Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome
you to the public hearing for the Windward-Bergs McCluster
Housing Development Agreement File Number DA1600001. It's great to see you all
here. We have agendas, a few copies of agendas on the table up here. We
know that there are people that are going to be wanting to speak, so if
you do want to speak, we'd like you to come up and sign in, and
then we'll just call you in the order that you sign in. We're going to
be timing people because of the number of people that may want to speak, and
we're going to be giving you five minutes, and we have some new technology that
we'll be using that has some lights on the front of the DS there where
you might be standing when you talk and it'll start you'll have a green light
for the first four minutes a yellow light for the last minute and then a
red light means you have to stop and we would really encourage you to not
invade the other people's time that would choose to speak. We've divided the hearing into
a couple of different staff presentations, the first one being the overview and the TALIS
connection, which seems to be the high interest, and then there will be a staff
presentation after some Public hearings or public discussion and Commission discussion and and then a
staff presentation on the remaining components of the development agreement and then at the end
of the meeting we'll be making a recommendation or be making a motion I'm assuming
to make a recommendation to the City Council so with that we have one one
piece of business that we have to take care of and that's the approval of
minutes from April 5th meeting Commissioners have you had a chance to read those? Does
anybody-- would somebody-- CHRIS RODGERS: Mr. Chair, move we approve the minutes of the April
5th meeting. CHRIS RODGERS: I second. CHRIS JERRAM: Great. All those in agreement, say aye.
CHRIS RODGERS: Aye. CHRIS JERRAM: Opposed? And so the minutes pass unanimously. And Chris will
turn the time over to you. CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT: All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My
name is Christopher Wright, and I'm with the city's Development Services Department. And I will
be presenting the project this evening. Welcome, everyone. It's a good crowd. There's a few
chairs right there. You can move them back if somebody really needs to sit down.
I'm sorry we don't have enough chairs right now. But I will start by introducing
the project. And it is, as the chairman said, it's for the Windward-Bergsma Development
Agreement and the file number is DA16-00001. And this is the open record public hearing
with the Development Commission. And as you said, at the end of this, the Development
Commission will be making a recommendation to the City Council who will be making the
final decision on the Development Agreement. this is a vicinity
map that shows where the project is located and it is as you can
see it has the newport way northwest is to the east as is the
central issaquah to the north and to the west is king county open space
And to the south is there's a city-owned property that has a water tank and
Harvey Manning Park. And then there's single-family residential kind of to the southeast. And then
the Talas neighborhood is to the south.
So the reason that this development agreement is coming to the Development Commission and then
ultimately the City Council is because they're proposing what we call a cluster development. And
for any cluster development that is larger than five acres in size, it requires a
development agreement. And that's the piece of it that we are reviewing this evening. And
the purpose, this is from the land use code, the purpose for cluster housing
is to one, achieve the maximum allowable density that's allowed in that
particular zone on the developable land while preserving critical areas and other
pervious surfaces. Another purpose is to provide more common usable and native
forested open space. Another purpose is to encourage affordable housing. And
then finally, to provide a more efficient arrangement of structures and infrastructure. So
basically what all that says is for a cluster development, the point is
to have the lots and the houses, the lots smaller, usually the setbacks
smaller, so they're clustered closer together so that there's more open space that's
ultimately preserved. So that's the reason for doing a cluster
development. This particular proposal is for a maximum equivalent of
78 single-family homes on a little over 45 and a
half acres. As proposed, this plot would have 74 detached
single-family homes and then four cottage duplex units. duplexes
with two units in each building and those will be the affordable housing piece that
that I'll talk about later and in addition to the new roads and frontage improvements
and the lots themselves this particular proposal also includes some neighborhood parks a significant amount
of open space trail connections and a stormwater vault The site includes
25 and a half acres of environmentally critical areas. This includes steep slopes, wetlands,
streams, and their buffers is included in that area. And that means that the
remaining 20 acres are what we call developable area. And the site will be
accessed from New Public Street off of Newport Way. And the secondary access is
proposed off of Bear Ridge Court Northwest, providing a connection to TALIS.
That last bullet there is why I suspect most of you are here.
The zoning of this site is it's actually split zone. So there's two
different zoning designations within the project area. And the western side is zoned
SFE, which stands for single family estates. And that is zoning that allows
single family residences at 1.24 dwelling units per acre. And then the
eastern side is on single family suburban, which is 4.5 dwelling units per
acre. Here is the conceptual site plan for the
plat and as you can see it has the road from Newport Way again
Newport Way is there on the right hand side on the east side and
then you see the red boxes there are essentially the house footprints. Again this
is in the early stages and conceptual but that's roughly how the houses will
be laid out. The lighter gray color is mostly critical areas and
buffers. And then the darker gray is, I mentioned the additional open
space, but those are areas that are developable. In other words, they're
outside of the critical areas and buffers. And if this plat wasn't
going through a cluster development agreement, then those are areas that could
be developed under a more traditional plat. And then at the bottom
is where the connection is made to TALIS at the bottom of
the screen. Now there are a few pieces to this puzzle that
is the Bergsma-Winward development. And each of these pieces can be reviewed
and decided independently, but in the end, they are all going to
need to fit together. And those few pieces are, first there was
the SEPA mitigated determination of non-significance that was issued in February. And
then there was the critical areas variances were approved by the hearing
examiner also in February. Now I will say about that that we the staff have
asked for clarification and possible reissuance of the decision from the hearing examiner and so
we expect that sometime in the next week or two. I'm not sure how long
that will take but it's important to note that again the Development Commission can go
ahead and make your recommendation to the council on this on the development agreement piece
because like I said they're kind of separate pieces. It's a little confusing. There's a
few different processes, few different ways we could have done this. For example, we could
have done the development agreement first and then the variance and then the plat. We've
done the variance and the plat at the same time. We've done all three at
the same time. So there's a few different ways we could have done it. And
so about the best way I can explain it is there are individual pieces, but
like I said, in the end, they're all going to need to fit.
So again, the MDNS was issued, the critical areas variance was decided, and what we're
looking at tonight is the development agreement for the clustered subdivision. And then as I
mentioned earlier, the next step after you make your recommendation to the city council and
if the city council approves the development agreement, then the next step will be going
to the city's hearing examiner again, but this time so he can review the preliminary
plat. So there's again, there's some other steps involved, but
after the development agreement will be the preliminary and final plat review.
And that will involve public hearings as well. So this hearing this
evening, we decided to break it up into two parts. The first
part was to talk specifically about that connection to TALIS because we
knew that was the piece that people were most interested and concerned
about. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the staff recommendation, and then
we'll give you an opportunity to ask questions to the staff about just this piece.
And then we'll open it up for the public comment. Again, the public comment in
this first part will just be about the connection to TALIS. And then, like I
said, if you have any additional questions at that point, you can ask. And then
we would ask that the commission make a recommendation or a motion just about the
connection. before we move on to the second part. Again, I think that's because that's
what most of the people here are interested in. And so then after we're done
discussing the connection piece, then we'll go on to the rest of the the rest
of the development agreement. And I will continue my presentation about the other pieces of
the development agreement after that. So that's kind of how this is this is going
to be laid out. So in my staff report I did reference a few of
the comp plan policies that support the connection, the road connection to TALIS. One
of them says to maintain and enhance a connected grid street system to provide
alternative routes, reduce congestion, and contribute to the vitality of neighborhoods. Another policy is
to maintain the continuity of the street pattern by avoiding dead ends and half
streets. And then finally to provide additional opportunities for not just
vehicles but also pedestrians for paths and trails connecting neighborhoods. And this is
an aerial photo that shows where that connection is going to be made,
where Bear Bridge Court Northwest currently exists. And we see where the road
kind of goes off to the left up there. That then leads into
the parking lot for Harvey Manning Park. But the connection for Do
we have a... - You need to use the mouse. - Use
the mouse, can you see it? Oh, there you go, okay. So
the new road connection would basically be coming in and connecting right
here. So there's also been some questions and some talk about how
this road connection was discussed, was it discussed, early on with
the talus when talus was being formed and so i did pull out
this paragraph from the original talus development agreement and it says that concurrent
with the preliminary plat applications the city shall evaluate whether a street connection
shall occur adjacent to adjacent non-east village property non-talus property The decision
to connect shall be based on the consideration of topography, anticipated compatibility of the
use of the adjoining parcel, other alternatives for access, public safety, and whether the
connection would result in adverse impacts to either of the properties. And then also
about that time, so that was that was part of the development agreement that
was approved in 1999. And then subsequently when the actual plat was approved, the plats
that were approved that northern part of Talus, this was part of the city council
notice of action that approved those preliminary plats in particular i would point out the
bottom paragraph here that says tract r which is the tract where the road connection
is being made tract r may be used for street right-of-way purposes only at such
time as it is included as part of the roadway link completely connecting east village
and newport way And then another condition that was added stated that the
prior to issuance of the building permits for the neighborhood, the applicant will place a
sign located immediately behind the right-of-way in tract R, identifying that the possible future street
connection could occur. So this again is just a snapshot of what that plat looked
like at the time. Again, here is the connection place that we're talking about.
And then ultimately here is the sign that was installed, I believe in 2001 as
a result of that condition.
So I do have a couple of letters that I wanted to read and then
there are a few members of the staff that will also be commenting on the
connection piece. And first I wanted to read this letter from Brett Heath, who is
the Director of Public Works Operations and he's also our Emergency Management Director for the
City. Dear Commissioners, as the Emergency Management Director for the City of Issaquah, I
would like to address the Development Commission regarding the proposed Bergsma development street connection to
the Tallis neighborhood. In the fall of 2015, the Tallis neighborhood experienced a slide on
which on what is known as parcel 9 property, which impacted and threatened to close
the Tallis Drive and Shangri-La intersection. Had this intersection been closed, the entire Talus area
north of the intersection would have been forced to use the James Bush Road as
its primary access route. While James Bush Road may serve as an alternate route for
emergency vehicles, it was not designed nor intended to be used as primary emergency point
of ingress and egress for all of the homes north of the intersection and is
woefully inadequate for such use. One must look no further than an aerial map of
the TALIS neighborhood and place an X through the TALIS Drive Shangri-La intersection to get
an appreciation for the complete dependency of the North TALIS neighborhood on this single juncture.
While the slide was an unfortunate event, it did highlight the need to address this
fundamental dependency issue and underscored the importance of providing a second improved TALIS access point.
In addition to events such as mentioned above, the single access point of Talus Drive
can be a point of constraint during snow events and when streets become impassable from
stalled cars, inhibiting access by snow removal equipment and potentially impacting police and fire access.
The Bergsma development proposal provides an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity, to resolve this access
issue by providing a connection from the north end of Talus through the Bergsma
development to Newport Way. And it is for this reason that I strongly encourage
the development commission to favorably consider the Bergsma-Talus connection. The second letter I would
like to read, and both of these are being entered into the packet as
the letter from Brett Heath will be entered as attachment 12. And then this
letter is from the Issaquah School District that I will enter as attachment 13.
says, "Dear Mr. Wright, I'm writing to support a full service connection to TALIS through
Berksmouth Development off Newport Way. When TALIS was originally developed, there was one major ingress
and egress off of SR 900. The entrance exit is a steep grade and the
neighborhood streets are increasingly difficult to maneuver a 40-foot school bus through safely. Over the
years, our school buses have experienced temporary and complete blockage entering and exiting TALIS. A
full service connection would make a positive impact on providing transportation services to the neighborhoods
in TALIS. We would be able to relieve lengthy delays waiting in traffic on SR
900. It would provide another access in the event of incremental weather and other emergencies.
It would provide an opportunity to route buses more efficiently by allowing us to travel
in a direction that may lessen mileage and could eliminate maneuvering some narrow streets and
help avoid a challenging right turn. The biggest safety benefit may be the option during
snow or ice events to pick up and drop off on Newport Way and SR
900. The district serves, that serves TALIS with five large buses, student capacity 52 to
78 and nine small buses, student capacity of one to 12. And it is our
desire to have full service road connection to safely and efficiently ingress and egress the
TALIS community. So as I mentioned that was from the Issaquah School
District from Jake Cooper who's the Chief of Finance and Operations. As I mentioned
this the city administration does recommend approval of the road connection through TALIS as
part of the approval of the development agreement but as I mentioned there are
a few other staff members that would like to speak to this recommendation. First
we have Kurt Seaman from the Public Works Engineering Department.
And I'd just like to say there are four seats,
four chairs up here that you can slide back if
you don't feel comfortable sitting in. At least four people
could be sitting down. So they're not magic seats or
anything. I've also been told I speak softly, so I'll
try to speak up. I don't know. Is that louder?
Is that any better? Up more? Getting higher.
I'll just I'll try to speak as loud as I can. So again, my
name is Kurt Seaman. I'm the transportation manager here at the city and I'm
just I'm not going to give you too much new information. Just highlight a
couple things that Christopher's already spoken to and the folks that wrote the letters
as well. Why the connections and from a transportation from the city's transportation standpoint,
just highlighting that this is in fact a planned connection. The city has policies
and practices that encourage and support neighborhood connections. And so we're always looking for
those opportunities to connect neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. It's the emergency access
that was spoken of earlier. That's for emergency vehicles. That also provides for resident
emergency exit and entrance into the area. So this is a way to obviously
to link the two neighborhoods, to connect the two neighborhoods. The street connection we're
talking a lot about. I know that's of concern to many of you. It
also, but But importantly as well is connecting the two neighborhoods in non-motorized ways
as well. So if as people move into this new neighborhood and it develops,
there's likely to be families and friends that need to connect to each other
between the neighborhoods. And so by providing this connection, that does that. And just
Just to reiterate the comp plan policies that Christopher mentioned, there is
the policies are very clear about the goals of the city to
strengthen and provide for a street network and to avoid dead-end streets.
And again, the idea of providing the non-motorized connections is important as
well. So that's just in a nutshell, that's what I have to
say. reiterate and stress. Okay thank you. Then we also have the police chief and
the fire chief here this evening to speak to this.
Thank you for allowing me to be here tonight and just to be a part
of this discussion. I recognize the importance of it to our community. But I am
here tonight to speak solely from an incident management or emergency management perspective on the
support of a connection between TALIS and the Bergsma Windward. Volume? Volume in. Would you
introduce yourself? I apologize. I'm Chief Scott Beerbaum of the Issaquah Police Department. So I
apologize for that. So I am here to talk about the incident management,
emergency management of aspect of this connection of potentially one word, Burisma to TALIS.
Plainly availability of multiple access points is important to first responders. That's that's first and
foremost for us. From the initial response to the ongoing investigation there are several reasons
for the need for multiple access points. When we respond to an incident one of
our first priorities is getting to the location safely and quickly determine the scale and
the scope of the incident. There are times when we are not able to
get to that incident because of blocked access, whether it's a collision in an intersection,
down trees, power lines, or a hazmat situation where it's not safe to approach from
downhill or downwind. Another aspect for us to consider is the duration of incidents. There's
often when we have investigations or incidents that last for hours, several hours, and where
we're blocking access for residents to and from their, to their homes. We want to
be able to provide that access in those long incidents such as finding we might
need to do an evacuation and to do that safely we need multiple access points.
And this is not just a discussion about TALUS but it's also for the new
development as well. So the people coming out of the Bergsma Windward development potentially as
well needing a way out or in during emergent situations. Ultimately we are concerned about
the safety of our community and having an additional access point
could increase that safety for our emergency response. So with that
thank you very much for me being a part of this
discussion tonight. I'm sorry it's not public comment. Okay this is
our Fire Chief for Eastside Fire and Rescue Jeff Clark.
