State Rep. Larry Springer (D-45th) has introduced a bill in the Legislature that would restrict government’s ability to condemn property and resell it for commercial purposes. Springer represents the northern end of Sammamish.
The Sammamish Review has this story.
I proposed such a restriction in testimony during public comment before the City Council as a protection for homeowners in the Town Center. The City Council rejected the recommendation.
The decision by the Sammamish City Council to approve an agreement with King County for transfer of development rights (TDR) from two small areas adjacent the city to the Town Center is a correct one.
An article reporting the agreement, with a map, may be found here.
The vote was 6-1 with Nancy Whitten against. Whitten has been fighting any additional residential units to the Town Center because of traffic implications. While Whitten properly raises questions, she unfortunately has diminished her credibility because virtually every objection revolves around her inability to exit her driveway on 229th Ave. across from Discovery School during rush hour.
Whitten asserts that there is no plan to mitigate traffic, and in this she is correct–but this is only part of the story. Here’s why:
Thus, these are the two safeguards. These assume, of course, that the City periodically does new traffic counts to have the latest data available for the analysis and testing; that recognized and scientifically valid methods are used; and that the traffic analysis modeling is reasonably accurate.
These are all important elements to accurate traffic testing and analysis.
Whitten is right to be concerned about trip generation from the Town Center but rather than picking on TDRs that already fall within the EIS analysis, she should be more concerned about the effort last year by Mayor Don Gerend to do away with the nationally-accepted Trip Generation Manual used by cities and counties and states nationwide.
City Manager Ben Yacizi made a hard, but correct decision when he halted the City’s recent review of the shoreline ordinary high water mark regulations.
An outgrowth of the flawed Shoreline Master Plan update, this separate city-citizen review came to a halt when it was revealed by a Lake Sammamish homeowner not involved in the process that the lead city employee, Eric La France, was friends with a key official of the City’s outside consultant, and had socialized with him shortly before the contract was award.
The Sammamish Review has this story and the Sammamish Reporter has this one, both detailing that the appearance of fairness demanded that the current effort be ended and restarted.
John Galvin, one of the landowners in the SE Quadrant, continued to lobby city council members on the Town Center after the public hearings closed September 7, in violation of the rules.
Written submissions closed at 5pm on Sept. 7; additional oral testimony was allowed that evening, but closed when deliberations by the council began. The second email below arrived after deliberations began.
Below are his emails.
The City Council on March 2 discussed a Planning Commission recommendation to change the 2008 adopted Town Center Plan to exclude 240 housing units from the “D” zone (which is the Sammamish Commons civic center and park) and instead disperse these among the A, B and C zones in the rest of the Town Center.
Some Council members want to retain the original Council decision of 2008 to allocate these 240 units on the Kellman property. This is the old mansion immediately west of the new Library. The Kellman mansion has been vacant since the City bought it, and it’s becoming rundown and is uninhabitable without major work.
Sammamish Comment 