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.
Lyman Howard. Source: Google images.
The Sammamish City Council returns Sept. 5 from its August recess with traffic and concurrency the No. 1 priority and the No. 1 item on the agenda.
City Manager Lyman Howard will present a proposal to establish a “roadmap” going forward to take a top-to-bottom look at how the City implements traffic concurrency policies and testing that are required before development can be approved.
Controversial study prompts review
The review is the outgrowth of a controversial study by a Sammamish citizen, Miki Mullor, who concluded the City Staff had manipulated data to approve development. After a de facto moratorium brought on by the 2008 Global Recession, an improving economy and capital liquidity enabled a major spurt of growth that saw wholesale tree removal and increased traffic congestion over a few years beginning about 2014.
Mullor’s study contained incendiary charges that prompted Howard to label it “inaccurate” and “deeply offensive” at the June 6 Council meeting, the day after Mullor emailed the study to the City. Howard suggested later at the same meeting that Staff would answer questions raised by the study and from the Council.
Update, July 25, 2017: The reporter for the Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter has been transferred to sister papers in the Bothell-Kenmore area.
A Special Report
This is seven pages when printed.
By Scott Hamilton
Analysis
Traffic and concurrency in Sammamish is a classic example of failure, and success, in 
government. It’s a glaring failure of the local newspaper.
It’s a success story of how a single citizen forced debate on an issue that even determined City Council members could not.
Here is the back-story of how traffic and concurrency became “the No. 1 priority in Sammamish.” A sequential history is necessary before we get to the punch line.
The Growth Management Act doesn’t exactly mandate development, as Sammamish officials often said, a special study session last night on traffic and transportation concurrency revealed last night.
Instead, the GMA gives cities and countries some options to respond to growth.
The deep-dive into how Sammamish developed and uses its currency system continues tonight in a special time, 4:30pm, at a City Council meeting that will be webcast and televised on Comcast 21.
The special meetings were prompted by a study by a Sammamish citizen, Miki Mullor, who concluded Sammamish manipulated concurrency to approve development.
He claimed the GMA allows cities to stop development if concurrency fails.
Not entirely so, the City Council was told last night.
And, yes, through policy decisions from a succession of City Councils, the Staff crafted concurrency that approves development—but the rationale is far more complex than the black-and-white reasons claimed by Mullor.
Mike Mullor
Update, June 6: The City Council meets tonight and this topic will come up. The meeting begins at 6:30pm at City Hall; Public Comment is scheduled about 7:25pm. Mullor’s study may be accessed here.
Original post, June 5:
Sammamish manipulated its traffic concurrency code to allow new development despite daily vehicle counts exceeding the thresholds for pass-fail standards, a study shows.
The City uses traffic count data it has to apply for concurrency testing. Most of the data is from 2012. Some 2014 data is used. No 2016 data is used, according to the study. Using 2014 data on key roads where 2012 data is used would have failed some concurrency testing and denied the applications for development, the study shows.
Click on all images to enlarge. Source: Miki Mullor Concurrency Study.
Miki Mullor, a Sammamish resident, used Public Records Request (PRR) to obtain 2014 traffic count data that the City has but does not generally use in its concurrency testing.
Sammamish Comment 