Hi thank you as you said excuse me I'm not with the city I'm with
Eastside Fire and Rescue and uh and we do serve the city and and uh
City of Issaquah is one of our key partners And I'm here to speak tonight
about specifics to this access road and the fire code. Everything the police chief said
about emergency management and having emergency access more than one way into a neighborhood to
evacuate and to get in for our responders and everyone else is of paramount importance,
all right, having that access. Now that said, as I understand the conversation is going
to go tonight, I do want to make a few things clear about access. And
if you have an access road going in there and you start talking about emergency
access, the fire code starts to come into play for minimums. And I know James
Bush Road has come up. That road is not wide enough for many of our
trucks to get up and down safely the way it is set up right now.
The minimum is 20 feet wide that we need to have in order to have
access. And then when it comes to access, if you were to set up an
emergency access system between the two neighborhoods, then it's being able to control that access.
And bollards versus automatic gate openings, there's a big difference from a fire response perspective
for emergency access there. And an emergency fence that can open automatically with our emitter
system or with the clickers is much more important to us than a bollard system
when it comes to accessing that. But we're definitely-- we need more than one way
into a neighborhood in order to be safe. As the police chief said, I completely
agree with that. And we're proponents of the access. And then how that access is
played out, if you alter the plan at all, then there are fire code implications.
And I'll be here. I'll be happy to answer any of those as it goes
on. OK. OK. We wanted to give the commission a chance to ask the staff
any questions before we turn it over to the public comment. I guess first question,
is the traffic engineer here? Yes. Can we ask some
questions of him about the traffic study itself? If it's
related to the connection, yes. It's related to the addition
of the TALIS traffic. Okay. Yep. That's appropriate. Good evening.
I'm Brad Lincoln with Gibson Traffic Consultants. So I'm the
engineer of record on the traffic impact analysis and happy
to answer your questions. So in the study there's, in
the executive summary, It states that the intersection SR 900
Newport Way and site access will operate acceptable levels during AM and
PM peak hour with the reassignment of the TALIS development trips. The
only exception to this is the driveway in the opposite side of
the site access will operate at a deficient level of service with
the TALIS development trips. In going through it, it appeared to me
that left-hand turns on eastbound AM on Newport
Way fell from an E to an F.
Just to be clear, you're referencing the February
2017 report, correct? Or which report are you
referencing? So I make sure I have the
right one. Yes, February 17th. Exactly. So on
page 20 in the chart, SR 900 at
Newport Way, eastbound left turns in the AM
peak, With the development commissions, it's level of service E. With development
commissions with TALIS, it drops to level of service F. And the delay
goes from 78 seconds to 170 seconds. As I understand from reading your
report, level E is the minimum for a state road. And so when
I read that, it seems to me like that's failing. I just want
to make sure I'm in the right place. You're talking about table 5?
Table 5, correct. And you're referencing the eastbound left turn at
the intersection of SR 900 at Newport Way? Correct. So the
intersection level of service as jurisdictions utilize it to determine what
intersection is operating acceptably and not acceptably, it's not based on
one movement. It's based on all of the movements. So the
staff asked us to summarize the level of service in the typical terms,
how we would typically do it for any of the surrounding jurisdictions when
you look at intersection level of service. And that's in Table 3 for
the AM and Table 4 for the PM, so the page prior to
where we were just discussing, page 19.
Okay. So those two tables show the operations during the AM and
PM peak hours, and that shows the intersection overall. It's a combination
of the whole intersection. Right. Okay. So the staff asked us to
also summarize operations for each movement, which... Quite honestly,
typically we don't do, but it's all in the attachments. So summarizing it is--
it's like we're not trying to disclose anything. So when you look at one
movement, yes, you're correct. That one movement does experience a change in operations, but
that doesn't constitute the whole intersection operating at-- deficient level of service. Okay, thank
you. And then as I do understand that the baseline condition for 2017
would be for that eastbound turn would be a delay of 70.7 seconds
and it would go up to 78 with the development but if we
add in TALIS it goes up to 169.5, is that right? So that's
more than doubles the delay to about three minutes that intersection? Yes.
And then, and I hope I'm not getting too far into
the weeds, but I think this was important to you. I
live in the weeds, it's okay. So in looking at, let's
see on page, this would be, it's figure 11. Yes. So
this is the future with TALIS, and then to compare that,
and this is the, make sure I get these straight. So
this is the PM peak with TALIS.
the PM peak without TALIS was figure nine. Yes. And so I guess
one of the questions I had was why did the, so this would
be if I understand this right, the right hand turn from Newport Way
to the new development is 15 in the PM peak, is that right?
Yes. Okay. And then in the new one with Burgsma added, it's
still 15. So I was wondering why would that not change
with the increase in potential people taking a right turn from
there to go to Burgsma? It's based primarily on just where
trips are anticipated to go based on the model we received
from City of Issaquah and See if I can find that
information. So do I read that right? It would mean that there
would be no additional trips going into TALIS taking that right hand
turn from southbound Newport? That's what that-- yes. OK. So let me
look through a couple of-- get to where I can show you
what I'm talking about here.
So a couple of things went into that. One is where trips
are anticipated to travel to and from. And like I said, we
received that information from the traffic model for the City of Issaquah.
And that's shown in figure seven for the PM peak hour. I'm
sorry, what page is that on? That would be on page 12,
figure seven. Page 101 of 219 in our
document. Okay. So the baseline is 12 taking a right-hand turn
in? That's well no what I want to. There's nobody there
right? Yeah what I want to discuss is the where trips
would be anticipated to travel to and from. So 25% the
model showed 25% of the talus of the excuse me of
the Bergsman trips traveling along Newport Way northwest of the site.
So you have that factor plus the factor
of trying to anticipate one we had to try and estimate the
number of trips from the talus development that could utilize the connection
and then where are those trips likely to travel to and from
similar to the bergsman development and the those assumptions were primarily that
trips that would use this connection from talus trips are going to
be trips really traveling to the north along 900. And so the
majority of trips that would use the connection were assigned essentially as southbound
right turn, this is during the PM peak hour, southbound right turn on
Newport, sorry, at 900 onto Newport, and then left turns into the site.
Okay. So in other words, assuming people won't get off at
Further up at Lake Mont and take Newport Way from the west. That was
one of the assumptions. And I'd have to go back and double check. I
think initially we didn't have as many trips traveling along Newport Way to the
northwest. But then the model, utilizing the city model, added more trips that way.
So it's just a combination of assumptions. Okay. And quite honestly
the the volumes on a daily basis are going to fluctuate.
So it's 15 but may it be 20? Yes. May it
be 10? There is going to be some fluctuation there. So.
Okay. And then I guess to summarize the total, sorry, I
gotta get the right page on here. If I have this
right, so the so in 2017 when I add them up
the the For the AM outbound, without TALIS 49,
with TALIS 131, so we go from 49 to 131. I
think you're on your figure 10. Is that what you're looking
at? Well, actually, I added up a couple different figures. And
this matches up with what you have on page 13 for
your summary. Commissioner, could I ask you to identify in our
document which one you're looking at? So it would be page 102 of 219.
Okay, got it. Thank you. Do you have the summary there, the ampeak hour?
Oh, yes, yes. So 21 inbound and 82 outbound. And so that 82 outbound
is going from what I calculate without TAL is 49 up to 131, so
an increase of 167%. And then the... PM outbound
goes from 20 to 41, which is the 21 increase you show, 105%.
And then the PM goes 54 in without TALIS to 128 with TALIS.
So that goes up by 74, which you show above, which is 137%
increase. I add all these together, and I get an increase of, in
the morning, 149%, in the evening, 134%. Does that-- which would
match up with your total in year 21 and-- - I'd have to double check,
but yes, there's the number of trips that would be going through the Bergsma development
would be higher from Tallis than generated by Bergsma. - And by Bergsma, right. -
I don't know, I can double check those percentages, but I think that's what you're
after. - Yeah, they all matched up with, yeah, with your total, so. Okay, thank
you, that's all the questions I had on that. Yeah. While
we've got you up there, let me ask you to
try to put this into non-engineer terms for the folks
that are here. And what-- a follow up to Commissioner
Morgan's question. And if you want to do this with
an average number, that's fine. I understand there are going
to be fluctuations. But for TALIS, extant TALIS residents now,
What do you predict will be the number of increased trips going out
of Talus through this connector road and coming back into Talus from the
Bergsma property if this connector is put in there? And I want to
make sure I understand. I think you're asking me how many trips from
Bergsma will travel through Talus? Here's what I think we'd like to start
with. What will the TALIS residents see in terms of
increased traffic if that connector road is put in there? Any way you
want to do it, percentage, average number, AM, PM, whatever. Because I think
my understanding from reading through the significant amount of input we got from
people up there, that's the concern. Right. I've
got those numbers handy if you want me to jump in. No, I think I'll
do it, try and, I'm going to try and do it in a- It's fine
if, it's fine if, Commissioner, I just wanted to get some numbers out there so
that we can discuss them. Essentially, we, when we looked at how TALIS is laid
out, and we counted the trips that occur at the TALIS access, we estimated 100,
what would, typically be generated by 120 single family residential units would
use the connection. So 120 TALUS trips or 120 units from TALUS
would roughly use the connection. So that's roughly equivalent when there was
the discussion earlier about the landslide and I forget the intersection, but
there was the units that would be blocked off. It would essentially
be equivalent to all of those units using the connection because
in part the units that are not adjacent to the connection, it's
not the most it's not easy to get there. I've driven it.
It's if you don't know it's there, you're not likely to find
it. Even if you know it's there, the street connections are within
TALIS. They're narrow. There's two lanes with parking and then
you're not even necessarily a typical public intersection getting onto the connection. It's
a curb cut. It's a driveway cut more than anything. So all of
those factors led us to essentially 120 units from TALIS using the connection.
And that's two cars a unit is the basic expectation. They're not all
going to be going at the same time, obviously. Correct. So during, it
would be During the PM peak hour, essentially each unit
generates one trip, one vehicle. Some are inbound and the majority
are inbound, the others are up on. Okay, so there's also
been a concern expressed about the water and traffic finding the
path of least resistance. and that the fear that if this connection
is put in there that folks will discover it as a way of getting
around anything that's going on at Newport 900 in an accident or anything that
would cause people to believe that they're going to save time or actually be
moving by going through the neighborhood using a connector to get onto Newport or
Newport to 900 with us. Well, I think the response to
that is similar to the discussion we had earlier about the impact of going through
Bergsma and going on to Newport and having to turn left on to SR 900
and that increase in delay. So theoretically getting through Bergsma might be quicker, but you're
going to run into a situation where you're now at the eastbound left turn, and
that goes back to the discussion that we had earlier.
Well, Commissioner Harrison, just to give you the numbers too.
So in the morning, the AM peak hour-- this is
combined in and out-- AM peak hour without TALIS, 69,
and with TALIS, 172, or an increase of 103 due
to TALIS. And the PM peak, 88 in and out
without TALIS, 206 with TALIS, an increase of 118 trips.
Mr. Chair, are you done? I have a question. I'm sure everybody's
concerned about the traffic, but getting back into the history, maybe Chris,
maybe you can help us on this. When TALIS was developed, you
know, it was done then we don't have this
issue about school bus, far access, police access to it. So why
was it allowed that there's only one access from TELUS going down
to 900? Why wasn't there a second? We always try to
do that. Was that not part of Issaquah? We are fortunate
to have one of the original planners and founders of TALIS,
Keith Niven, who is the director of development services. But
you know, thanks. So what I can say is this, I was actually
the planner that did the subdivision plat that this road is going to
connect into. So I can answer pretty much almost any questions about that
conversation about the other access point. What happened at that hearing, the original
planning for talus and why it only has one public access. It does
have, as was mentioned earlier, I think by the Fire Chief, there is
a second, there is an emergency access to TALIS right now. It's James
Bush Road. And James Bush Road Not only is it kind of substandard
from a kind of an improvement perspective, but it's also my memory
is I think it's 22% grade at the lowest portion of
the road. So it's not -- it can work in an emergency.
And when part of TALIS started sliding kind of a year and
a half ago, if we would have lost that piece of Shangri-La
away, then that would have been the only way in and out
for all the residents that are north of TALIS Drive. The
only answer I can give you, Commissioner, is that the
developer of TALIS did not own any other property that actually abutted a public
street and so therefore there was no connection to which was one of the reasons
why when that northernmost subdivision plaque came in that the condition was put on that
if you could ever make a road connection to newport that that would be something
that the city would be interested in in considering at that time so but I
think the answer is the developer only had property under ownership that
could really get to SR 900 a public way in one place.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And I guess this is like in the
past. I guess, you know, as you know, when we do discussion
about development, there's always utility, garbage, fire, police access, and it's
always, in my mind, the primary issue that we have to look
at. And if that doesn't satisfy that, then the width of the
roadway, that's another issue that I'm hearing that we got issue with
Talos being, road being so narrow. The school district, I guess the
have a letter that says they would encourage the improvement or the
connection of the access roadway. And yet in the past, as I
remember, they would not go into a neighborhood development to pick up
kids. But now they do. They do. Yeah. So I guess I'm
kind of confused, you know, when we need access and they're here
to support going into the neighborhood. Is that a change in policy as far as
you know? So right now -- School bus into the neighborhood now? So right now,
so there's no other place in TALIS to collect kids other than in neighborhoods, right?
So right now what happens is a school bus goes into TALIS and because it's
basically a big cul-de-sac, they go around in a circle and they come back out
again. School buses also go up and down Newport and collect kids from Newport Way.
So if there was a connection to Newport from TALIS, they could look at operationally,
would there be some efficiencies to, rather than double back the school bus through TALIS
coming down to Newport and maybe picking up some kids on Newport. Yeah, and I
would, I think that's a good idea to have the school bus go into the
neighborhood to pick up kids, but I remember the discussion we had with Gateway, you
know, there's a accident there and then we were trying to get the school bus
away from Newport Way to pick up kids so it doesn't hold up the traffic
as it's going on and what was explained to us was that the school bus
would not go into the neighborhood thus you need to widen the road or do
something with the roadway so it was not I didn't think it was being practical
not going to the the neighborhood. And now we see this issue that the school
bus are going in, but then the roadway are so narrow that they cannot maneuver.
So, you know, it's a school district changing, you know, one day, you know, one
school year, it's, they can't go in. Now they go in and, and we're, we're
stuck with trying to, to accommodate the school bus. And I have no problem with
accommodating the school bus, but That was what the experience was. And now
we're seeing that they're encouraging us to have this connection with full service so
that their school bus doesn't have to do a lengthy delay. Well, I guess
everybody here knows that when the school bus is around and they're picking up
kids, you stop. And you just try to avoid that time frame when the
school bus is around. So I guess my point is that I see
the need for the access, although, you know, how the talus is coming around, how
it's got developed, you know, I guess that's in the past, we can't do anything
about it. But the access, you know, I can see that we probably need it,
but to change, to add neighbors and talus is adding more and more development in
there, which I don't know why it's going on like that. you know they know
that there's a problem with access and yet they're adding more uh units
in their uh in their building there so i guess i'm a little
bit confused why you know this is happening and i'm sure some of
the neighbors are concerned also knowing that this is what we're faced with
why are we still allowing all this development in talus two we're adding
all this eventually And then eventually we'll talk about
this neighborhoods up there too. So I'll just leave it at
that right now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Other comments? I don't
think so. Questions? All right. I'm not real sure that with
this new format, Mr. Chair, I'm not real sure. I know
we're talking about the connection, but if we're still not clear
on some things that we encourage to to use this
time to talk about specifics. Frankly, I'd like to know what
the options are to a full pass-through. The fire chief mentioned
bollards and electric gate, and I'd like to understand more about
that, about what the options are, whether or not that's even
considerable or worthy of consideration. I just -- So can I
help? So I think your choices -- I think you guys have four choices as
it relates to the connection on the road, either to approve a connection -- or
recommend approval. So you guys are not the decision maker. You're the recommending body to
the council. So you can recommend approving the connection. You can recommend not approving the
connection. You can recommend approving the connection as emergency access only. Now whether that's bollards
or a gate or a sentry, the details of that can get worked out later.
