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Sammamish residents took to email, social media and showed up in person at the Oct. 16 council meeting to tell council to keep the moratorium on the Town Center and not to exempt anyone from the new development regulations.
On a split 4/3 vote, the council voted to keep the moratorium. The vote on the development regulations has been postponed.
Continue reading “Public pressure on city council keeps the moratorium on the Town Center”
By Miki Mullor
Deputy Editor
A day after staff revealed the last data on the new concurrency rules, a split Sammamish city council took action to save development of hundreds, potentially thousands, of new homes, from what looks like an inevitable shut down of growth in Sammamish due to lack of road capacity.
Continue reading “City council ready to prop up development of hundreds of new homes”
Commentary
By Scott Hamilton
At yet another meeting, the Sammamish City Council was consumed by the traffic concurrency-driven building moratorium.
In a surprise move, Deputy Mayor Karen Moran moved to lift the moratorium for the Town Center and for short plats. (Short plats are small developments of only a few homes, those projects typically sought by the “moms and pops.)
The meeting ended without taking a vote.
This action would be unfair to other developers and provide preferential treatment to STCA, the developer of the Town Center.
By Scott Hamilton
Commentary
The Sammamish City Council hardly distinguished itself Tuesday night, descending into full-fledged dysfunction, paralysis and open warfare.
The issues: concurrency and the building moratorium.
It was often an embarrassing display and overall, the council as a collective body came off tarnishing itself.
Continue reading “Sammamish city council descends into dysfunction, paralysis”
The building moratorium in Sammamish won’t be lifted next week.
In a sometimes-heated meeting, the city council on a 4-3 vote adopted an amendment offered by Deputy Mayor Karen Moran to add some capacity-based measurements to the Level of Service concurrency model previously approved.
The absence of road capacity measurements means some key road segments without stop signs or stop lights aren’t measured.
These include East Lake Sammamish Parkway north of Inglewood Hill Road to the Redmond city limits; 244th north of NE 8th to the city limits; and long stretches of Sahalee Way.
All are heavily congested during rush hour and would likely fail concurrency tests.
Continue reading “Concurrency approval, lifting building moratorium now targeted for September”
The surprise move Tuesday by the Sammamish City Council to adopt an emergency building moratorium was about more than creating a pause to understand how traffic concurrency became an enabler of development rather than a control mechanism.
It was a rebuke to a staff and consultants that, years in the making, had ignored Council policy and the City’s own codes and Comprehensive Plan.
The Sammamish City Council, in a surprise move, unanimously adopted a building moratorium for six months to make time to sort out the traffic concurrency problems that emerged in June.
The item was not on the agenda. Deputy Mayor Christie Malchow introduced the ordinance declaring an emergency to adopt the moratorium. Member Tom Odell seconded.
She said it became clear in a study session Monday night and in previous meetings that staff process was “trumping” policy.
Underlying assumptions in Table T-8 in the Comprehensive Plan can’t be addressed until the next update in a year. T-8 details traffic counts and other data.
