dead and all this other stuff. I don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a riparian forest that died. It’s not a park. They seem increasingly delusional about something that I’m not privy to or getting. It’s almost like they’re being weaponized by somebody because they specifically targeted us.” Tarnet believes the homeowners are violating Washougal’s ordinance 9.66.050, which states that “during all hours in any park, it shall be unlawful for any person to store personal property, including camp facilities (other than vehicles) and camp paraphernalia.” She also believes the homeowners are “encroaching” and “squatting” on public land. “I’m not using ‘squatter’ necessarily as a pejorative term, but an accurate term,” Tarnet said. “The definition of ‘squatter’ is someone who takes away public land or a public good or a public building, which is what they’re doing.” Washougal resident Donna Sinclair, a longtime Mable Kerr Park visitor who attended two of the group’s cleanup sessions, wrote an email to Scott and Stuebe about the situation, asking if the City was taking legal action against the homeowners. “I walked through the park (on Sept. 26) and was shocked to see logs stacked in the area we cleaned up with a sort of fence-barrier being erected with what appears to be rope,” Sinclair, a former Washougal School Board member, stated in her email to the mayor and city manager. “In the nearly 20 years I have lived here, this has been public property, and now private citizens appear to be stealing a portion of our park.” The homeowner from the May 1 and July 27 incidents declined an interview request from The Post-Record. The homeowner from the June 22 incident did not respond to The Post-Record’s request for comment. City sets boundaries for Adopt-a-Park volunteers Tarnet said she received a call from Rose Jewell, the City’s community engagement coordinator, in mid-August, asking Tarnet to come to Washougal City Hall to discuss the situation. During that late-August meeting, Jewell asked Tarnet and her group to adhere to the City’s guidelines for its Adopt-A-Park volunteers, who are asked to stay within 6 feet of designated trails. “We sat down with Rose, and she gave us a map, and she said, ‘You may not do any clearance in the front of this park,’ which is where we’ve been working to clear all the blackberries and weeds from the front to open up the trailhead,” Tarnet said. “She said, ‘You may not touch that. However, there’s a trail that goes in a horseshoe shape. On the west side of the trail, you may clear anything that’s within 6 feet of the trail.’ There’s nothing within 6 feet of the trail except a whole bunch of tree trunks that the City put there (after) clearing them off the trail.” Tarnet said the City’s rules have essentially banned her group from working in the park, which she said is frustrating since her group has been trying to restore the park. “We’re not the people trying to steal the park, but we’re the ones who have been kicked out,” Tarnet said, adding that City leaders referred to the 45th Court homeowners during their discussion with Tarnet. “They said, ‘You have poked the bear. We need to let this settle down,’” she said. Scott said the City did not intend to ban Tarnet’s volunteer group from the park. “I can’t speak to how they perceived it or how they took it,” Scott said. “But we, for a couple of different reasons, felt that we needed to kind of take a step back there for a period of time and limit the scope of where the work was happening. We never told them that they were banned from continuing to do work, but we did constrain the scope.” Scott said Tarnet came to the Council and “it was clear that she was disappointed.” “I understand that, and I certainly respect that,” Scott said. “They perceived it as the City kicking them out or banning them, but that was not our intent at all. It was, for a period of time, just kind of stepping back to limit the area and scope of work until we work through some things.” On Aug. 23, Robert Zeinemann, the City’s attorney, sent letters to the eight homeowners via the homeowners’ then-attorney, Brian Wolfe, of Vancouver, asking the homeowners to “cease any unauthorized actions, use and encroachments on Kerr Park lands,” and “remove any improvements, structures, and/or objects (they) have built, used or own that are encroaching on Kerr Park” within 30 days. When contacted by The Post-Record, Wolfe said he is not sure if he still represents the homeowners. “I have sent letters to them asking if they wanted to re-engage with me,” Wolfe told The Post-Record. “I have not had a response.” Wolfe said he represented two of the property owners, who claimed the park boundary being described to them “was wrong,” in 2019. “I sent a letter to the then-mayor and the city manager offering to sit down and discuss the dispute,” he said. “I heard nothing from the City until very recently. Back in 2019, there was some evidence that property owners adjacent to Kerr Park had a valid claim for adverse possession that predated the ownership by the City.” Adverse possession is a legal concept that allows a trespasser — sometimes a stranger but more often a neighbor — to gain legal title over the land of a property owner. Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 7.28.070 states that “every person in actual, open and notorious possession of lands or tenements under claim and color of title, made in good faith, and who shall for seven successive years continue in possession, and shall also during said time pay all taxes legally assessed on such lands or tenements, shall be held and adjudged to be the legal owner of said lands or tenements, to the extent and according to the purport of his or her paper title.” Scott told The Post-Record that he couldn’t discuss details due to an ongoing legal process, but confirmed that the City is “working on” a resolution to the situation. “There are some property owners along that western perimeter of this (park) that have encroached, to different degrees, into the City’s property,” Scott said. “The City has been aware of this for some time. Actually, before COVID, we were beginning to address it very formally, and then, (when) we came out of it, we didn’t pick it back up right away. But it’s been picked back up this year, and we are working through that process.” ‘I knew before I poked the bear, that the bear was there’ On Aug. 24, Tarnet’s group gathered at Mable Kerr Park one last time for a “farewell” event, and once again ran into trouble. Three homeowners called the Washougal Police Department, complaining of “an ongoing disturbance” between them and Tarnet, according to a report written by Washougal police officer Ryan Aguilar. “Upon my arrival, I was able to speak with (Tarnet), who said she was leaving because she was no longer allowed at the park and today was her ‘farewell party,’” Aguilar stated in the report. “(Tarnet) provided me with her information and then left. I spoke with all three neighbors about the ongoing issues they’ve had with (Tarnet) and her ‘clean-up.’ They stated (Tarnet) from time to time would be seen walking onto their property and screaming and yelling and just being loud while in the park.” Aguldar told them that Tarnet was not committing a crime by being in the park and was not being served with any type of trespass or restraining orders. The City formally canceled the Adopt-A-Park program in Mable Kerr Park on Aug. 31, according to Tarnet, who added that she is planning to halt her efforts in the near future, reluctantly accepting the fact that her vision for Mable Kerr Park doesn’t fit into the City’s plans. She is, however, making one final push to ensure that the public can access the entirety of the park. “My final involvement in this effort to stop the City from continuing to enable the squatters,” Tarnet said. “The City has the right, has had the right all along, to tell these people, ‘Not only is there a code enforcement because you can’t squat in this park, you can’t put your stuff in the park, but if you pursue this, you’re going to be banned from going in this park.’ It’s in the law. “What I would like to see is that they enforce the law and cut down the blackberry barrier, and give the Kerr Park 2024 group an apology — I think we’ve got it coming — and the right to go in there and clean up the rest of that park, regardless of whether it’s within 6 feet of a trail.” Tarnet stated on her website that “everything that is happening in Mable Kerr Park is the result of the entire failure of the city of Washougal to maintain the park in a fashion that would enable the general public to use the park with the exception of the trails.” Tarnet said she still believes City officials didn’t want her group in the park. “And to be brutally honest, I knew from the minute that I saw that park that there was something afoot,” Tarnet said. “Because if you walk you walk around the 45th Court side of the park, and you see all those logs piled up there, and that huge blackberry briar, and trees on the very north end that are very carefully groomed so they go all the way down to the ground, and a little sign that says ‘No Exit,’ I knew. I knew before I poked the bear, that the bear was there.”

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