Or you can basically say, you know what, we're not going to make a recommendation
and just kick it back to the city council and let them make a decision.
So those I think are your four choices. There might be others, but I don't
know what they would be. I think those kind of cover the gamut. Okay. So
let me -- let's go then. Let's go with what the city is saying or
what the applicant is saying right now. The connection would be in terms of its
physical dimensions if it goes through with what the staff report, what we got in
here. Again, so let's get that out so folks will know exactly what we're talking
about here. That would be you. It'll be a road, two-lane
road, how wide, sidewalks. Yeah, the details really will be worked out at the
preliminary plat stage. It will be a road, right? I mean, that's what we're
talking about. You might need to say something at this point about your meeting
getting out of control. All right. I know there's a lot of interest and
maybe some... lack of trust or whatever it is, but I would encourage
you to hold your comments. There will be a public opportunity for you. It's
real disruptive. Please conduct yourself accordingly. Thank you. So, Christopher, if the connection is
approved as a road, it will be, in fact, a two-lane hard surface road
with no let or hindrance in terms of warning signs or whatever.
It will be a through road open to anybody that wants to use
it. That's right. Okay. If it is approved as an emergency connection only,
it will have dimensions that will allow the passage of the largest firefighting
vehicles as determined by East Side Fire, and it will be blocked. It
will have physical impairments to the movement of private vehicles that can
be removed in an emergency situation efficiently and quickly by emergency
reaction vehicles. Yes. Okay. And school buses would not be able
to use it. If it's for emergencies only, that would be
the only for emergencies. Fire. Okay. All right. That's what I
wanted. Thank you. Other comments? Okay. Let us open the opportunity
for public comment. First person on the list is Ken Essman,
I believe. Excuse me if I mess your name up. And
I'll just remind you, please introduce yourself. Pay attention to the lights in
front there. You'll have a green light for four minutes, a yellow light
for the last minute, and then a red light, and we'll ask you
to stop. My name is Ken Easman. I'm a resident of the Taos
community. Already I've got a red light. It's been very much.
Thanks for talking to us. 2473 Northwest Stony Creek Drive. I'm also
a resident and taxpayer in the city of Issaquah. So I want
to talk about Bergsma, Windward, and I think the second road into
Tallis would be a huge mistake and I oppose it. And the
reason is I think it would change the character of the north communities within the
Talus neighborhood and all the ugliness that goes on with a major arterial would be
in the midst of a very quiet set of neighborhoods up there. And that's my
rationale. If you look at the Talus Road network as it was
designed, it's much like the trunk of a tree that feeds the branches, that feeds
the canopy, canopy being our neighborhoods. You know, what you're talking about is putting the
trunk of the tree straight into the canopy. It doesn't make any sense. I mean,
here's the facts about the neighborhood, you know, and the traffic engineer should have understood
this. 535 homes are on the north side of Talus Drive, not 120.
This new connection would go past three parks and a tight residential street.
This is what the street looks like. It's garbage day. That's a lane
of traffic trying to get through there. The street is 18 feet wide
with a seven foot parking strip and it's classified as a residential street.
This is the connection. This is what's between our secondary arterial of Shangri-La
Way and Harvey Manning Park where the connection comes in. Here's another shot
of it on moving day.
Here's another shot with our kids playing on the sidewalk. So this is a major
arterial, 500 plus homes with a couple of vehicles each coming in and out through
this tight little neighborhood. Here's a shot of our park and our street trees, which
are a common problem. They get ripped up by the traffic and the trucks and
it's bad enough that that happens on Talus Drive where they're almost all killed on
the street strip. Now we're going to have them coming through this little neighborhood.
Speaking of Talus Drive, it's known as the Talus Speedway. It didn't take me but
a couple of minutes to get those shots, 38 miles an hour in a 25.
That's what happens on Talus Drive. And that's not what we want in this quiet
little section of our community. And it's a regular comment in Next Door about the
recklessness and the speeding that goes on there. That's not what we want in our
neighborhoods. And even on wide Talus Drive, people are hitting
fire hydrants and taking down light poles. Can you imagine what it would be on
an 18-foot street? By the way, 18 feet, 20 foot is the minimum requirement for
Eastside Fire. Interesting. And litter. And the big trucks who can't even stay on Talus
Drive. It's two lanes wide and they're still in the median. And what happens when
they have to go through our little 18-foot neighborhood? And this is the problem that
was also brought up. you know, the shortcut through TALIS for people heading for
Renton and May Valley. They'll figure that out. So at the end of the
day, the little bit of extra commute time that somebody might gain is certainly not
worth the impact to the quality of life in those quiet neighborhoods back there. And
it's not just Trieres. It's Hawks Ridge and Wilderness Peak and Aliente and Mountain Air,
Rosecrest and Ascent are all going to be impacted. 500 plus homes because you're going
to put a major arterial through their neighborhoods. You know, I was looking
at the sign up there while I was waiting for the meeting to start. You
know, the city motto and the vision and the guiding principles, all good stuff. You
know, one of the goals, goal number five is balance community. And the goal number
one is preserve and encourage viable neighborhoods. Please don't ruin our neighborhoods with this connection.
Thank you.
Once again, we'll encourage you to save your applause
until the end when everybody has time because you're
using your own time. We'll be here until you
all get a chance to talk, but you're using
your own time. Steve Duffy, you're next. Hi, Christopher.
Steve Duffy. I live on Wilderness Peak Drive and
I've been a resident there since 2009. I've been
a resident of Issaquah since 1999. My comments were going to
be around do we really need more development kind of to your point sir and
the traffic and the affordable housing option which I think you've covered that the affordable
housing now it's going to be duplexes so I guess I'm glad you're identifying that
up front versus changing it at the last minute. On the point of more development
I mean we have What was it? Plat 9, the landslide lane. We
have the development above that, another one above that, one above that. So
that's what that's for. And then we have Forest Heights. I live right
behind Forest Heights. They started knocking down trees two years ago. The first
house isn't even finished. I think there's lots of room to build houses to have
people move in. Why can't we get them done? Do we really need more development?
Um, so that's that's one of the points I really think this is going to
go through. I have tried to fight City Hall when I first got the notice
in February of 2010. I said, oh, let's get organized. Let's go. And all the
residents who lived on, um, was it bear Ridge? Um, most of them left. unfortunately
I think they were the smart ones because I stayed and it is a continuous
continual annoyance so I'm I fully expect this this road to go through and there's
no upside for the existing residents I think your points were well taken but it
doesn't matter I really don't think it matters I think it's gonna happen whether you
want to whether you want it or not I mean that's that's kind of my
message to my fellow people in the community that roads going through so
I'm also concerned about Wilderness Peak. So where, let me
get my road straight here, where Bear Ridge Drive becomes
Wilderness Peak, that's where it tees into Shangri-La. So people will come through
this big artery, hit that stop sign and say, "Do I go up this hill
or do I go straight down into Wilderness Peak?" And that's a hill and I
have people go through there all the way. It doesn't go all the time. It
doesn't go anywhere, right? So they come flying down there and they go, "Oh, I'm
in the wrong spot." So they go whipping around and then back out. So at
a minimum, I think there should be a sign there that says, "No outlet," or
something like that. because that's going to be an issue when when you build this
road people will hit that stop sign and say do i go uphill or do
i go this way you know that type of thing so i would suggest that
that's something that uh we do people will cut through uh basically when there's traffic
on 900 too i mean if if there was a way through i would take
it because 900 is bad i mean we all we all know people trying to
get home it's an extra 10 minutes maybe it's five minutes but it's just annoying
right it's just annoying because there's a lot of traffic and i've called and i
know a lot of people on a first name basis of the city i'm sorry
the mayor's not here he's been very supportive i wanted to shake his hand in
person but some other time this is the second time i've spoken in this room
by the way so um So those are the those are kind of my main
points. Do we do we really need more more construction, more development? How am I
doing green? You know, concern about the traffic and then James Bush. I mean, I
spoke here June 4th of 2012 and I said, why don't we just improve James
Bush? That would be our other way out. I didn't know there was going to
be a landslide, but James Bush seems like another option to get things going i
know it's narrow there were all sorts of excuses by the way if someone needed
james bush for emergency access try pushing all the forest heights construction vehicles out of
the way i mean seriously it's bad right so um but i think james bush
should be looked at as as an option and um you know hopefully you can
get out before the road gets through because i'll be gone thank you all right
thank you next person is going to be christy anderson and i want to encourage
everybody that We're really talking about the access at this point. That
will be our primary focus. And we'll talk about the rest of
the development later. But Christy Anderson? CHRISTIE ANDERSON: I'd like to wait
till the second part, please. CHRIS JERRAM: OK. Andy Bernstein? ANDY BERNSTEIN:
My name's Andy Bernstein. Actually, I live in unincorporated King County by
the Four Creeks area. And my comments do tie into this extra
row, but also all the development. As I understand it, there's about 88,000 cubic
feet of debris that's going to be removed here. And what we have seen down
in our area of May Valley Road has to do with a concern that you
all had and all stated, which was regarding safety, emergency issues, and traffic flow. So
with this debris that is going to be removed along with your new access road,
there's issues on May Valley Road that I think you should be aware of. One
is safety. May Valley Road is very narrow. It's got narrow shoulders. It's a matter
of time until there's going to be accidents. So what I'm referring to are the
double dumper dump trucks that have increased substantially on May Valley Road, and they're going
to increase even further once this development goes through. So with these trucks coming down,
many also do not cover their loads. We've stood out there and counted trucks, and
I'd say about out of 10 of them, two may cover their loads. And their
loads are full of gravel. And so when they don't cover them, there's rock chips
that occur on people's windshields. There's rocks that are thrown at the walkers, bike riders,
horse riders. And also I should mention that May Valley Road is a recreational corridor.
So keep that in mind with the development that goes on to the number of
these large double dumpers that are making that trip. The other area again regards safety.
When these trucks come down May Valley Road and they want to make a a
right-hand turn onto Issaquah Hobart Road. They have to get into the left-hand lane to
make that turn because they're too big to actually turn from the right-hand lane. So
that slows the flow of traffic but also makes it dangerous because a lot of
people want to go around the right-hand side of those trucks to make their right-hand
turn on Issaquah Hobart Road. The other issue, again, regarding safety is children walking to
the bus stop. During the dark times in the morning when they walk, these trucks
are coming down and I don't know how fast they're going, but I know they're
not going the speed limit. So again, it's only a matter of time before some
kids are going to be hit. Road damage. We have seen an increase in potholes
that has occurred because of these large trucks. And last year we had an area
of May Valley Road that had a slide on it. It took them, I think,
almost nine months to fix that slide. And we wonder what the impact of these
large double-dumper dump trucks are going to have on that part of the road. My
comments really are they don't pertain to you folks and I'm sorry that you're going
to be going through this. But where we are, we have seen this increase in
these trucks and you're going to see them too because I'm sure they're going to
be they're going to be on 900. They're going to be on Newport. Um they
are those guys have a job to do. I know, but they're just unsafe when
they're going faster than the speed limit. They don't cover their loads. They can't make
the turns on these tight roads. So I don't know what impact or what
situations you can have over that, but I ask you to keep those
in mind when these decisions are made. Thanks for allowing me to make
comments. Susan? Susan Neville? My name is Susan Neville and I live at
2825 Northwest Pinecone Drive. And I'm a little intimidated by all the experts
testimony we've had so far. I can offer being a 21 year resident
of Issaquah and I live at the same location on Pinecone Drive,
which is the Newport Way corridor. So, um, okay. We have an opportunity
to change the way we have handled our poor development decisions in the
past by not recommending the addition of the connector road from Tallis to
Newport Way through the Berksma development. A previous mistake was made when
the developers of Tallis received approval to build 1,700 residential units with only one
functioning thoroughway. The second mistake is about to occur. The City would like to
fix Tallis' need for two accessible thoroughways by building a connector road to Newport
Way. The quality of life among Newport Way and Tallis neighbors will be severely
affected by this action and most importantly this decision is being made at
the expense of us, the residents of that area and the environment which
we haven't even spoken about. The ramifications are currently the four new developments
planned for Newport Way corridor alone will create 4,000 new trips per day.
The TALIS traffic study concluded only 84 peak trips. We discussed that earlier.
But this study does not take into consideration that this road will become
a shortcut. We have to look at today's millennium commuters who will take
the shortest route per GPS or Siri recommendations. The Tallis residential neighborhoods were
not built to safely accommodate the new traffic generated by the shortcut.
The city planners will say this connector road will bring neighborhoods together and increase our
sense of community. I understand this is the goal of planners to connect neighborhoods where
possible, but not at the expense of the existing residents. I don't believe the
future Berksville residents want to be part of a connector development between Talus and Newport
Way or the northern neighborhoods of Talus were not intended or planned to be connected
to Newport Way. And most importantly, the residents do not want to be connected under
these conditions. The existing Newport Way corridor and Talus neighborhoods should not be asked to
fix the previous Talus development mistakes. We understand the need for
safety, emergency access, and up until today, TALIS has functioned using James Bush Road as
their emergency egress. We also understand the need for new development, but it should be
well planned and in accordance with our new Issaquah vision where possible. We have the
opportunity to make responsible development decisions, and we need to find a better solution that
benefits all the communities involved. I have been, since
March, a group of us have been gathering signatures
and this is just from Newport Way corridor. And
since March, we've brought together 72 signatures of just
that corridor and five neighborhoods. And I'd like to
officially put it noted that I have the signatures
here to hand in. I just want to ask
one more thing just so everyone's clear. If everybody
that is here today is opposing the Connector Road, could they raise
their hand? Because I just wanted, I know everybody won't talk. So
just thank you very much. And thank you for coming. Thank you.
Thank you for listening. Okay, next speaker is Tim Kimble. I'm Tim
Kimble, 2825 Northwest Pinecone Drive. Thank you for giving us the time
to comment, everybody. I appreciate it. So there's been
a lot of discussion regarding the impact to neighborhoods and to the environment of
allowing the the Bergsman development and discussion on the the application and the subsequent
approval of the variances to allow for an access road to the site as
well as the second point of access that would also join the Taos communities.
With that said, I'd like to bring to your attention a clause in the hearing
examiner's decision which followed the public hearing held on February 14th of this year. And
it's my belief that the decision by the examiner clearly states that the Bergsma development
shall only have one means of access. I'll read just a couple of short lines
that I'm referring to, which is exerted from the findings and conclusions of the hearing
examiner in the matter of application number VAR 16-0001. Summary of decision.
The request for these variances, for three variances, from City
of Issaquah Critical Areas Regulations associated with the proposed windward
development preliminary plat at 1763 Newport Way Northwest is conditionally
approved. The variances shall only be deemed approved if the
City Council declines to open alternate access to the site.
Conditions are necessary to mitigate project impacts and to ensure compliance with
the Issaquah Municipal Code, etc. In other words, approval is conditional on
the provision that alternate access is declined and thus should alternate access
to the site be allowed, the variances would not be approved. I'm
just a layman, but that seems very clear to me. So the
hearing examiner is an interpreter of laws and a steward of public
lands. has offered a well-reasoned decision by reviewing the facts and hearing testimony in
this matter and I think it's imperative that this provision be given the highest regard.
