A group of shoreline property owners announced they had filed a challenge to the city of Bainbridge Island’s new Shoreline Management Master Program this week.

Richard “Dick” Haugan, a founder of Preserve Responsible Shoreline Management and coordinator of the appeal, said the petition claims that the city’s new plan violates the state’s Shoreline Management Act and the updated SMP will hurt property owners with homes on the island’s coast.

The petition is the second legal challenge filed against the city’s SMP this week with the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board, a group set up by the Legislature to handle disputes that arise from the Growth Management Act and the Shoreline Management Act.

Haugan, who unsuccessfully ran for the city council last year and vowed to overturn the SMP if elected, said the 21-page petition sets out 48 issues that claim the new plan violates state law, and conflicts with Bainbridge’s development regulations as well as the city’s and the park district’s comprehensive plans.

Haugan said the city spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a plan that targets one group of environmentally responsible homeowners, while ignoring pollution from road and highway runoff and city sewage leaks that are bigger polluters of Puget Sound.

The petition notes the SMP’s “hostility to single family residential use” and “micromanagement of homeowners’ yards and maintenance of homes,” and also alleges that the city did not properly provide notice of public meetings and disregarded comments that were made about the new plan.

“Public comment at hearings were restricted and the [Shoreline Management Act’s] requirement for response to public comment was largely ignored by both the city and the [Department of Ecology],” wrote Richard M. Stephens, the attorney representing the Bainbridge property owners.

“No serious response was given to the most important comments, either verbal or written, by the public,” Stephens added. “In essence, the public participation requirements for the update of an SMP were treated as a mere formality rather than a substantive involvement of the public.”

Some of the issues raised in the petition echo complaints made during previous hearings on the SMP.

The petition challenges the city for labeling some existing homes along the shoreline as “nonconforming,” and also questions whether the city can prohibit docks, bulkheads and buoys in certain areas.

The city is also faulted in the petition for not using “the most current, accurate, and complete scientific and technical information available” as it updated the SMP.

Science was used to “support policy-driven choices,” the petition claims, and the petition also failed to make use of scientific information on the need and effectiveness of buffers for single family homes, and the contribution of pollution for city streets and sewer leaks.

The petition also said the city’s new SMP violated the Constitution, which the challengers admitted “are outside the scope of this board’s jurisdiction and will be addressed in another forum.”

The 22-page petition notes the constitutional issues include “violations of privacy, due process, taking of property without compensation and even freedom of speech.”

The petitioners seeking the hearings board review of the city’s updated SMP include seven Bainbridge residents and four organizations.

The petitioners are Haugan, Alice Tawresey, Robert Day, Linda Young, Don Flora, John Rosling, Gary Tripp, Bainbridge Defense Fund, Preserve Responsible Shoreline Management, Bainbridge Shoreline Homeowners and Point Monroe Lagoon Home Owners Association.

City officials could not immediately comment on the petitions Wednesday.

The challenge by the Bainbridge property owners was the second this week for Bainbridge’s new SMP, which was adopted on a 4-3 vote by the city council in July.

Earlier this week, three environmental groups concerned about the plan’s regulations on aquaculture — Bainbridge Alliance for Puget Sound, Association of Bainbridge Communities and Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat — announced they would file a petition for review of the updated SMP.