5A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2016
Neighbors: Problems arise when
city dwellers move to countryside
Continued from Page 1A
Biggest problem
“I think it’s the biggest prob-
lem for rural property owners,”
said Dave Hunnicutt, execu-
tive director of the Oregonians
in Action property rights non-
profit group.
Hunnicutt said most of the
phone calls he receives about
property right disputes relate to
neighbors butting heads.
“You should feel blessed to
have neighbors that are good,”
he said.
Often, problems arise when
city dwellers move to the coun-
tryside expecting idyllic peace,
only to have their aesthetic
tastes offended by neighbors
who don’t mow their grass or
who populate their yard with
rusted pickup trucks on blocks,
Hunnicutt said.
Escalating conflicts
The conflict often escalates
when the offended landowner
recruits a government agency
to retaliate against the neigh-
bor, sometimes on regulatory
grounds unrelated to the under-
lying problem, he said.
“The county gets called
and the state gets called. They
march in, and rather than use
diplomacy, go in with guns
blazing and make it even
worse,” Hunnicutt said.
At that point, lawyers are
often hired, battle lines are
drawn, and the time-consum-
ing and expensive process of
litigation begins, said Marti
Dane, executive director of the
Six Rivers Dispute Resolution
Center in Hood River.
“If that’s the preferred
method, we end up getting our-
selves into trouble,” Dane said.
Free mediators
She said there is an alterna-
tive way to put the pieces back
together, though it’s often over-
looked as tensions increase:
using a third-party mediator.
Dane’s organization is home
to the USDA’s Certified Agri-
cultural Mediation Program
for Oregon, which is aimed
at resolving common rural
problems.
Last year, more than 4,000
disputes across the U.S. were
referred to it and similar
programs.
Cost-wise, mediation has a
big advantage over litigation:
It’s free, as long as the disputes
relate to certain issues, such as
boundary disagreements, prob-
lems with non-farm neighbors,
wetland determinations, graz-
ing on public land and internal
farm family conflicts, among
others.
People are often reluctant to
seek mediation, seeing it as a
form of “giving up” or compro-
mising, Dane said.
“It’s much more of a formal
process, much more sophis-
ticated than people thought it
was,” she said.
A common misconcep-
Mateusz Perkowski/EO Media Group
Marti Dane, executive director of the Six Rivers Dispute
Resolution Center in Hood River, which administers the
USDA’s Certified Agricultural Mediation Program in Oregon.
tion about mediation is that the
antagonists are forced to face
each other to hash out their
differences.
In reality, a mediator gener-
ally interviews each party sep-
arately and extensively, learn-
ing the nuances of the conflict.
Everything that the mediator
learns remains confidential and
the information is not disclosed
to either neighbor.
It’s not even necessary for
both parties to immediately
agree to mediation — one
landowner can request it, then
the mediator decides how to
approach the neighbor.
“I may go a month before I
dare put them in the same room
together,” said Gary Linkous,
an attorney and mediator for the
USDA program.
Objectivity counts
Mediation works for the
simple reason that the media-
tor doesn’t have any feelings
invested in the dispute, Link-
ous said.
They’re able to look at the
dispute objectively and devise
proposed solutions that the
antagonists are too angry or
defensive to consider.
“Emotionally, people get
adversarial pretty quickly,” he
said. “What you’re trying to do
is defuse the thing.”
Neighbor conflicts often
center on practical problems
— such as one landowner who
cut hay that blocked another’s
irrigation ditch — that could
have practical solutions, Link-
ous said.
Lawsuits, instead, focus on
monetary damages and legal
theories that seldom actually
pan out in court, he said.
“The reality is 90 per-
cent-plus settle anyhow,” Link-
ous said. “Why not work on it
sooner and not spend all that
money, if you can?”
Unlike attorneys, who stra-
tegically consider what infor-
mation to reveal, mediators are
able to see the bottom line and
underlying agenda of both sides
while also maintaining secrecy,
said Dane.
Mediation can help people
realize that a solution is pos-
sible where neither side has to
be defeated, she said. “If you
can stop wanting the other
person to be wrong, then you
can make a lot more progress
toward creative solutions and
less regulation.”
Mediator’s role
Mediators aim to discern
between the neighbors’ actual
interests and their negotiating
positions, said Jack Hebner,
executive director of the Ful-
crum Institute, an organization
in Spokane that provides USDA
mediation services in Washing-
ton, Idaho and Montana.
People’s real motivations
can diverge from what they
claim, said Hebner.
For example, someone who
needs to sell his car to pay for
medical care for a sick child
isn’t likely to admit that fact
during sales negotiations, he
said.
Rather, he’s going to act as
if he’s trying to get the best deal
for the vehicle, so as to avoid
losing his bargaining power,
Hebner said.
“In our culture, once you
say what you need, you become
vulnerable,” he said.
By having full access to
information, mediators can
easily clear up disputes that
emerge from simple misunder-
standings, said Gayle Cooper,
associate director of the Ful-
crum Institute.