Now while I oppose the development and access road for reasons of preservation of old-growth
forest land and impact to neighborhoods, I think, you know, and I think this concern
has been made abundantly clear, I'd like to emphasize that it is incumbent on all
of us to preserve as much of our wild lands and our wildlife as we
reasonably can. And if the development is forthcoming at the least,
we not permit a road that would be a little more
than another means of sending more cars up and down a
once pristine Cougar Mountain hillside. With respect to the emergency access,
if the road is eminent, then I would clearly advocate for
it to be emergency access only. And just one other quick
note. I think the numbers are just woefully low. And if you
walk this area between SR 900 and where the driveway would be, the
math just, to me, it just doesn't play out. When you see all
the traffic that's coming down SR 900. Please speak into the microphone. Oh,
I'm sorry. There would be just a serious backup of traffic
that is going to take that shortcut coming off of
SR 900 making a left turn onto this drive. So
I really think it needs to have you know a
little more scrutiny. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. Joe
Verner. My name is Joe Verner. Address is 1230 Oakwood
Place Northwest, Issaquah. It's on the Newport Way Northwest Corridor.
I have grave doubts on the accuracy of traffic
analysis. The traffic engineer that was up here earlier
just addressed himself to TALIS. If you envision this
as SR 900 and here is Newport, TALIS people
drive and take a left onto Newport. What the
traffic analysis engineer fails to mention is traffic is
coming on Newport this way, pass-through traffic besides Dallas
people is pass-through traffic that are turning on to Newport
and from Maple and Gilman they're coming up SR 900
and turning right on to Newport now if a traffic
engineer was out there doing his job he'd be out
there doing it in rush-hour traffic during the school year
And rush hour traffic on Newport is about 7:00 till 8:00 AM going
west. It's almost a steady stream of traffic coming up Newport. And I
live at the other end of Newport, about a mile up the road.
Newport is two-way traffic in rush hour. There's not a lot of it
going east. But when there's a break in the steady traffic of westbound,
and people trying to get onto Newport, have to be concerned
with the traffic that's going eastbound. I've been at my intersection on many
mornings taking anywhere between two and four minutes to wait for a break
in traffic both directions. So it's not just TALIS traffic coming down here.
We have solid traffic on Newport. And I have serious doubts if
our city engineers have figured out what the dickens they're going to do to try
to control traffic coming down from Newport or Talus to make a left turn onto
Newport Way in the morning rush hour. So I want you to consider that.
And one of the reasons we're having a discussion here this morning of
a connector road is the error that the city and its engineers made
when they approved the plat and the design of Talus. Now you all
are trying to correct that and dump this onto the folks that live
in another neighborhood. So I encourage you, Commission, nix this approval process of
a connector road. And if you don't, then
the next thing you must do is be
on the city engineer's case to develop a
suitable traffic control environment where the new Bergsma
Road comes into play. Thank you. Julie Clark.
And then how do I advance the slides?
If anybody's come in that hasn't signed in
and you wish to talk, I encourage you
to come up here and sign this so
we can make sure you're
And I'll just remind you, we're only
taking comments on the connection at this
point. We'll be talking about the second
half of the development. We'll probably end
up taking a short break. That one?
No. That was Christopher's. Sorry. That's not
you? That's you, right? No, no, no.
It should be up there. That one?
Are you PDF? Okay, let's put you
back in. I'm sorry. There we go.
Okay. And then to advance, do I
just click? Yes. So you can hit
the enter. Okay. And backspace to go
back. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I'll wait.
I want to have them take that
down there. If you want, you can
carry that down there or however works best for you guys. That
table down there and we'll start with her and then I'll come
back. Thank you. All right, great. Ms. Clark, why don't you go
ahead and start. Could we get your attention here, please? Shall I
start? Yes, ma'am, please. Okay, thank you. My name is Julie Clark.
I live at 915 Bear Ridge Court Northwest in Issaquah. And on
Monday I was able to submit to the city council a petition I drafted along
with 44 signatures showing support and opposition to the connector road between Newport Way and
Talus via the Bergsma Windward development. These signatures come from residents in Trieres,
Aliente, Wilderness Peak, The Bridges, Ascent, and Hawks Ridge. Tonight I am submitting
29 more signatures that I have myself and a neighbor have collected over
the past day, day and a half. Our neighborhood does not want a
connector road. It's unfortunate the City Council was so short-sighted when they approved
the development for Tallis But they failed to recognize the need for
a second egress and ingress road while permitting the construction of more than
1,700 homes. Today, the city council is again approaching a development with short-sighted
views. Putting in an arterial through the middle of a quiet family neighborhood
does not make sense for today, nor will it make sense years from
today. My main concerns are the through road enters Tallis through
Harvey Manning Park. It connects narrow residential streets as a
shortcut for State Route 900 and the driveways in Trieras
connect directly to the residential street. Everybody backs in or
pulls into their driveway onto these streets. Trieras consists of
120 homes with relatively small lots to community parks
and the Harvey Manning Park. The alley homes have small
garages and may need to use Big Tree and Bear
Ridge to park their second vehicles. According to the traffic
impact study analysis used by the city of Issaquah, it
says that using aerial data, It is estimated that half of the units
in the Talus development are between Talus Drive and the Bergsma development and
that half of these units would utilize the connection through the Bergsma development.
So that's one quarter of the homes. There are 1,700 residential units. So
contrary to the traffic study analysis showing 103 total a.m. peak hour trips
and 118 total PM peak hour trips, the total is
more like 425 somehow split because that's a quarter of 1700.
Surely the number would be substantially higher than 100 or 200
trips. I don't have a picture of Trieras, but at the
northern end, there's really only about 30 homes that go on
that northern side. So to assume that they are only
impacting our traffic by a small amount is not a correct assumption because most
homes in Trieres don't come down this way to leave and to come home
in the evenings. They're north of this particular road. I've attached two photos
here I'll show. So first you saw the Bear Ridge Court which is the
road between Harvey Manning Park and Big Tree Bear Ridge Drive. That was on
a Monday on traffic day. Here's the same day on Bear Ridge Drive. Vehicles
cannot get around that garbage truck and it's just a small congested road as
is. This is the intersection where that connector will be feeding right out into our
neighborhood. This is looking on Bear Ridge Court Northwest out at Big Tree to the
left and Bear Ridge to the right. This is a school stop, a school bus
stop where kids get on the bus and get off every day.
OK. So going back to Harvey Manning Park, when we met with the city
prior to it being developed-- it wasn't there when I moved in-- the city
assured us that if the park went in, the chances of a road going
through were minimal. Matter of fact, they were so confident, they planted these arborvitaes
right in front of the sign. These pictures were there-- or this was there
then. That is your time. Thank you. This is how
it looks now, less than six months
after that. Thank you. Brookie Scholl. Unless
you want the sign. Hi, my name
is Brookie Scholl. I live at 544
Timber Creek Drive, Northwest. I'm a resident
of Tallis and I'm also the treasurer
of our homeowners association. I'd like to
read a letter that was sent by
our attorney, Peter Eglic, to the commission
earlier this week. The TRA represents several
thousand TALIS homeowners who are vitally interested in and
significantly impacted by the possible proposal to establish a through road connection
between the Windward-Bergsma development and TALIS. Several TALIS residents have already submitted
comments pointing out the incongruity and harm that would occur from such
a connection. These comments on behalf of the TRA incorporate the supplement,
incorporate and supplement those comments. A fundamental shortcoming underlies the various applicant
sponsored and staff reports the Commission has been offered on what has been
euphemistically labeled as a possible Bergsma-Tallis road connection. That shortcoming is illustrated by
the Gibson Traffic Report, which focuses on peak hour data and LOS ratings
for intersection operations, but ignores the nature of the Tallis community and the
roads that would constitute the connection. These qualitative as well as road dimension
and operation factors are critical to a decision about whether the possible connection is in
the public interest. The commission requires passage through the narrow street of Bear Ridge Drive.
This street classifies as a residential street under the Talus Master Development Agreement with a
seven foot parking strip and a roadway 18 feet in width. The appendix to
the TALIS master development agreement provides the framework for TALIS road classification and use. The
plan relies on an ordered system with spine roads feeding into the neighborhood collectors that
in turn feed relatively narrow and quiet residential streets. The possible extension would nonetheless direct
arterial traffic onto and through a residential street. Neither the staff report nor the Gibson
traffic report Report acknowledges this nor do they address how this can be? Responsibly and
lawfully accomplished when the map talus master development agreement description of residential streets is
completely inconsistent With their use as vital arterials it states the residential street is
a neighborhood scale street that allows parking on one side of the street only
this roadway provides access between residences or buildings and and collector streets. They also
contribute to the residential character of the neighborhood. Again, with parking on one side,
these residential streets leave only the 18 feet for a through roadway with limited
sight lines and geometry that would create substantial impacts of more than neighborhood use
occurs. The materials presented to the commission do not do justice to the elaborate
planning that went into TALIS. They focus on consistency with generalized city policies but
ignore very specific plans. Finally, emergency services have not been cited as imperative
driving the possible connection. If they're now brought to the fore, they can
be addressed through a physical barrier allowing limited use in actual emergencies, establishing
a new constant arterial connection that will encourage pass-through traffic on residential streets
will only create more emergencies. The Commission in recognition of the public
interest including and avoiding actions that would undermine the long-standing plan established for TALIS should
recommend against the possible road connection between Bergsma and TALIS. I'd also like to
make a personal comment. When we were here a few months ago, when we
were dealing with parcel nine and the landslide, it was noted to us that
the James Bush Road was okay for us, that we should feel comfortable that
the emergency vehicles would be able to be used. So I feel a little
slighted that today we were told that that's not the case. So thank you.
Thank you. Larry Thornburg. Okay. Thank you. Karen Porterfield. Since I
wish to speak for both, would you like me to speak now or
later? Well, can you speak on the traffic now and later? We'll put
you down for make sure you get included in the next. Thank you.
Karen Porterfield, 2498 Northwest Stony Creek Drive. So a typical commute home.
For most traffic nights, we get stacked up right past Lakemont. It can
take me 40 minutes to get from past Lakemont to my home in
Tallis. So never let it be said that traffic does not look for
a quicker way. Traffic is indeed like water, and I can easily see
people going from Lakemont to Newport through Bergsma through Tallis to 900.
That's a lot quicker than the 40 minutes it's been taking me. So to
hear the conversation say, oh, this will only be used by a few people
who live in the community, they truly have not been part of the evening
commute. A main concern I have is safety, safety for our children, safety for
our pedestrians. And it should be noted that we have a significant senior community
housing kind of project, Timber Ridge. Our seniors are active, they're out in the
community, but they're out there as pedestrians. So seniors and children both are being
put at risk by this conversation. In addition to the safety of our children
and the safety of our seniors, we know from studies, and I say this
as a faculty member in public administration at Seattle University, arterials bring crime.
We have had challenge challenges like many of the neighborhoods have
with problems with people taking mail with taking packages. Having an
arterial also raises the question of additional crime. Putting the connector
road as proposed It goes by the one large park we have in
all of TALIS for our kids to really get out and run around in.
And again, this drives back to the safety of our children. I can't say
enough, and I appreciate and I understand what staff is doing when they came
and quoted the 1999 "Here's what we were talking about," because they're trying to
put together their best argument. But I want to point out to everybody here,
when they say "shall be considered," when we were talking about other egress points, "shall
be considered," and for any of us who've had kids, when we say "maybe," does
not mean "yes." It means we will consider it. So I would encourage all of
you here on the Commission to hear it that way. This is an opportunity. It
is not an automatic "yes." And I just want to wrap with
two things as we finish this. The first one is, as a consultant, I
work with regional cities, and I'm working with multiple regional cities in this area
right now. It hurts me, because this has been my career, to have people
stand here and say, it doesn't matter what we tell you. The city is
going to ignore us. And that's not OK. So I don't know
what your final decision will be, but I hope it will be open and
transparent. I hope there will be strong clarity so that people can understand what
your decision is and why you made it. Because that's how we are going to
solve this. We can't trust our government. And the last thing that I will say
to all of you is I heard one of the commissioners tonight say, well, what
are our options? You should not have to ask for that. The staff who supports
you should provide all the options, all the pros and cons, and then their recommendation.
But you shouldn't have to ask for it. You should expect it and you should
be staffed at that level and so I hope going forward you will make that
request because you deserve that as a volunteer of our community. You put in a
lot of time. I could tell from the questions being asked you didn't just pick
this report up on a Sunday afternoon and spend 20 minutes reading it. There are
a lot of hours there. and for the time you invest
you need to be supported respectfully and appropriately so
please demand that thank you Geraldine Carey hi my
name is Jeremy Carroll I live at 913 Bear
Ridge Drive and my garbage cans have been photographed
about four different times during this so I can
speak for myself and Julie we are directly impacted
by this idea I also need to apologize in
advance I tell my wife I'm never responsible for things I say when I'm hungry
and I'm starving right now. Traffic will definitely be routed right in front of my
home on already incredibly narrow streets. I think the pictures that you've seen today with
trucks knocking down trees, light poles going out on the main TALIS roadway there are
all very real, and they happen all the time. And I'm sorry. I didn't know
I was speaking tonight. I have some notes on my phone, but I wish I
would have made a PowerPoint like everybody else. I think we can all agree that
everything you've heard tonight about the traffic report in no way makes any sort of
sense whatsoever for the residents of TALIS. We live there. I deal with it every
day. I cross those intersections. I take the bus into downtown Seattle and back home
every single day and then deal with 900. We live in a very social society.
Raise of hands. Who knows what Waze is in this room? Cool. Somebody named that
little hill that is covered in plastic sliding hill on a social network that people
use for turn-by-turn directions over a year ago, and it's still looking that. I look
at a plastic muddy hill and have been for over a year and a half
now. The fact that that's not done and we're considering adding an additional layer of
traffic through our neighborhood absolutely blows my mind. Taliesin itself has some really oddball
issues with how it's cut into a very large hill. There's all sorts of drainage
issues. All of our parks are always sopping wet. I can't imagine what is going
to happen to the community if we're going to remove more material, allow more houses
to be built, and we don't even have sufficient enough drainage through the area as
it is. I just want to say, and I'm sure everybody in this room knows
it, landslides are a real thing. they've impacted a lot of people in our state
in the past and i get the sense that it's really not being looked at
as closely as it should considering we've been looking at sliding hill as it's called
for almost two years now i also don't understand the upside in putting this in
based on what i've heard today and based on what i've experienced living in talus
i don't know if it's Yeah, I don't know what the upside is in connecting
these two neighborhoods at all. It doesn't sound like the neighborhood that's going in. It's
a good deal for them and it's definitely not a good deal for us. I
will take the path of least resistance and any given chance I get in traffic
just like anybody else would. And it's it doesn't make any sort of sense to
me that that only a handful of cars are projected to go through this neighborhood.
Waze is a perfect example. We all know what it is. Everybody here uses it
on a daily basis. I use it every single day I get in my car.
