Category Archives: Town Center

City staff opposes restoring a stringent Town Center stormwater regulation designed to protect creeks and homes

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By Miki Mullor
Editor

A months-long investigation by Sammamish Comment that includes email interviews with staff and public records requests reveal city staff opposition to restoring a stringent stormwater standard in the Town Center area.

  • Staff opposes the former standard because the soil in the Town Center makes it “infeasible” to implement. 
  • In public, staff said the standard or an equivalent to it, is in place.
  • In private meetings with council members, staff admitted it was eliminated and opposed restoring it.
  • STCA’s Phase I 400 homes permit’s stormwater section was approved although the developer said it is not implementing it because “it is not feasible”. 
  • The City does not know the impact of the currently enacted and relaxed standards on the creeks and downstream homes.
  • City Manager David Rudat on The Comment’s investigation: “a take down”.
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BREAKING NEWS: Council Member Jason Ritchie resigns over Town Center; calls city council obstructionist

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By Miki Mullor
Editor

In a bombshell announcement at the end of the Sammamish City Council meeting tonight, Council member Jason Ritchie resigned from his position effective immediately.

Earlier in the meeting, the Council extended the moratorium on development for six more months, with an exception for single family homes on existing lots.

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Sammamish Water District warns Constantine on a development moratorium in Sammamish

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By Miki Mullor
Editor

A moratorium on development is coming to Northern Sammamish, unless King County commits to fund short- and long-term improvement to the sewage infrastructure.

A moratorium on sewer connections will impact not only future development but also permitted development that has not yet been connected to sewer.

In December, we reported that the Sammamish Water and Sewer district is out of capacity to handle sewer for development on an irregular line roughly north of SE 8th St., including the Town Center development site. 

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BREAKING NEWS: City denies Town Center STCA Phase 1 application for 348 homes

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By Miki Mullor
Editor

The City of Sammamish Friday denied the permit application submitted by STCA LLC, the larget landowner in the Town Center.

The year-long review is a major blow to STCA and development of the central core of the city. The city staff rejected the application for 300 apartments and 48 townhomes over a multitude of issues. The Community Development Department said the application failed to comply with the development code, ignored environmental requirements and key design elements of the Town Center Plan.

The department had communicated with STCA repeatedly to correct deficiencies, extending the review period several times. STCA still failed to meet requirements, the city said in its decision.

A second STCA application, for 44 homes adjacently, also suffers similar deficiencies, however, STCA was granted 60 days to remedy it. 

This is the same project that was the subject of a controversial approval of a concurrency certificate in August 2019. 

The denial is subject to appeal to the Hearing Examiner. It also won’t prevent STCA from submitting a new redesign of the project in the future but it is not clear whether STCA can reuse its 2019 concurrency certificate. 

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Staff disputes Council Member Treen on stormwater standards but evades explanation; stalls action

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By Miki Mullor
Editor

For the second time, staff from the City’s Public Works department promotes official statements that contradict the public record.  

Back in August, the City was forced to issue a rare retraction after a traffic planner in the Public Works department said in an email that was widely published that “there was no manipulation of data to favor any type of development.”  The City claimed the email was taken out of context. 

Kent Treen

Now, another Public Works staffer has publicly disputed Council Member Kent Treen’s bombshell conclusion, in his guest op-ed, that in 2013 the City relaxed a critical stormwater standard in the Town Center to ease development costs and that in 2016 that standard was dismantled altogether.  

Treen’s effort to restore the old standard in a special legislation has been stalled by staff.

The public record shows that staff’s public dispute of Treen is inconsistent with City’s own past positions on the issue.  

For two weeks,The Sammamish Comment attempted to interview staff on the issue to address the inconsistency. Staff, who were very quick to dispute Treen in public, now are unable to find time to answer questions by email on the issue. 

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