An angry Island County Commissioner Jill Johnson yesterday urged her Board colleagues to act against a large Oak Harbor marijuana-growing and -processing facility that has been operating for up to two years without county permission.

“I would like the Board to support directing our planning director to issue a stop-work order, because they are operating illegally,” Johnson said.

“This isn’t like someone put up an illegal deck or fence. I want to do my part to ensure people going into the marijuana industry understand we’re not taking shortcuts.”

The Board put off action until this morning, giving the other commissioners a chance to better acquaint themselves with the issue.

A Woodinville couple, Christina and Scott Hensrude, own seven of the 11 buildings between 3143 and 3171 Goldie Road in Oak Harbor. For up to two years, they let tenants in five of those buildings grow and process recreational marijuana, witnesses say.

The couple filed in 2014 for county permission to convert the seven buildings from commercial rentals to marijuana use, but they only received the requisite site plan review hearing Friday.

It’s clear the couple violated county land-use law by operating without first having received a hearing examiner’s approval following such a hearing, several county officials said.

During Friday’s proceedings, Hearing Examiner Michael Bobbink said the couple’s jumping the gun wasn’t an issue he was willing to consider.

He called it “extraneous.”

Hiller West, the county’s director of current-use planning and community development, at Friday’s hearing proposed no serious objections to the application. He said the county had never received a complaint about unlawful use, maintaining that position despite sworn testimony by one neighbor that he had complained over and over to the county.

West said a reporter telling him of the violation and offering to show photographs did not constitute a complaint. Nor did numerous News-Times stories starting in 2014 detailing how tenants were ejected to make room for marijuana processing, he said.

Bobbink could issue his decision within a week, West said yesterday.

Even if he does, Johnson said she wants to take action against the operation, and she wants it quickly.

She mentioned notifying the state and trying to get the Hensrudes’ and their tenants’ state-issued growing and processing licenses pulled.

Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the state Liquor and Cannabis Board, said that’s unlikely.