And it routes people through the fastest possible way, period. It's how it works. This
entire, I think, idea of putting a road in here is doubling down on a
very bad idea. I understand that when Talos was originally designed, it may not have
been thought through as we would all really like. but for the most part adding
this road is not going to improve the situation if there is no benefit to
us as residents and there is absolutely no benefit to this new development that's going
in it's just going to cause more problems with that being said thank you i
really appreciate the time here and i really do hope that you guys listen to
everybody's concerns here and i appreciate some of the questions that you guys have been
asking because you're having the same thoughts that i am that not a lot of
this makes any sense whatsoever and it doesn't seem like it's very well thought out
yet now I don't think the road is a good idea. I'd like to default
to whatever somebody else said about if we're going to do this, it's for emergency
access only. I do agree that that should be an electronic gate if that's the
way that it goes. But at the end of the day, there hasn't been any
discussion around on these emergency services and having access. How many times has that been
a problem? Anytime you see a moving truck, as you guys all know, it's almost
impossible to get around them. I personally don't try, try not to drive because I'm
aware of when the school buses are going to be going through there. So I
just waited out until they're all gone. But this is not going to improve anybody's
way of life. This is only going to make it worse. And we have a
great little quiet community. If you're going to to Treyarch where I live, it's because
you live there. And if you offer a way to cut that entire corner of
900, everybody is going to take it. There's not a single person that's not going
to drive through that neighborhood. And to be honest, they're going to drive through it
a little more reckless than the residents of Taliswood. Thank you. All right. I was
calling for Geraldine Carey. Not Jeremy Carvell. Sorry. My name is Geraldine
Carey and I have been a resident in the same place in Issaquah for
40 years so I think I'm an old timer by now. I've come before
the Development Commission a lot of times and this project concerns me because of
its access point on Newport Way. I live really close to the access point.
My driveway is between the intersection of 900 and the landscape business. I
am right there at the corner and I think when you add all these
cars into the line of traffic either going north, I mean east or west,
it's going to make getting out of my driveway impossible. I think the numbers
are off. I started to look at one of the documents, the city
used in their presentation and everything I read said complies, complies, complies. And
it offended me because the city has all these things and yet the
developers are able to push them aside and do what they want to
do. There's no respect for the people who live in the community. There's
no respect for what is happening to our city. I know development has
to happen, but it has to be done responsibly. And what's happening is totally disrespectful
to the people who live here. I mean, I have been coming up here for
40 years. And you know it's kind of disappointing the one fellow said it's going
to happen you have no control over it and it's sad you know to go
before all these commissions to be told you're at the wrong meeting you can't do
this you know and so I really support what everybody says about this development that
it's not a good thing especially the connector that will bring traffic onto Newport Way.
Newport Way, if you're going to do that, needs to have a fund set
aside by the developers that if there's more than 100 cars a day, they
are responsible for putting in a signal. They're responsible for something that makes it
safe for the people who need to access Newport Way. I hope that if
you put in and okay a connector road to TALUS, which I don't think
is good for TALIS and I don't think it's good for traffic on Newport Way,
that it is a gated and it is electronically activated so that the people who
live in Bergsma are not subject to being a pass-through community. I mean, I would
not want to live in that community knowing that a road is going to carry
traffic traffic from a major, I don't know what you said, 120,000 residents. I mean,
I just think that you need to let people know what's gonna happen. So I
know you need an emergency road, but like people have said, TALIS, when it went
in, should have provided that road. I mean, if you're willing to haul out
88,000 cubic yards of gravel now. You should have done
it then. You should have made them put in a
road for their safety issues. Thank you. Thank you. Barry
Hamadie? Hamadie? Hammerly. Hammerly, sorry. I'm Mary
Hammerly. I live at 1230 Oakwood Place, Northwest. Oakwood Place is in a
development called Summer Hill that is the first left right now after you
pass the landscape business. Those of us that are living on Newport Way
are experiencing the nightmare, and I don't use it lightly, of all the development that's
already been authorized to go onto Newport Way. You have a huge development in the
process that is apartments. You have another development that's being put in across the street
from the entrance to Summerhill. And as far as I know, that always was wetland,
but it's been approved for development. And now you're talking about this Berksma development, and
now you want to take all the talus traffic and run it through Newport Way.
The bottom line is Newport Way cannot handle it. I've gone to meetings and talking
about how are we ever going to handle the traffic on Newport Way for the
development that's approved, and you're going to put all of the talus traffic on there.
Your traffic studies are absurd. And I don't say that lightly because you do not
take into consideration the reality of what happens on Newport Way. The traffic on
Newport Way, a large portion of it comes down Lakemont, goes all the way down
Newport Way, gets to SR 900 and turns right to go out further. If you
put this development through, this traffic isn't going to be going back to SR 900.
It's going to continue right down Newport Way and clog up the only entrance that
those of us that live on Newport Way have to get in and out. It
is not a benefit in any way, shape or form to put the Taos traffic
onto Newport Way and if you even seriously consider it, take a look at all
the development you've already authorized on Newport Way and look at the meetings that I've
been attending saying what in the world are we going to do with the traffic
with these other developments and you think that Newport Way can handle this all the
thousands of cars from TALIS. It's absurd. And be reasonable. I hear the traffic person
saying well the city gave us this model. The model city gave you is not
in any way shape or form accurate. If you have a thousand houses that's 2000
cars. You look at the number of cars when I hear the traffic studies
for all the other developments on Newport Way. It's always grossly underestimated. You have a
senior development that doesn't even, that is being authorized for not even having enough parking
places for the number of units. And the comment is they'll take public transportation.
It's not going to happen. Don't put any more traffic on Newport
Way. Don't put the Tallahassee traffic on Newport Way. And if I
had my druthers, I would prefer you not even put the Bergsma
traffic on Newport Way. Ms. Connors? Mitch? I don't think I have
that right. good
evening my name is mitch connors i've been a resident of the issaquah area for
about three years now on may valley road which i think someone else had mentioned
earlier on i'd really love to support the connection in the neighborhood as someone who
has to commute southbound on 900 every day to get to may valley road in
the pm it does take me sometimes as much as 45 50 minutes to get
four miles which is worse than my commute through downtown seattle on game day So
I would love to have a route that bypasses that and Bergsman sounds fantastic. I
recognize that's probably not the intention. But you know, as a plan B, I'd love
to take that. No, in all seriousness, this is not a well thought through idea.
The traffic moves at less than five miles per hour at rush hour down that
corridor. It is infuriating. There's evidence of road rage every single day. People honking, getting
cut off, demonstrating their use of fingers. We see accidents on a regular basis.
And so thinking that that traffic is not going to bypass using this corridor,
I think is just naive, unfortunately. I did want to kind of tell a little
bit of a story about my time on May Valley Road and I hope that
it's a cautionary tale for the Tallis community and potentially for the Bergsman community if
it exists someday. Three years ago I moved to May Valley Road. It was a
quiet, peaceful area. You could see on a regular Saturday, I don't know if they,
they haven't done this in a long time, but a horse-drawn carriage, I think they
might have taken rentals or something like that, would go down my road, this sort
of ugly white thing, but very quaint. There were horseback riders who would ride between
the trail systems of Cougar Mountain and Squawk Mountain. There are still to this day
many cyclists who ride by. It's actually part of the upcoming flying wheels race, not
race, Cascade Bicycle Club ride. It's a beautiful part of the route and it's a
very popular ride with cyclists even to this day. But over the last three years,
sadly, that community has changed. It's not what it was. The horseback riders are no
longer even risking the road because traffic is moving so quickly. Just in the last
year, we saw approval of the Gateway Project brought I don't know how many thousands
of cubic yards of gravel down our quiet road in giant trucks. Recently the City
Council decision to close truck routes within Issaquah City, which for the city was probably
a great decision, meant that more truck traffic was pushed onto our quiet road. We
were told by the city that we're not their problem, which I respect. We were
told to go to the county, we went to the county, we were told that
we're not their problem either. We seem to be no one's problem, unfortunately. Now this
project could potentially add even more heavy traffic to our once quiet road. We've
seen graffiti increase as a result of the increased traffic, break-ins to mailboxes. The
guardrail that goes along the road near my house was broken three months after
it was replaced by heavy truck traffic and is still not replaced. The moral
of this story, I hope, is twofold for you. One is that you can't
tell in advance how a thoroughfare is going to be used. You just don't know.
May Valley Road was never intended to be the route for thousands of gravel trucks
each week. It was intended to be a quiet, calm place with country farms and
backwoods trails. But that's not what it has become today. So I'd really urge you
to consider that example as you consider putting this passage between the two neighborhoods here.
I'd also like to ask that you start considering more sustainable development practices Newport
Way 900 May Valley Road Front Street these are not appropriate places for huge
construction equipment to be driving every day these are appropriate places for cyclists in
some cases for horseback riders we have been for 50 years a wonderful
It's not suburban. What's the word rural community? a great place to
escape from the urban areas of downtown and We're beginning to lose
that because of the focus and aggressive development without focusing on development
of infrastructure that can really support those practices So I would encourage
you to vote no on both counts Jesse Hartman was that that
was that was Jesse Hartman right Kimberly Brown That was
Mitch, so I need Jessie Hartman. All right, she's
coming. Hi, my name is Kimberly Brown. I live
in the Wilderness Peak subdivision of Tallis. I will say I
am skeptical that we won't get the road. So I would say if you feel
obligated to push this through, because I know the developers also have rights, that I
would ask that you please put it through with only emergency access. And my reasons
are twofold. I'm hoping to tell a story, but maybe not as eloquently. As a
mom, I'm astonished that our city who less than two years ago lowered speed limits
on Newport and arterial because a child was hit in a crosswalk would even think
of routing through traffic through 18 foot roads. My kids walk to Harvey Manning Park
on a regular basis with parent supervision, but you never know what's going to happen.
It scares me as a parent. We actually moved into Talos in July of last
year. So we're pretty recent residents of Issaquah proper. We spent 10 years out on
Tiger Mountain in the Miramont neighborhood. And the Waze app has come up a couple
of times tonight. And what's interesting is Waze had a significant impact on that space
out there. Issaquah Hobart Road, as everyone in the region knows, is one of the
worst roads in all of the county. Waze, through Google's amazing technology, started routing everyone
coming northbound in the morning onto Tiger Mountain Road. What we saw was a significant
increase and obviously lots of next-door conversations and email threads and whatnot. Significant increase not
only of traffic but in speed. These are pass-through people. They're excited that they're no
longer sitting in bumper-to-bumper for the seven miles it takes them to get to I-90.
So they buzz up and over Tiger Mountain Road. We saw a significant road deterioration
in a very short period of time because the road was not built to handle
that kind of volume. And then finally, It's a right turn, which is even easier
than what we're talking about if I'm going on the morning commute out of Tallis
on this new road. It was a right turn back onto Iziquahobart Road. I started
counting, my daycare is and was right there. There were more than 50 cars waiting
to turn right on a typical morning. So you can imagine the wait time. People
had a great idea, it's gonna save me some time, but ultimately it was at
a significant cost. You can say a lot of that was maybe local neighborhoods getting
really concerned because it had an impact on them. And we never like it when
change has an impact on us personally. But the county actually got enough gripes, if
you will, and they came out and they did studies. And what the county ultimately
did is they made it a no right turn onto Tiger Mountain Road on the
south end. during the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. morning commute with the exception of
school buses. That included residents, so all of us residents then were now sitting in
the Zocco-Hobart road traffic if you had any reason to be coming from Maple Valley
or Hobart. What I want the city to consider is apps like Waze are going
to impact travel patterns. I find a lot of fault in the traffic study. I
read a significant portion of it. It's not my area of expertise, but I think
we need to consider that if we put it there, they will come. And is
the city willing to deal with the increased response to traffic accidents, increased medical response
when some adult child, elderly person is inevitably hit by a car that's cruising through
there? And also the increased infrastructure cost that will undoubtedly happen as those roads are
beat down significantly faster than they were intended to be and designed to be.
So thank you. My ask again,
if you have to put it
in, please, please make it emergency
access only. Thanks. All right. I
called Jessie Hartman. No, that was
Kimberly Brown, right? Jessie Hartman? Okay.
How about Tina Conforti? Good evening,
everyone. My name is Tina Conforti,
and I live on 1220 Oakwood
Place, northwest Issaquah. And I appreciate the
time you're taking the commission and all of the
city employers. My concern, I have a very big
concern about this project, the Bergasma project.
The proposed set of clusters in 78 single-family lots with
the excess road near Sur 900 and Newport Way. This
cluster development will impact traffic and safety for all of
the vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. We really don't want to
see any more children murdered on Newport Way, killed by
accident, If you drive along on a peak time down a
new pathway, it is a dangerous road to drive down. They have
cyclists on one side. The cars, when they take the curve, they
go over the wide line because they have not enough road to
take the turn. And many times I've seen very close cyclists to
be hurt by cars. So when we think about a holiday project
going along the Danau Newport Way, we can't take anymore. I invite the
whole of the city public work and the commission to come down one
weekend and spend some time. We exchange neighborhood. If you come in right
now, you can get out from our Summer Hill residence. There are truck
parks across the street, utility road. You come in on weekends, There
is a King County trolley down to our road. We
need to stop. We need to stop. The construction, it's
impact enormously. Our piece of our neighborhood has been taken
away. Another thing that I am very concerned about it
is the Bergama project is too risky for a land
slider. With the heavy rain falling this past
winter and the damage done to trees and slope
down the soil, you can see up the hill
and the mountains because the heavy rain that we
had this past winter and the trees damages.
land sliders are naturally occurring by environmental hazards and increase
the frequency in most project activity, human activity. That means
all these projects, we are in risk of land sliding
in Newport. Are you taking that into consideration for all
of the residents around the area? Don't see the city
of the city government taking consideration taking all of this project and
just pile them up on newport way newport way it's too near
a road it's two way we don't have a four-way road so
we gotta go before another child get killed a new part away
another person get killed It's unbelievable. Please,
please, this project cannot be approved. And it's
more study, a better solution for alternative roads
and not new pathway entrance because it's going
to become the shortcut for everyone. So we
don't want to see that. And I appreciate
very much of your time. Thank you very
much. Rival Ribertson. Sorry, was that even close?
Rival. Oh, it was close.
My name is Rigel Ryerson and I also live at the corner of SR 900
Newport Way. And I guess I have two points. One of them was already touched
on. It was the hearing examiner's findings. And I just want to reiterate what his
findings were because on that slide earlier during their processes, for the process it said
the variances were approved. But the hearing examiner, the very next sentence is the variances
shall only be deemed approved if the city council declines to open it, open alternate
access to the site. I just want to like reiterate that that's what he said
so I don't understand why there's still talk about the variances and the alternate site
both happening but um and I guess my second point would be uh traffic on
this road that's going to be using Newport Way because they will because people use
things like Waze and Google routing, they're going to come down from Tallis through Bergsma
and want to turn left to get to I-90. Right now that's how I get
to I-90. I don't go, because I live at the corner of Newport Way and
900, I don't go 900. Even though it's maybe eight blocks to I-90, it'll take
me ten minutes to just go that that little stint. So TALIS is going to
do the exact same thing. They're going to come straight through Bergsma and want to
turn left on this double lane road. That's going to cause more traffic accidents right
there and it's going to cause a backup into Bergsma. Second of all, traffic coming
eastbound on Newport Way, backs up past the entrance of this driveway. At the intersection
of Newport Way it backs up way past that so I'm not sure, you know,
and turning left on that road is a nightmare. And then you're going to have
people wanting, going the other way to Tallis at rush hour traffic instead of waiting
to cross Newport Way. They're going to want to turn right on Newport Way and
left into the, through the Bergsma And they're going
to be crossing that traffic again, and it's just
going to cause more accidents. So that's all I
have. Kay Haynes. Kay Haynes, 2830 Northwest Pinecone Drive.
So I'm not going to say anything different from
what's been said, but I'm just going to underline
it because I support what people are saying tonight.
