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.
Deputy Mayor Christie Malchow
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.
Editor’s note: There has been a spirited discussion on Facebook under Save Sammamish (a closed group) about the current level of development and the topic of a building moratorium. Here is what I posted this morning.
When the Comp Plan was written in 2001-2003 (of which I was a part), we did everything possible to meet the minimum requirements of the Growth Management Act (GMA) in order to have the minimum growth for our city. However, development of the Town Center was set aside from this process for a separate process.
Except for some very selected areas for GMA compliance purposes, no up-zoning was approved by the City Council.
As has been discussed, growth and job targets are set in negotiation with the county and other cities. Sammamish considers itself an island, so we always argued for minimum growth targets.
Then we did the Town Center plan. There were proposals for up to 1.7 million SF of commercial/retail/office (larger than Redmond Town Center) and (if I recall correctly) at least 3,500 residential units.
These were non-starter proposals. The committees and Planning Commission (of which I was also a part) settled on recommending to Council 500,000 sf of commercial and 2,000 units. The Council upped this to 600,000 and 2,500. The Environmental Impact Statement studied up to 700,000 sf and 3,000 units before another EIS would be required with dramatically higher road improvements also required.
Wally Pereyra, the leading environmentalist in Sammamish, favors a building moratorium. Photo via Google images.
The leading environmentalist in Sammamish supports a building moratorium.
Wally Pereyra, who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring Ebright Creek on behalf on threatened Kokanee Salmon and similar amounts on other restoration and land use appeals, will miss tonight’s City Council meeting at which the subject will come up.
Pereyra issued a written statement, copying Sammamish Comment:
Sammamish Comment 