A tour of Brenda and Gary Oian Vust’s Eagle Lake house shows how the developing marsh just beyond their backyard was a focus for their building plans.

Views from the living room upstairs, family room downstairs and deck and patio outside all angle to the south to face the scenic wetland, which is also full of the sights and sounds that come with the songbirds, reptiles and plants that live there.

Those views could all be blocked if the Oian Vusts’ next-door neighbors, Jeff and Amy Smith, move forward with a plan to build a shed. It’s a plan, the Oian Vusts say, that wouldn’t be possible if Jeff Smith hadn’t used his position on the city’s Planning Commission to change Eagle Lake’s setback rules for wetlands.

City officials say Smith is only one member of a seven-member advisory board, so he didn’t have the influence the Oian Vusts claim he did in the setback change. The ultimate decision to require a 10-foot buffer instead of a 20-foot buffer between sheds and wetlands was made by the City Council, said City Administrator Brad Potter.

It was Smith who brought up the idea first, prompting the Oian Vusts to question his ethics during a City Council meeting. When City Attorney Christopher Kennedy was asked to review the matter, he said there was no proof that what Smith did was unethical. However, Kennedy said Smith could have done things differently.

“While his activity appears suspicious and certainly he could have taken steps to limit these suspicions, there is no evidence that he was only acting for his own gain,” Kennedy said in an Aug. 3 letter to City Council members.

It’s a neighborhood dispute that’s magnified the challenges Eagle Lake faces as the city grows around a complex system of wetlands.

Smith did not return telephone calls from The Free Press.

In 2005, the city didn’t have any setback rules for wetlands, Potter said.

That’s the year concerns were raised about how close two Connie Lane houses were being built to a wetland, which got the process of setting a setback started. The 20-foot setback was adopted on July 11, 2005.

After Smith’s proposal was made at a Planning Commission meeting to change the setback to 5 feet, a 10-foot setback was recommended by commission members. That ordinance change was adopted by the City Council on Sept. 11, 2006.

Smith was the only person to request a permit to build a shed within the new setback range after the ordinance was changed. He withdrew the request after questions were raised and hasn’t resubmitted it.

It can’t be proven that Smith had plans to build a shed when he made the suggestion for the setback change, which was approved by the council after an independent review, Kennedy said in the letter.

“I do believe that the commissioner has placed himself in an awkward situation,” Kennedy wrote. “He has opened himself up to criticism and charges that he acted in his own self interest.

“Whether he did or not is a matter of conjecture and the city has no real action that it can take other than to remind commissioners that if they know that they will be impacted in a specific manner by an action that they should recuse themselves from the discussion of the same.”