I live along the corridor on Newport Road, off
of Newport Road, and, you know,
The context of all of this is a larger context than just
the connector road. I mean, people have pointed that out. There are
other mitigating things that are affected that the connector road affects. So
for example, we are being subjected to 650 plus units of new
housing along Newport Road. And that is going to
result in 1,000 new cars, 900 to 1,300 additional
vehicles, and over 4,000 new trips a day, 400
trips at peak hour. This is a lot of
traffic along Newport. And personally, I have supported all along that the idea
of building housing on the in the valley floor so that we're not taking away
our critical areas, our hillsides, our forested areas. And I know there's a price that
goes with that. I don't think this was done well. I think the fact that
we're talking about access and problems with access and here we're building all of these
units. the connector road and the problems with the connector road are going to
be nothing compared to the problems of what's going to happen on Newport with all
of this new traffic from these 650 additional units that are going to be pouring
onto Newport. And seriously, there's no other egress besides Newport. That's it. There's no other
egress. And so I think then what happened with the Bergsma property It was kind
of the tip of the iceberg in a couple of ways. One, we've already got
this explosion of traffic going on in Newport. We're gagging under this possibility. I'm willing
to live with that. I understand the philosophy for building on the valley floor. But
then we turn around and we desecrate the hillsides, we create developments
that are completely contradictory to our philosophy of building on the valley
floor and leaving the hillsides and the critical areas as they are
now. So the added traffic with the connector road was like the
tip of the iceberg. And the insult of building on the,
of developing on the hillsides when we're sacrificing our neighborhood because of
this enormous new traffic, which is understandable and justifiable, I think, in
terms of the new development. Not in terms of the planning and
the lack of secondary egress from Newport Way for those developments.
You just have to understand the total context is really impacting people.
So I wanted to say and I understand because it is all
part of a larger context. I just want to add that this
having to accept this is doubly, triply difficult because of the things
that are going to go along with this. So we have the
600 units coming along. And yet we have sites like
the Bergsma Windward project, forested hillsides being destroyed, except now the word
for destroying a forested hillside is called mitigation. Whereby we can find
a way to build on 40% slopes, create 12% grade roads, then
build storm water detention vaults for runoff of water. Remove 88,000
cubic yards of materials for the development. Remove existing vegetation on 30% of
a site. Impact streams and buffers. Destroy forested canopy. Increase chances of mudslides
due to climate change. And create a visual scar from the valley floor
in perpetuity. And this is what we thought we were avoiding by allowing
development on the valley floor. So... So I
can only say personally, my family and I, we can't support the connector road.
We can't support the cluster housing. We can't support anything that goes on with
the Bergsma property, even though I know people are of good intention. Even the
hearing examiner for the Bergsma site, only approved the
requested variances, including the Bergsma Roadway, if
there was no other alternative access, which
implies, that implies that the proposed variances
were less than ideal to begin with.
So we really hope that you'll consider
the larger picture when you're looking at
the Connector Road and the rest of
the site. - Jeff Richards. - I'm
sorry, no sweat.
Thank you for this process. Thank you for your time tonight. I don't
know how many of these meetings go this long, but you guys are
civil servants and you're not entertaining these projects to bug the heck out
of us. So we appreciate your service and I appreciate this process.
I wasn't exactly sure which portion of this to speak to. It's a little more
general. I think it speaks to the connector a bit. So forgive me. Yes. Excuse
me. Would you introduce yourself? I'm sorry. Jeff Richards. I am an Issaquah resident. I
live in the Cougar Ridge development, which is just up 54th. And I'm a proud
but concerned Newport Way resident. I just I have a simple message
of empathy and of gratitude and a challenge for our civil servants and then
I think for us as well as as a quah residents. I grew up
in on the east side I was born in Bellevue moved my family moved
to Woodinville that's where I grew up that's where I went to high school.
Went to school in Seattle, lived in Seattle forever. My wife and I had two
little kids and we said, "Where do we want to live?" For me, it was
not a question. It was Issaquah. I'm 39 years old and since I can remember,
Issaquah is one of those cities on the east side, maybe the city on the
east side, where you can say, "That's a place I want to live." They have
a tremendous balance. uh... things to do infrastructure uh... but it's
the gateway to the wilderness it's the perfect city it's the perfect city
in the northwest uh... but as a resident as i've lived now lived
here for a little over three years uh... i've seen the plans for
development i've immersed myself in every t_i_a_ every uh... strategic vision plan uh...
i'm i'd i'm growing more concerned I'm empathetic. You guys take pride in your
work. You want to do the best. You probably love this city maybe more than
I do. So I can appreciate that. So please don't hear my message thinking
that I don't appreciate the hard work, the long hours, the consideration, the many
moving pieces. One of the main reasons development happens is to bring revenue to
the city so that we can provide better roads, better schools, more attractive space
for commercial development, which benefits us. So progress is necessary, but my challenge
to both our leaders of the city, but also to ourselves, being
a city, you know, to an extent on a hill, being that
beacon on the east side, are we progressing as a great city?
Are we going about it in the right way? Are we doing everything
we can to dot every I, cross every T? As I've looked through
many TIAs, looked through many development proposals, I'm encouraged by the level of
depth that are there, but I'm concerned with the inconsistencies from TIA to
TIA. With so many developments, especially here on Newport Way, There's a game
of leapfrog that seems to be going on And while I'm sure there's
great care being taken to consider step A and step B and all
the way through to step Z, but I see holes in the plans.
There are pieces that don't consider other developments. And so while I know
there are great plans, great aspirational plans for Newport Way, there's plans to
widen it. There's plans to make that a true parkway. But as
I read through some of the initial thoughts on that, I come back to that
concern of, are the I's being dotted and T's being crossed?
I would challenge us as residents to help the city find alternate
ways to generate that revenue rather than building more and more unnecessary
and probably not the right developments. So again, progress is necessary. We
are a great city and I would just challenge our civil servants
and ourselves, let's progress as a great city. Thanks. Carol Lopez.
Good evening. I just also want to thank you, the commissioners, for serving our community.
I know it's a lot to listen to. In the interest of time, I scribbled
a few notes here so I could be a little more brief than I usually
would be. So my name is Carol Lopez. I am a resident of Sammamish
Point Condominiums, 2262 Newport Way Northwest. I'm a former board member. I served on the
board for five years on our HOA, and I'm also a former HOA president. Jesse,
who is our current president, had to leave a little early, so I'm going to
tag team with him as well. I just basically want to agree
with the previous speakers and appeal to you, the Commission,
to recommend against this proposed connector road. That's really the
net. Newport Way along this stretch is increasingly becoming a
fire hazard. And I really want to make that point and
let it sink in because more and more vehicles are being dumped onto this little
stretch without much of an outlet. We who live on Newport Way Northwest, especially in
Sammamish Point and some of the other communities, have really no other way to get
in and out. We're stuck. And we didn't ask for all this construction. It
has been put upon us. So we are basically stuck. One of the things that
I noted at the outset of the applicant's presentation is that they had a number
of speakers who came forward and endorsed this second access egress road in and out
of Talus. But I'm wondering, and I understand the rationale, we should have two
entrances, two exits, but I'm wondering where those voices were when the Gateway Apartments
was designed, proposed, and approved with one entrance and egress for 400 units. Where were
the voices then? We need another entrance and egress for the Gateway Apartments. And I
encourage the Commission to continue to go back to the City to appeal for another
entrance to the Gateway Apartments because right now it is emptying onto Newport Way. And
if this road is approved, it will also empty onto Newport Way.
So that's it. Thank you. Mary Lynch. I'm Mary
Lynch and I'm loading this. I just want to
support what the others have said tonight and in
the interest of time I will go through some
of these pretty quickly.
I just want to support what Carol said is we've been before you for almost
two years, and especially with Gateway, consistently. And a lot of us went down and
talked to the fire and the police and asked them to support us with Gateway
with a second entrance. And we was told it was designed to code, it was
not needed. We came to the hearing, it was not needed. Why
has, if James Bush isn't a successful road, why has the city continued to allow
development on James Bush Road? The comment tonight was saying construction's blocking that. That is
a safety hazard and a violation. That should be noted and something should be done
with it immediately. Why has the city continued to allow parcel seven, eight, and nine
to have access if it is such a hazardous place to live? I also
-- I've already covered those. Let me get to the next one. We need an
entrance on Poplar for Newport Way for the same reason why TALIS needs a second
entrance and we should be given that. It's already been brought up and I would
ask you that you read the hearing examiner's conclusion because you will note that the
city staff failed to read that to you. But there's the link. You can go
to it. I won't go to that. But the variances in there and which I
responded to is the fact that the city staff did not require the developer to
even look at an access through TALIS as being the only way in. That wasn't
even studied and presented. So the hearing commissioner had to rule on what the city
showed him. And that was very frustrating to us. But part of those variances, which
also since they didn't present that to you, involved relocating a creek. a glacial fan
creek and also reducing down the buffers for that and the other existing wetlands
and creeks. My opinion is we should not allow the project to move forward
with the connection to Newport Way.
And I think this should be also considered for the 70 to 80 homes that
are going in there, that this is not the ideal place for them. And why
isn't the home or the developer and property owner presenting here tonight? What is in
their best interest? They want to get a big development so they can get a
bunch of money. Why aren't we looking at this piece of parcel as being parkland
and other things, or saving as a green space?
One of the reasons I bring up the creek is just this week the city
approved close to a million dollars to create a fix on our development in Summerhill
when again the city approved to relocate a glacial fan stream. And guess what? The
city did not require the developer to do it correctly. So we have had continual
flooding. Our homes have been flooded. The city did not stand behind us. They supported
the developer and allowed the developer to pull out of the development without redoing the
stream to what was code. So for years the cities having been doing public works
projects to clean up the flooding, the homeowners had to pay for their own insurance
due to the flooding and the city right now has just approved over or close
to a million dollars to temporarily or to partially fix the problem, not even all
the problem. Landslides, that's already been talked about. December of '10 in
Talas, there also was one this year in James Bush. So what are we doing?
We're digging into the same basic type of hill and what are we gonna create?
Who's gonna pay for the, the city hasn't even identified who's gonna pay for the
Talas Court yet. So what are we doing with the development agreement to, if we're
gonna allow this, to make sure that this road and the developer and the homeowners
pay for whatever mess they create? Also, speed. The traffic study has a
lot of flaws that people already put up. One is that right now on Newport
Way, the city is not enforcing the speed limit. We knew that wouldn't happen unless
the city enforces it. We're getting the average speed to be between 35 and 45
miles an hour. And we've continued to ask the city to do a speed study
to show that. But I did not see in the traffic study that a new
traffic study has been done, but they did assume for this entrance that the speed
limit has been lowered. Some of the things that are commonly occurring there, as
people said, people drive on the shoulder to get around the corner here. They're just
going to turn and go up that access road. They block lanes. A couple of
people that are here tonight live in these homes. There is a big do not
block intersection. On any given day, you will see that blocked. Let me just quickly
go through these other slides. The traffic does not abide by those intersections. So all
I would say is... I'm very disappointed with the city. I spent a
lot of my time here and to have city staff come in here and be
two faced with what they say that all of a sudden this is not a
safe, TALIS is not safe but Gateway is safe I think is a total travesty.
Thank you. All right. That's the last person that I have that signed in. If
anybody else wishes to speak could I get them to sign in and we'll continue
on. But I do want to remind you that right now we're just talking about--
just talking about the connection, the Alice Berksma connection.
And after we get done this, we'll be taking
a short break and then moving on to the--
I know several of you said that you wanted
to comment on the second portion. And we'll persevere.
We will eventually get there. CHRIS JERRAM: Yeah, he's
going to . CHRIS JERRAM: No. CHRIS JERRAM: Yeah.
CHRIS JERRAM: - I ask, I ask, I ask this
if you guys have written that three days. - I also
want to speak with you. - Yeah, that's what I can
do. - Sure. - They're two for one coupon. - Correct.
- And then we're gonna have to go to the bathroom.
- Connie? - Yeah. - Okay. - Hey, Connie? Do you
want to take this down and then he can start and
you guys can fill it out down at the table? Okay.
I don't know
how many months. Jack
Goldberg, 19437 SE 57th Place in Cougar Ridge. I realize it's late and I will
be brief, but I think you need to realize that there's a whole other class
of people who are not here who would be impacted by the Connector Road, and
that's all the people who live in Bergsma. That's another 70-odd people who will see
the additional traffic of TALIS going through their neighborhood, and that's not what they were
expecting. So, that's something else to consider. It's a whole group of people who can't
talk because they're not here yet. They're not around. But they would see the impact
of the TALIS connector if it goes through. And I don't think that subdivision is
designed to be a major arterial as the rest of them. That's all I have.
Well, thank you. Dave, Dave Kapler.
Good evening, David Kapler, 255 Southeast Andrews Street. The hearing examiner decision
is unclear and does need to be updated or clarified. I did
submit by email this evening a picture to Chris of the taken
May 3rd, 2015 of the sign being invisible, blocked by the plantings.
I was on the City Council when we did TALIS and before I was on
City Council I was a big advocate of TALIS East Cougar back in the early
80s when I was on the New Castle Community Plan and lived in May Valley.
We've said that would be an option, but 20 years ago, we had
no idea that SR 900 would still be a two-lane road with no
shoulders and would be completely plugged up as it is now. That's going
to force cars to go up through Talus, I'm afraid, if the road
is built or the connection is there. I think the Earlier, speaker
said, what's the balance? Delayed response is one potential of
having a gate, even if it's electronic. But by having
all that traffic going through those narrow roads and the kids there and
all the rest, there's a much more, maybe more risk from increased need
for responses. So how do you balance that? And I would say you
have a gate. And electronic gate would make the most sense. and see
how it goes. But I think you would just be
driving way too much traffic through those narrow streets in
this north part of Tallis. Thank you. Connie Marsh. Hey,
my name's Connie Marsh, and I live on Squawk Mountain.
When I read the staff report, there was very, very
little about how the decision would be made on whether
to have this connection or not. The information that was
presented to you was mainly policy support. for the road where
there's an entire comprehensive plan that has a lot of policy language in it
that is about maintaining neighborhoods and not allowing arterials to degrade neighborhoods. And so
it is unclear to me, one, why this is coming to development commission when
the people who have the history of the road connection is urban village development
commission. and I believe their development agreement even says it's supposed to go to
UVDC yet you are supposed to somehow either make this decision or push
it off to City Council and I don't think that it was a
fair representation that was provided to you by City staff to enable you
to make a wise decision especially in the face of so many people in
the public who are not interested in having the road connection. So if I was
sitting in your chair, I would a ask for clarification as to how you were
supposed to be making this decision and by what criteria because I don't see that
you're in a position to be able to decide based on on
much. So personally, I don't think that it is a
wise road connection as quality of life in the community
needs to be a priority now because we are losing
our soul. Thank you. Greg Crabb. Good evening. My name
is Greg Crabby. I'm here on behalf of Windward Development,
the applicant. And I just wanted to say that, you
know, we We are showing the full connection into TALIS in
a spirit of cooperation with staff. We understand the needs of connectivity, but I
think here tonight the community has made it clear that they have concerns about
having full access through both developments, and we are sensitive to that as well.
And so our recommendation would be to make it a limited access, emergency-only access
with gates, and that's it.
CHRIS RODGERS: Thank you. Last call. Anybody else from the public
wish to make comment? On this half of the piece, correct?
CHRIS RODGERS: Yeah, right. On the access or the connection. I'm
sorry. Connection. I'll get it straight. We have a number of
people that want to speak on the rest of the development.
So commissioners, go ahead. Yes, Mr. Chairman. On the emergency response
time to the existing talus, do we have records of those? How many
times emergency were called and how long did it take for you to
get to the talus? We have records of traffic flow and stuff like
that. So we have anything for emergency, police call, fire?
