Tag Archives: City Staff

City’s new concurrency plan doesn’t measure congestion, overall travel time

Posted on by
8

By Miki Mullor

Deputy Editor

A new traffic concurrency plan for Sammamish appears unlikely to meet the Sammamish City Council target date to lift the building moratorium in July, despite six months of staff and consultant work and expenditures of about $375,000. (Read more.)

Concurrency is a state law requirement to “​prohibit​ ​development​ ​approval​ ​if​ ​the development​ ​causes​ ​the​ ​level​ ​of​ ​service​ ​on​ ​a​ ​locally​ ​owned​ ​transportation​ ​facility​ ​to​ ​decline​ ​below the​ ​standards​ ​adopted”, unless “​transportation​ ​improvements​ ​or​ ​strategies​ ​to​ ​accommodate​ ​the​ ​impacts​ ​of​ ​development​ ​are made​ ​concurrent​ ​with​ ​the​ ​development “. The law allows development to proceed if “a financial commitment is in place to complete​ ​the​ ​improvements​ ​or​ ​strategies​ ​within​ ​six​ ​years​.”  (see RCW 36.70A.070, and a clean indented version)

Accordingly, cities are required to set a level of service standard for their roads, measure traffic and forecast future impact of development on traffic.  

In response to residents’ frustration over traffic congestion in Sammamish, City Council has enacted a moratorium and directed staff to revise the city’s concurrency system to focus on drivers’ experience.  Continue reading →

Sammamish’s Town Center-concurrency dilemma

Posted on by
7

By Scott Hamilton

Editor

The Sammamish City Council faces a complex set of issues interconnecting the Town Center and efforts to revise its traffic concurrency policies.

At stake is whether the Town Center proceeds per the 2009 plan adopted by the Planning Commission and City Council or, as some desire, the plan is reopened with the goal of down-sizing it.

Reopening the plan also allows the possibility of some advocating an up—zoning of the TC.

The city is under a building moratorium adopted last October. The council and staff want to lift the moratorium in July, but controversy over how to proceed with revisions for concurrency casts doubt over whether revisions may be ready by then.

Continue reading →

Sammamish extends building moratorium

Posted on by
2

The Sammamish City Council extended the building moratorium to allow staff and the council to complete a revised traffic concurrency plan by July. The Town Center was not exempted.

The vote was 7-0.

Council member Jason Ritchie said STCA, a developer of the Town Center, “will be fine either way.”

But he expressed concern about the individual homeowners being prevented from building.

Continue reading →

Council quietly killed STCA plans out of public view last year

Posted on by
6

Sammamish City Council members quietly and out of the public view closed down efforts by developer STCA to dramatically upzone the Town Center.

The effort by STCA and the Council’s action never emerged into the public domain, it was revealed at the Save Sammamish meeting last night.

The revelation came after Sammamish Comment revealed the plans in a post Monday morning. The issue quickly became a hot topic on Facebook in various activist pages.

Council member Ramiro Valderrama, in a posting on The Comment, responded that, “I know of no current discussions for upcoming the Town Center.” But he did not reveal the Council had shut the effort down last fall, at a time when the City was preparing to accept “Docket Requests” to the Comprehensive Plan.

One Valderrama critic noted the parsing of words: there are no “current” discussions.

Continue reading →

As drivers sit in traffic, Sammamish ponders up-zoning of Town Center

Posted on by
10

Even as Sammamish residents scream over traffic congestion, exacerbated over what proved to be fraudulent implementation of a traffic concurrency model intended to be sure the roads can handle growth, efforts are underway to sharply up-size the Town Center.

The Town Center was approved to have 600,000sf of commercial/retail/office space and 2,000 residential units. Transfer Development Rights (TDRs) already boosted the residential units a few hundred above the 2,000.

The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) studied impacts up to 700,000sf and 3,000 units. Anything above this would require a Supplement EIS, Kamuron Gurol, the Community Development Director, said at the time.

The development company, STCA, is working with staff to propose hiking the Town Center by as much as 250,000sf and up to 1,500 more residential units.

STCA is currently developing the Town Center west of 228th Ave.

Continue reading →