King County’s design for the Southern portion of improving the East Lake Sammamish Trail is 90% complete and despite indicating to Sammamish city officials that it would be more flexible, nothing in the design appears to be responsive to the City of residents.
In other words: Drop dead.
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.”
[New Statesman interview, 7 January 1939]”
― Winston S. Churchill
This is around 18 pages when printed.
Summary
The City of Sammamish has tried to keep an arm’s length to final 
A review of two years’ of emails, videos of Council meetings, conversations with city council members and homeowners along the Trail paints a picture of:
King County will destroy 36% of the trees and put at risk 26% more–a total of 120 out of 194 trees–in just 1.3 miles of the East Lake Sammamish Trail between SE 43rd Way (the round-about) and 33rd (roughly the 7-11) as it plans to widen the trail to 18 ft (equal to 1.5 lanes of two lane highway).
The Sammamish Review reported the pending destruction November 5.
And this doesn’t include the long section from 33rd to Inglewood Hill Road.
In a post on October 16, I raised the alarm.
The County’s destruction of trees on the Northern section of ELST, north of Inglewood to the Redmond city limits, is a blight on the landscape.
The County claims that it must adhere to federal and local standards for the trail’s paving and “improvements,” and the trees must go as a result and to protect wetlands that are in reality drainage ditches.
I filed a four page Public Comment with the County and City in advance of the Oct. 29 comment deadline. This document is here: ELST Comments 10202014_2
The County claims it cannot deviate from the trail standards. Poppycock. On the section through Issaquah, there are a couple of deviations from standards, narrowing the trail and changing the alignment slightly for environmental reasons.
Photos below the page break.
While many letters to The Sammamish Review and comments to the Sammamish City Council have recently focused on the Lake Sammamish Trail from Inglewood Hill north to the Redmond city limits, residents south of Inglewood Hill to the Issaquah city limits are next on the trail “improvement” list.
Residents have until Oct. 29 to comment to the City and the County on plans to extend the 18 ft wide extreme makeover this distance. Trees will be destroyed in the name of building this “improvement” to city, county and federal standards. (Eighteen feet is the width of a land-and-a half of East Lake Sammamish Parkway.)
The City and the County have it within discretion to make small adjustments to standards. In most cases, aligning the trail slightly toward ELSP will save trees adjacent the west side of the trail. I spoke with a county official who said this would encroach on the wetlands. In walking the trail end-to-end, most “wetlands” are nothing more than drainage ditches, and in any event in most cases these ditches may be moved slightly toward ELSP.
Finally, the trade off between wetland and trees ignores the environmental benefits of trees: capturing stormwater runoff, stabilizing slopes and protecting the lake. They also help cool temperatures. My car’s thermometer shows as much as a 5 degree difference on hot days from the Safeway complex to my neighborhood, which is surrounded by cedar trees.
Residents need to flood the City and County with comments. Unfortunately, too many members of our city council appear uninterested in public opinion (as letter writers and the Oct. 8 editorial suggest). It took Councilmember Ramiro Valderrama months to get the city to put the north end on the agenda and to do something about the rape-and-scrape destruction of a thousand trees (by one count) on the north end of the trail. The County ran rough-shod over objections and pleas to be selective and careful.
The emergency tree ordinance just passed by the Council this week isn’t sufficient to prevent a similar slaughter on the south end of the project, Valderrama told me last night.
Public comments to the application by October 29 and public comment to the City Council is necessary. But in the end, appeals of the city permit and the shoreline management permit may be the only alternatives.
The Sammamish City Council is failing the public trust.
All you have to do is watch the video of the June 17 City Council meeting to understand this bold statement.
When we became a city in 1999 (after the 1998 vote to incorporate), there were high hopes about getting out from under an unresponsive and arrogant King County government, the Council and departments, who viewed Sammamish as a dumping ground for development but without supporting infrastructure. We could communicate with “downtown” till the cows came home and our concerns would fall on deaf ears.
In the early days of our city, our council and staff indeed proved more responsive to citizen concerns. Today, our City is certainly more responsive to infrastructure requirements–but responsiveness to citizens has been slowly returning to “downtown” mentality.
Long-time readers of this column know the evolution of support I’ve expressed for the City Council and policies to a great deal of concern as arrogance and tone-deafness has set in. I need not recount all these issues, but instead will focus on what came up at the June 17 meeting.
Sammamish Comment 