And I see the fire chief coming up to the mic. I was going to
try and field that one, but if you want to go for it, Jeff, go
ahead. Normally, it takes less than three minutes. I don't have it here tonight, but
that's certainly something we can query and get to you. The number of calls, the
response times up into the TALIS and any of the other areas, yeah, that's easily
attainable. Would you introduce yourself, please? Excuse me. I'm sorry. Jeff Clark, Fire Chief with
Eastside Fire and Rescue. Yeah. Can I? Chief, I have another question for you. Could
you tell us, please, the maximum number of firefighters that are on duty in the
city of Issaquah at any time? That would be 11. 11. So I think that
my experience is that most folks that hear that are dumbfounded that they assume that
there are more police officers and more firefighters than is actually the case. So you've
got a tremendous amount of responsibility in terms of the area that you cover because
would you Tell us that too in terms of the responsibility for,
there are three fire stations in municipal Issaquah, is that correct? That's correct.
Okay. Those trucks respond to an area that includes the city, but it
also includes unincorporated King County, is that right? Yes. We actually have nine
stations within Eastside that are career stations and we respond to May Valley. Sammamish,
Issaquah, North Bend, and Carnation. That's 190 square miles that we respond to. Okay. So
the Commissioner's question about the frequency of emergency call responses to TALIS is something we
could be provided with at some point in the future? Yeah, that's absolutely something we
can do. The large number of the calls to TALIS, a large number of them
are in Timber Ridge. which is the, uh, yes. But, uh, but yeah, we do
have the data. That is something that's easy for me to get to you. And
how about for police? Um, call. I know the police chief had to leave, but
that is data that it should be easily attainable as well. Yeah, we can get
that right. Other comments, questions. Thank you. I think that a couple of us have
this question for the staff. Could you please address the hearing examiner issue about, uh,
is finding that if, uh, the three variances are contingent on not
having a connector road i flagged that when i was reading it
too so i'm not real clear on that sure um so in
um In reading through the hearing examiner's decision, so there's three variances
that were part of that hearing. One of them was to put the detention
vault for the project basically down at the bottom of the hill closest to
Newport, which is in a steep slope. The second was for the road. And
the third was to actually the road intrudes within a stream buffer more than
what's allowed by right through the code. So those three variances. So the city's
opinion is that the hearing examiner somewhat overreached his authority
in that the legal access for those parcels is on
Newport and it's not clear to the city how he
can remove that legal access. through a decision for a variance hearing. So
we ask for clarification on that point. The point, the first variance for the detention
vault has absolutely nothing to do with access. The location of that vault is at
the low point of the plat and whether there's access from Newport or from Talus
or both really is somewhat irrelevant to the location of that vault so we're not
sure why he also would negate the approval of that variance if the
council were to connect these two neighborhoods. So we've asked for
that. Don't know how long that's going to take to get,
but Christopher and I had a conversation with him about that
about three weeks ago. And so that's coming. Thank you. At
this point, that's going on. Question, Mr. Chair. If the road...
the connection who's going to pay for that right now i take it
as the developer who's going to pay for the roadway the access between
the newport way and then the talus yes okay but if it's just
the the access road with no developer involvement in that would the city
pay for that uh connector yeah just the connector with access emergency access
who's going to pay for that So if the decision,
if I answer this not what you intended, please let me know. Okay.
So if the recommendation from the commission is it's emergency access only, right?
They would build that including whether it's a gate or bollards or whatever
means for emergency access. That would be part of the plat improvements that
the developer would pay for. And in return, the developer would get what?
Right now, the developer would get, if we approve the neighborhood, all
those homes, then they would get the homes built. and then they would
build that roadway. Yes. But if we say we just need the access and we
don't want the housing in there. So the city would have to use eminent domain
to condemn the property to get the right of way because we don't have the
right of way to make that connection without it being part of a development project.
Okay. So the developer would not just come in and say I'm a nice guy
and I'll put in that road for you. Not likely. I have not asked him
that question. All right. Okay. All right. So either that, then
the eminent domain, or we would, the city would have to
find another location for the second access then. And there probably
is not one on this side of Cougar. There's not one?
Because of slopes. It's difficult to get this one in. Okay.
Gotcha. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions?
So how about discussion? What, uh, you know, I guess sort of between us,
one of the things that I don't think has come up is, um, the
idea of the benefit of a connection with or without the emergency only factor
for pedestrians and bicyclists. It seems to me that, you know, I did a
count of who was for and against. I think they were mostly for just,
Slight majority of people out there. So I mean it doesn't seem like there's anybody
except from some people at the city that are for this not even the developers
for it although I did hear a lot of people say they would accept a
an emergency connection which would meet the what we would need from fire and police
and Perhaps other things but the benefit of it too is is providing some say
bicycle and pedestrian access to from this neighborhood down to Newport Way or vice versa.
And I'm all for cut through bicyclists and pedestrians if they want to go that
way. But I don't know if you guys have thought about that. Well, I saw
it the other way. I felt there were more folks who are against the development.
I'm just talking about the connection. Just talk about the connection right now. Yeah, there
are more folks who are against the connection. Right, that's what I said. That's what
he said. Okay. Yeah. I don't believe that
you can have, it seems to me that providing, if it is an
emergency only with a gate or bollards or something, and we have any
kind of a seismic event or anything that blocks the primary, the only
extant exit in and out of TALIS, it would be beneficial to have
an alternative that could be used in the state of an emergency.
That said, I think you were on the commission then
a long time ago, but I wondered when I lived
here, when I moved here, and I heard about TALIS
being proposed, I didn't understand at the time why there
was only one access. And I expressed some concern about
that in meetings like this. So I have felt for a
long time that there is a need for an emergency alternative to the
only way out of there. But I also think that there have been some
very legitimate concerns raised here, and I'm particularly impressed by Mr. Krabbe's remarks, that
there are some very legitimate concerns raised by the extent homeowners who would see,
even if it's not the worst case scenario, who would see significantly increased traffic
on streets that weren't designed for it. I think we
got this from the TALIS development agreement, what Connie had sent
in, Section 14.2 that talks about plaque connections and that said
the city would evaluate whether street connections shall occur to adjacent
non-TALIS property and based on whether the connect, one of the items that would
be based on is whether connection would result in adverse impacts to either of the
property owners. It sounds to me like it's obvious it's adversely impacting both TALIS from
what we've heard from the public and the future members of the Bergsma property. -
And Commissioner, when I read that same passage, I actually underlined it with a question
mark. It said, please define adverse. I mean, adverse can mean your property
value is totally destroyed, or it could mean that it's going to be inconvenient 20
minutes a day. And there's a huge, I mean, that's kind of one of these
amorphous words that doesn't really have any significance until you define it. But I would
think, in my mind, for the future BIRGSMA owners to see the traffic through their
neighborhood, increased by 130 to 170 percent during peak hour due to
TALIS people coming through. I'd consider that adverse. More discussion? Anybody feel
compelled to make a recommendation for a motion? Well, I don't, you
know, we don't have any wording to go by, so I'll just
make it up as I go, I guess, so you can fix
it for me. Mr. Chair, I move that the Development Commission recommend
approval of the connection as an emergency only with an electronic gated barrier.
Well, and Mr. Chair. Wait. Let's let him make his motion. Well, I
was going to say that could be left up. That could be in
the motion. It could be left up to the fire and security staff
to determine. How about if I put it this way then? So with
an access-- approved by the city and Eastside Fire. I need a
second. CHRIS JERRAM: Chris, did you write that down? Somebody write that down.
Susan, would you let us-- why don't you read that for us? CHRIS
JERRAM: But we'll need a second. Move the development commission recommend approval of
connection as emergency only with an access approved by city and Eastside Fire.
CHRIS JERRAM: Second. CHRIS JERRAM: All right. Discussion? Yeah. Without the numbers
for the fire response and police response time and the number of
calls that they get, I'm not sure if we need that access.
I'd be curious to find out how are you handling it now
with one access? I mean, don't get me wrong. I think two
access is always what we're looking for. We're
adding a roadway there for access and I'm not sure
how we're going to go about it. So, you know,
with one access right now and TALIS has been there
for how many years? 15, 20 years? How are you
handling it? Are we having people not getting fire access
and they're not getting the proper care with one access?
I mean, you know. Commissioner, I... I believe
that it is prudent if the opportunity presents itself to
provide for an emergency alternative to the single access point
for the community. And if that is done as part
of a larger agreement that the costs and the dimensions
of which are part of that negotiation with the applicant,
then to me it seems like a good alternative to the status
quo. Right. And I would not disagree with you on that. I think the second
axis is probably a good thing to have, but do we really need that? um
we're not going to need it until we need it right and that's why that's
why i'm asking for some numbers you know is it is it are they responding
in time you know fire chief maybe you can so because i don't have the
numbers with me now the only thing that i can ask you to put into
your mind is our our closest station to here is up on maple and the
900 road right on the corner Right. Right. It's just up off this map here.
Parking right. So right now, what that what that truck has to do in order
to get to the Tallis neighborhood that's in question here is go all the way
up to Tallis Road, weave in and out all the way back into this neighborhood
to get back in there. I'm guessing that that's going to be eight to 10
minutes. All right. If this access road was here, they would be there in less
than five. - All right, so when looking at it anecdotally that way, if you're
the person having a heart attack or your house is on fire here, then that
difference is a big difference. Now, as far as numbers and that, I can certainly
get that for you, but if you look at a map, it's just an inherent,
you can look at the map and understand the difference in response times that would
happen because that access is there and would only be accessible to us in the
way that the motion's proposed right now. - So it seems reasonable to me to
think that The reality is that when TALIS was done, they didn't have right
away sufficient to be able to provide a second access. This provides a second access,
and we don't know when it may or may not be needed, but it also
eliminates the potential of unnecessary traffic from TALIS and Bergsman. So it seems like it's
kind of the best solution for the opportunity. And Mr. Chair, I also believe that
this does address a primary city objective, which is to
promote connectivity. and access to Harvey Manning Park by people, the future
residents of Bergsma on foot or by bicycle. And if it's not there, then
it would be significantly more difficult for them to access the park and whatever
else might be up there. So that's a fringe benefit in my mind, but
it still fits the city's objective. And I think for a bike rider to
go from Talus through Bergsma down to Newport Way and head west or vice
versa versus having to go on to SR 900, way safer route. And I
don't think it would, personally, I don't think anybody in Talas or Bergsma would
mind those bicyclists coming through. So I guess what I don't want is tie
ourselves into a corner where we have that roadway and who's going to pay
for that? And the developer-- I think it would be a requirement of the development.
It'll be part of the-- OK. And that's where I'm coming from. If that's one
of the requirements or in return, the developer would say, OK, we will have that
roadway. OK, we will pay for that. And in return, then that goes into our
second session this evening. Are we going to approve that housing? RICK PEDOLSKY: We haven't
decided that yet. RICK PEDOLSKY: Right. That's what I'm saying is that if we recommend--
this is a recommendation that we're doing. And if we recommend that there is a
roadway, a secondary roadway to the council, and the council says, OK, the commissioner agreed
that there should be a secondary roadway, then we're going to go ahead and do
it. that goes back to, well, who's going to pay for that? And the developer.
And the developer comes back and says, OK, since I'm going to put a roadway,
I would like to have 78 homes in there. CHRIS RODGERS: If there's not 78
homes there, there's not going to be a secondary access. They're not going to be
a secondary access. DAVID BURRAGE: That the road is contingent on approval. And if it
isn't approved, then there's no road. But we're tying ourselves by recommending
to the council to have a secondary roadway. That's all part of the same process.
We're only splitting this up so that these people don't have to stay till midnight
like we do. to go over the second part of it. I think there's, yeah.
Yeah. And I don't want to belabor this point, but the thing is that I
think it's your neighborhood, it's our neighborhood. I've seen it grown, you know, and I
just don't think that we want to tie ourselves In the corner where, one, we
approve the roadway, and two, how are we going to do the neighborhood? We're not
going to. We're not going to approve the roadway? I don't know if we're going
to approve the roadway or not. We're not going to approve one without the other.
If there's no approval of the development, there's not going to be any secondary access.
I don't really understand that. The rationale? No. Commissioner, if we approve the road, but
we don't approve or don't recommend approval of the Berksman development, then there's no road.
There's no road. Right. And actually, I guess to clarify, we could be-- if we
decided to not approve the development in general or to recommend against approval of that
in general, But we had a recommendation for an emergency road. If the
council decided that they were going to approve the development, then they would have
our recommendation that if there is a development, that the connector road is emergency
access only. Right. Maybe we're looking at it differently. Maybe we should
say, you know, the development of the home, should we approve that or not? And
then if we don't approve it, then can we just approve an access route? We
chose to do it the other way. And so we're going to make a decision
on whether we make a recommendation to the council to approve the connector as an
emergency route. So the motion should be subject to approval of the housing
development and the roadway will be provided subject to the approval of the
housing development. In other words, if the housing, just like what we had
talked about, if the housing unit is not approved, then there's no roadway.
So the motion that you have, we have on the table right now
is to provide access road, the Newport way. And I would- As part
of the Bergsma development agreement. It is a connector, not
an access road. It is a connector that would connect
the existing talus to the proposed Bergsma. If the proposed
Bergsma is not approved by the City Council, then there's
no connector. There's no connector. There's no second. No. In
the purview of this objective, this meeting. So what we're trying to
do here is identify whether or not the connector road is recommended
by the commission. And if so, what type of roadway will it
be? And then after the break, we'll talk about the rest of
the deal. But if there's no Bergsma development approved by the city,
there's no connector, right? OK. All right.
OK. Are we ready to take further
discussion? So the motion is to allow
the construction of the connection as an
emergency access only connection. All those in
favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? So we--
fortunately, have approved the first portion of this meeting. So-- and I'm-- CHRIS RODGERS: Only
three more hours for the second half. DAVID BURRAGE: I just want to say, I
know there are probably people that are going to go because that was their real
interest. But I don't mean this to be taken wrong, but it always offends me
when people say that the commissions or the city doesn't listen. Because this is the
democratic process that allows us to be able to hear your concerns. And to be
able to take that into advisement, you've done an excellent job tonight. And I just
want to express my appreciation to you for doing that. Now, we're going to continue
on, but several of us are getting old and have issues that we need to
take care of. And so I would recommend that we take a 10-minute break if
you can hang with us in there. We had four or five people that really
wanted to talk on the second portion of this. So I appreciate your time. If
you can stay, we'd love to have you because your input has been invaluable.
CHRIS
RODGERS:
Absolutely.
Yeah.
CHRIS
RODGERS:
So
thank
you.
Let's
take
a
10
minute
break.
All
right.
I'm
going
to
bring
us
back
into
the
public
hearing.
We're
officially
started.
And
this
is
the
Windward-Bergsma
Cluster
Housing
Development
Agreement
File
Number
DA1600001.
We
just
got
finished
with
our
TALIS
connection.
And
now
we'll
be
moving
into
the
staff
presentation
on
the
remaining
components
of
the
development
agreement.
Chris. Okay thank you Mr. Chair. I just want to before I get into the
other components of the development agreement I did want to mention I did pass out
some additional attachments that were not part of your packet that went out a week
ago and so you each got copies of those so I wanted to formally enter
those as new attachments. Attachment number 10 is an affordable housing amendment. It's kind of
the red line legislative document that you have there. I'll talk about that in just
a minute Attachment 11 is the notice of action. This was that I showed you
a piece of it earlier today. It was from the 2001 City Council agenda bill.
And then attachment 12 was the letter from Brett Heath of Public Works Operations that
I read earlier. Attachment 13 was the letter from the Issaquah School District. And then
also since the packet went out a week ago, I've obviously received many more public
comments and those are all being bundled together as additional attachments. And those will all
be sent on to the city council with your recommendation.
Okay as we mentioned the the next part of this hearing is going to be
talking about all of the other components of the development agreement for the Windward-Bergsma Platte.