One dispute over water
drainage between a private
landowner and a federal agency
was resolved when it became
apparent the government
hadn’t taken any action to cause
the problem, as the landowner
believed, she said.
“They were operating from
misinformation,” Cooper said.
Linkous said he advises par-
ties in mediation to be open with
any documents or other proof
that buttresses their position.
Such information would
eventually be turned over
during the discovery process
in litigation, but only after the
case had cost more time and
money, he said.
Though Linkous is an
attorney, he doesn’t provide
legal advice to neighbors in
mediation.
However, if he does encoun-
ter relevant case law or regula-
tions that undermine one side’s
position, Linkous asks the peo-
ple or their attorneys how they
plan to deal with the precedent.
This approach can help
clear up legal issues that could
drag out in a formal lawsuit.
“They take on a life of their
own,” he said.
Farmers are generally more
receptive to mediation because
they’re often acquainted with
their neighbors and face similar
obstacles, said Dane.
On the other hand, the famil-
iarity among farm families can
also cause them to have precon-
ceptions about each other —
such as believing negotiations
are pointless because the other
family is unreasonable, she said.
Seemingly complex dis-
putes may boil down to per-
sonal affronts that one or both
parties are loathe to admit, she
said.
In one case, for example, the
fundamental problem was that
one landowner had moved his
excavator through a neighbor’s
horse pasture, creating a haz-
ardous rut, she said.
The dispute nearly escalated
into a lawsuit over road-build-
ing and other unrelated issues,
but it was ultimately resolved
through mediation, which con-
vinced one landowner to sim-
ply fill in the rut on his neigh-
bor’s property.
“They just needed to
understand there had been an
offense,” said Dane.
Time to vent
Mediation allows people to
vent, which can then put the sit-
uation into clearer perspective,
she said.
Initially, people tend to react
with outrage to a perceived
provocation by a neighbor,
simply because that’s a way of
drawing attention to the prob-
lem, Dane said.
“People, when they get off
their emotional roller coaster,
tend to be very reasonable,” she
said.
The prospect of media-
tion and litigation can be pre-
empted altogether if neighbors
address a touchy issue without
allowing tempers to flare.
“It’s the tone with which
you approach them,” said Coo-
per. “As soon as you put some-
one on the defensive, they start
to have an emotional reaction.”
If a landowner is planning
to take some action to which
neighbors might object or
worry about, it’s best to talk to
them beforehand, said Linkous.
“It’s telling that neighbor
you’re thinking about them,”
he said.
Conversely, if a land-
owner is alarmed by a neigh-
bor’s activity, it’s better to ask
questions politely about the
action rather than immediately
demanding it be stopped or
changed, said Dane.
“People will definitely get
defensive when you tell them
what to do,” she said.
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Top GOP leader: Senate to
probe reports of Russia hacking
NEW YORK — The top Senate Republican said Mon-
day that Congress will investigate a CIA assessment that Rus-
sia interfered in the November election on behalf of Donald
Trump, an intelligence conclusion that the incoming com-
mander in chief has called “ridiculous.”
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that an
inquiry would be conducted by the Senate intelligence panel.
Two key Senate Republicans — John McCain of Arizona and
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Trump critic —
have joined with two Democrats in seeking a bipartisan investi-
gation into the Kremlin’s activities during the election.
“Obviously any foreign breach of our cybersecurity mea-
sures is disturbing, and I strongly condemn any such efforts,”
McConnell said.
Unlike Trump, who has expressed admiration for Russian
leader Vladimir Putin, McConnell said flatly, “The Russians are
not our friends.”
Asked about McConnell’s support for a congressional
probe, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the focus on Rus-
sian interference in the election is “an attempt to delegitimize
President-elect Trump’s win.”
The CIA recently concluded with “high confidence” that
Russia sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump,
raising red flags among lawmakers concerned about the sanc-
tity of the U.S. voting system and potentially straining relations
at the start of Trump’s administration.
Trump said Sunday the recent CIA assertion that Russian
hacking had sought to help his candidacy was “ridiculous,” and
he praised ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has emerged
as the leading contender to lead the State Department.
Terminally ill 5-year-old
boy dies in Santa’s arms
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee Santa Claus says a
terminally ill 5-year-old boy died in his arms after he gave the
boy a present in the hospital.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports Eric Schmitt-Matzen,
who does about 80 events a year as Santa, was asked a few
weeks ago to visit the dying boy.
Schmitt-Matzen says after giving the boy a toy, the boy
asked how he would be able to tell when he got to where he was
going after he died. Schmitt-Matzen told him to tell them he
was “Santa’s No. 1 elf” and they would let him in.
He says the boy gave him a big hug, asked “Santa, can you
help me?” and died in his arms.
CLOSED FO
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Evening listings
MONDAY
D ECEMBER 12
PM
6:30
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KATU News at 6
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(:35) Jimmy Kimmel
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Evening
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(:35) Tonight Show
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(:35) S. Colbert
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(5:15) NFL Football Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots (L)
(:20) SportsCenter The day's news in the world of sports.
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