A dispute over a rural Powell septic system became flush with drama at last week’s Park County Commission meeting.

At issue is a 5.29-acre piece of land that sits off Lane 8, just northeast of Road 8 and Powell city limits. David Bugher recently purchased the property and is building a guest house there, with plans to install a septic system. However, County Planning Director Joy Hill concluded that an agreement made by a prior owner requires that the property be served by the city’s sewer system.

Bugher and his engineer disputed Hill’s interpretation of the decades-old documents, but agreed to seek the explicit permission of the Powell City Council and the Park County Commission before installing a septic tank.

The Powell council voted to let Bugher out of the 2002 agreement at its Sept. 3 meeting. Commissioners then gave their blessing on Sept. 17 — but only after a heated discussion.

In conversations with commissioners ahead of the meeting, Bugher said staff had threatened him and refused to put him on the agenda. However, after hearing their staffers’ sides of the stories, some commissioners contended that Bugher had exaggerated or misinterpreted what happened.

Going to jail?

Most of the complaints stemmed from a conversation between Hill and Randy Watts, who is working for Bugher on the development of the Lane 8 property.

After learning Hill wouldn’t allow him to install a septic tank, “I said, ‘Well, what if I just go ahead and put it in and we’ll worry about it as we get there?” Watts recalled, “‘Because he’s [Bugher] moving onto his land.’”

According to Hill, she then offered the worst case scenario for proceeding without a permit — the theoretical possibility of a criminal prosecution and jail time.

“I just told him [Watts] that that could happen,” Hill said. “I also said it’s very unlikely that that would be an approach the county would take, because we want to rectify the matter. We truly just want to get this remedied.”

However, Watts said he took it as a threat — and he accused Hill of further threatening to keep him off a list of preferred contractors.

“Now that is highly illegal,” Watts told the commissioners. “You cannot have a preferred list of contractors; can’t threaten my livelihood.”

Later in the discussion, Commissioner Lloyd Thiel agreed with Watts that the county maintaining a list of preferred contractors would be “absolutely wrong.”

Hill said her office does not have such a list, but has discussed developing something along those lines; she described it as being in the context of having contractors register with the county.

“I also mentioned to Mr. Watts that it would not look good if he were to put a system in the ground and then a violation be issued,” Hill said, since Watts’ name would be attached to the violation.

Developer v. staff

At some point following that conversation between those two, Bugher called Commissioner Lee Livingston and complained that he had been personally threatened by the planning director.

However, Livingston expressed frustration after learning that the comments in question were actually made to Watts. Bugher said he felt personally threatened “because Randy [Watts] works for me,” but Livingston said that wasn’t what he’d been led to believe.

“And I do not take kindly to being lied to or someone trying to manipulate me,” Livingston told the developer. “That is a very serious allegation and that’s not how we do business here.”

“OK,” Bugher responded.

Meanwhile, Commission Chair Dossie Overfield brought up a separate complaint that Bugher made about the board’s executive assistant, Molly Norberg. The week prior to the meeting, Bugher reportedly called Overfield and said that Norberg had “refused” to put him on the agenda and told him that he’d have to wait until October. However, Norberg said she’d actually told the developer that she would check with Hill about the amount of time needed for the discussion and then call back. Norberg said she was still on the phone with the planning director when Bugher contacted Overfield with his complaint.

The item was placed on the Sept. 17 agenda and Overfield said she found Bugher’s accusations “pretty disheartening.”

Going forward, “I’d appreciate it if you use a little more thought process to what conversations actually are and pay attention to what she’s [Norberg’s] saying …," Overfield said.

Following more discussion, the commissioners unanimously voted to let Bugher to move forward with a septic system.

The city doesn’t care

The Powell City Council also gave its unanimous consent, but with much less discussion and debate. City Administrator Zack Thorington described the city’s position as, “Hey, we don’t care.”

In a report to the council, Thorington indicated that the city might actually prefer for Bugher to go on a septic system: Given the topography of the land, it would be “very expensive and very maintenance heavy” to bring city sewer service to the property, Thorington wrote.

Further, he said residents are only required to use city utilities when they live within city limits. 

“We’ve never forced anyone [to use city services], not in all the years I’ve been here,” Councilman Floyd Young said at the Sept. 3 meeting.

While the Lane 8 property could become a part of the city some day — the agreement says the property and an adjoining lot will be “promptly” annexed if the city demands it — Thorington doesn’t foresee that happening in the near future.

During last week’s debate before the commissioners, Hill made a point of saying that her concern was not with the septic system itself, but with following the legal agreements on the property.

There was “no harm intended by planning and zoning,” Hill said. “We’re just here to give people information.”