And in the city code, it talks about what pieces, what should be addressed
within a development agreement. And those include project description, site plan, open space, including
preservation of critical areas and buffers, the uses, affordable housing, the design and building
standards, and then a capital facilities plan. And all of those have been included
in the proposal you're viewing tonight. The first component that
I was going to talk about is the development standards because you see those specified
in the development agreement. Here we have the setbacks that are proposed. One deviation that
is requested with regard to the setbacks have to do specifically with the several lots
that are immediately adjacent to the city-owned property. Long story short, with a cluster
plat, you look at the setbacks for the exterior points of the entire development
and use the setbacks for that particular zone. As I mentioned earlier, the single family
estates zoning has really big setbacks, like 15 or 30 feet, depending on whether it's
front or side. They're asking to reduce those setbacks adjacent to the city property. And
again, because it won't really affect anybody, we are supportive of that. The development
agreement also talks about the pervious and impervious surface. Again, like the setbacks looking
at the entire site, the maximum impervious surface calculations are looking at the entire
site as well. So we're just acknowledging that of the developable area, they will
not be exceeding 30% of impervious surface for the whole site. And they'll be
well below that. It also addresses the minimum lot size within the plat.
Again, this is how you do the clustering is to allow lots smaller than what
the underlying zone would typically allow. And what's being proposed is 3,500 square feet for
the 74 detached single family lots. And then for the cottages, which will be attached
units, 3,000 square feet for those. I also wanted to point out that
the building height calculation is a little different than what is in the land use
code. That's mostly having to do with the challenging topography of the site and the
different lots. And I've included how the height would be measured from basically like the
center line of the road rather than the average of the grade. And again, I
can talk more about that if you're interested. Another component of the
development agreement is design standards. The Issaquah Municipal Code currently doesn't really have
design standards that apply to single family residences, but that's one of the benefits
we have of doing a development agreement like that, or like this, is that
we can include some design standards to ensure the quality of the homes. And
included in this particular development agreement are standards related to the orientation of the
houses, how corner lots are addressed, parking and driveway standards, garages again this is like
how far that having the garage set a certain distance back from where the door
is and stuff like that and home design including some colors and materials included as
well again with a standard subdivision you don't have a whole lot of possibility of
instilling design standards both the development agreement we do I've
also included as you saw in the actual development agreement there are several exhibits that
have minor deviations to the city street standards. Again those are exhibits 7 through 11
of the development agreement and we can address those if you have questions as well.
And I've included them here again if you had questions so we can refer to
them if we need to. Another component of the development agreement has
to do with open space and in this particular proposal there is 4.7 acres of
common usable open space that's being included. When we see the site plan again those
were the kind of the darker areas that I was referring to. Those include recreational
tracks and they're the flatter areas so they're more usable. Again, that's the area that
under a traditional plat would be able to be developed because it's outside of critical
areas and buffers. But the critical area tracks, which is the critical areas and buffers
on this site is approximately 27 acres and they will be set aside as a
native growth protection easement. but they do include trail connections and with those trail
connections that link into the King County open space trails, there's a possibility
of the applicant dedicating those open space areas to either the city or
the county.
i think this is the last component i was going to talk about was the
affordable housing piece and what's proposed is that 10 of the total number of units
or eight units will be set aside as affordable housing units so as i mentioned
that beginning this evening there will be 74 detached single-family market rate houses and then
there will be eight attached cottage units that will be that will have to be,
have covenants recorded on them so that they are affordable housing. And as far as
the density calculation goes, how that fits in, when we did the initial calculation on
the number of units that could go into this plat based on the underlying zoning,
with the split zoning of SFE and SFS, we came up with 78 units.
Again, I could explain that calculation more if I need to. And for
the purposes of including the affordable housing, we're counting those as half units.
Currently, the Issaquah Municipal Code does not have a cottage housing section. And
so we looked at some other cities and how they do it and I
think I referenced a few maybe in the staff report but it's pretty common
for these smaller cottages to be counted as half units in density. The affordable
housing units will be limited in size for between 1,200 and 1,300 square feet
and if you look on the site plan again you can see where they
are. I'll go back to it in a second. But one of
the nice things about it is they're kind of evenly distributed throughout the
plat instead of just kind of tucked over in one particular corner. And
they also are required to meet, there's an affordable housing section in the
Issaquah Municipal Code that they need to meet the criteria of that. And
so finally, as I mentioned, the exhibit that I entered attachment number 10. I'm
specifically bringing up because it's a change that has taken place since the packet went
out to you last week. We've talked to the applicant some more and we've talked
to Arch who is the affordable housing advocacy group that we work with and they
made some suggested changes that the applicant has agreed to so I'll just kind of
mention what those are you can ask questions if you want to but mostly again
that what was incorporated from what you was was sent to you a week ago
is the the minimum size for the affordable housing units We wanted to ensure
because the conceptual site plan is just that conceptual at this point we want to
ensure that they continue to be spread throughout the development and then for the pricing
we wanted to make it we wanted to refer to the issaquah municipal code section
that already defines that to make it more similar to the code rather than a
little bit different which is what it was. And then the other
changes just had to do with the timing of the covenant for
how long it lasts and when that needs to be recorded. So
I kind of threw a lot at you real quick. But if
there's any questions about any part of that, we're here to answer
those. But I think that concludes my recommendation. Well, I will add
for the recommended the recommendation that will go to the
City Council. So there's three conditions that we're recommending. Two of them were in the
staff report. The first one has to do with meeting the conditions of the MDNS
and of the variance. The second one really had to do with, we noticed in
the street cross sections and the description of what was happening on Newport Way that
it didn't talk specifically about the lighting. So we just wanted to make sure that
the lighting will meet the city standard. So that's why that was specifically added. And
then the third condition again is to modify the affordable housing section of the
development agreement to reflect the changes that were included in that exhibit.
And then finally, I will just say the only reason there's
only three recommended conditions is because we've been working with the
applicant for a really long time and he's been very responsive.
There's been a lot of back and forth on this and
we're happy to have gotten it to the place it's at.
Thank you. Commissioners? I apologize for being Republican. Are we going
to see any elevations or any proposals as part of this
in terms of what I didn't see any in the packet. So
do we have any input at all, any requirement to review the
architectural aspects of the proposal, the application? Well, as I mentioned, there's
the narrative design standards that are included in the development agreement.
the only elevations you see in the as part of the development agreement
have to do with showing how the height will be measured but other
than that we don't have sample elevations of what the houses will look
like no But, okay, you don't have, I mean, you don't have those to
share or you've got them. I mean, the city is working with the applicant to
determine that or? No, not yet. That's a ways off. Like I said, the next
step after this will be the preliminary plat. And that is more laying out the
details of the lot, the details of the roads and infrastructure. That's the next step.
It's not until after that that we start to see actual building permit plans. So
if I can add, so the city generally doesn't do architecture review on single family
detached housing. Okay. So, you know, in TALIS, it's a different story. And they have
their own architecture review committee. Highlands has their own architecture review committee. But because this
is stand-alone, Not so much. Are you talking about the elevation
of lots or profile? No, no. Normally, normally, normally in our
community conferences and public hearings, we see elevation. We see what
the applicant is proposing to have the structures look like. OK.
OK. And it just wasn't clear to me if that's just not part of this
process. Yeah. If it was a traditional plat, we wouldn't be talking about it at
all. There is no design review for single family houses in a traditional plat. The
only reason we're able to incorporate some design is because they're going to development agreement.
All right. Christopher. Sorry, Randy. No, so just
to conclude that, so is it, at what point does the
applicant get green light to go ahead with whatever has been
agreed upon? And when will the public be able to understand
what the city has approved for the Bergsma development in terms
of its physical appearance? As I mentioned, this will be,
solidified in more detail with the preliminary plat approval and then the final plat
and those will go to the hearing examiner in a public hearing process. Again
that's laying out the lots, the open space, the parks, the utilities, that's all
focused on with the preliminary plat and final plat. Again, the design of
the houses now is the chance, if we're concerned about that, to incorporate it
into the development agreement. Because then what happens after the final plat is approved
is we start to get the individual building permits for each of these lots.
We go back to the development agreement to make sure that those building permits
reflect all of the standards that were adopted in the development agreement. Typically, we
wouldn't be involved in... This is only because it's clustered. Otherwise, if it was
subdivision, we wouldn't be involved in approving house styles or anything. That's right. That's right.
We're doing it to the degree that we are. Right, approving the development, but not
necessarily a design of the houses. Speaking of the houses, you said that there's a
variance from a 30-foot height to a 35-foot height. Is that right? Yeah. I mean,
currently in the existing land use code, it's measured from the average of the grade
to the midpoint of the highest gable and what's proposed is a
little bit different than that. The applicant can speak to this as
well. As far as where it's being measured from, either the finish
grade or the center line of the street and it's either 35
feet or not to exceed 40 from the center line of the
road.
If you want to know more, I would ask the applicant
to dig into it. There's a diagram on page 212 of
your packet. Yeah, so I was looking at those and so
on exhibit 6A, it shows 35 foot max from finished grade
and that 35 foot max that typically would be 30 feet?
In the rest of the city, it's 30 feet from the
midpoint of the grade to the midpoint of the highest gable. In
the midpoint of the existing grade or finished grade? An average of both.
Okay. And they're changing to- 212, Christopher, you've passed it. 212.
Okay, so this is showing how it would be measured for the detached single family
and then it's a separate way that it would be calculated for the cottage or
at least a lower standard for the cottages. Okay, so they're saying 35 feet from
the average finished grade, not the average of existing and finished. Right. Normally it would
be 30 feet from existing and finished and we're going to change it to 35
from finished. Right. So it could go up higher just from finishing it and another
five feet on top of that. So why would we go the extra five feet?
Yeah, I could have the applicant speak to that. OK.
And we can decide how we want to do this because I know the applicant
may want to make a presentation at this point. We know that the public wants
to make comments. So we can go through that. And then if you have more
questions, we can do a whole big question and answer. Why don't we do that?
OK. Why don't we do that? So should we have the applicant speak now? Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes, sir. So
I have not prepared a presentation this evening, but I can certainly answer your
questions regarding any of this and the building height first, if you like. Would
you introduce yourself? Oh, my name is Greg Krabbe. I'm with Windward Real Estate.
Thank you. So I just want to make clear I understand. So if what
Christopher said was our current code would be 30 feet from the average of
existing and finished grade, and the proposal is... In the back, the photo looks like
it's 35 feet just from finish grade. So it could be both higher from going
from the average to the finished and another five feet on top of that. Right.
And then up to 40 feet from the road center line. Yeah. And I guess
what would be the reason why we would do that? Okay. Well, let me start
first with where you measure the base measurement occurs at. So as you can see,
there's a lot of terrain in this site. When we grade in the roads, all
the roads are limited to 12 percent. A lot of the highs and the lows
in the lots get graded out as a result of the road grades. So there
will be circumstances where between two lots, existing grade could be quite a bit lower
than existing grade for the house next door or for the lot next door. So
what we want to do is create a homogeneous and consistent profile of the housing
roof lines as we go through the project. And so what we propose to do
is just measure the building height from the finished lot grade. Does that... And that
will be, in essence, at road grade? Well, closely. Now, we like the lots to
be a little bit higher than the road so that everything drains down into the
road. I mean, that's a natural solution. So what we've done is said that you
would have... up to five feet of variation. If the lot was up to five
feet higher than the road, then the maximum grade from road center line would be
40 feet, but the house would still be limited to 35 feet from the pad
grade. Okay. And part of doing this, part of approving this is because if we
were doing this on a non-clustered, excuse me, non-clustered basis, this wouldn't matter in terms
of the grade change. Is that right? It wouldn't matter or would matter? Well, it
would not because the homes would be so spread out. Conceivably, yes. Yes, exactly. The
standards we're proposing are very similar to Tallis'. In fact, the building heights, the maximum
building height is 10 feet shorter. Tallis' allows 45 feet. And we like the style
in there. I mean, it's an alpine look. And because they're three-story with the garages
due to the terrain and the step lots, It's pretty necessary to have that
flexibility in the building height. Okay. So Christopher, so we're consistent or less
than Talus then? I know we base that on Talus as far as
how it's measured and I think it is taller in Talus. Yes. All
right. Thank you. Mr. Chair, this may be a city staff question rather
than Mr. Crowley, but with the public admission that I'm
dyslectic and third grade math. I did not understand when
it comes to clearing the property. On page 23 of
219, the last sentence says, "The action proposes removal of
existing vegetation over 34% of the site. And when I
went back, when I read that and went back to page 11 of 219, it
wasn't, it isn't clear to me what there is, what appears to me to be
a discrepancy between the numbers that define critical area and develop what is planned to
be developed and the 34%. Now they're not Uh, one is in acres.
So is that that the reason that that's that 34% of the site
will have to be cleared? That's when you add up the, uh, the
acres in the various categories? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, um, This
says removal of tree cover will adversely affect the site's ability to filter
suspended particulates from the air and its overall aesthetic character. The action proposes
removal of existing vegetation over 34% of the site. And I assume that
that's that number, that 34% is the result of long study
and negotiation with the city over what is the minimum percent
of the site that must be cleared in order for you
to accomplish the objective you have. Absolutely, yes. Yes. It's both. I
mean, it's the minimum that we could clear and accomplish the density allowed, but frankly,
it's all the site really allows. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, the whole
point of the cluster is to compress the development. Yes, and that's what we've accomplished
here. I mean, there are upland areas here that are developable, but we're not because
we're going with the... We're not developing them or clearing them because of the cluster
development. OK. And this is definitely a staff question. Christopher, what is surrounding the Bergsma
site, aside-- we know where Tallis is. And there's county land to the west of
it. Is that correct? Yes, it's county open space to the north of it and
to the west of it. So all of that white space around the Bergsma site
is county open space? That's right. OK. And that's dedicated county open space. That's not
quite right. I mean, I could guide you if you would-- I'm pleased. I think--
Or you could use the mouse, too, on the-- OK. Where is it?
The cat ate it. Oh, got it. Okay. So this is owned by
PSE, and it's basically a stream with a power line running through it.
This is owned by a private party, but it is in the county,
oddly enough. This is all in King County and it's privately
owned. Well, actually it may be part of the park. This is owned by
King County and in King County and it's a park. Okay, so to the
left of the Bergsma site is privately owned. It's King County and it's privately
owned. Do we know how that is owned by King County? Oh,
it's large lot. Yeah. It's rural. Like one per five acres probably. Yeah,
it's like rural timber. I mean, it's not developable. There's no utilities. It's
not developable. No. In fact, I'm not sure if the King County Park
may wrap around. I'm not dead sure. And I just wanted to follow
up because one of the requirements I didn't mention for a development agreement
is that 15% of the entire site of developable area needs to
be set aside as open space. So it's 15% is again what you see
in the dark spaces there that could be built on, but because they're doing
a cluster, must be set aside as permanent open space. - Okay. - Christopher,
one of the, The second requirement is the improvements to Newport Way along
the development frontage. Could you point out on the map there the entire length
of the frontage that would all be developed then? Yeah, the entire frontage of
this property. It's significant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. And all that will have that
same treatment then with the sidewalks and bike lanes and everything? Oh, yes. Yeah.
I mean, forgive me for promoting my project, but it's a good thing for
you guys. Thank you. To follow up on that question, Christopher,
can you show us, is there an exploded view of Newport that
goes up to Gateway and so on? And the reason I'm asking
this is that we have, in the previous development commission meeting, specifically
with Newport, on both sides of 900, we've noted that the new
developments are required to put turn lanes in and
do very significant improvements of the road surface to
accommodate the development and paid very significant six-digit fees to pay for the
improvements. But our concern in the past has been that these are three lanes and
then back down to two lanes and then three lanes and then back down to
two lanes so that the overall, and I believe that we actually asked in what
may have been the last meeting, if the public could expect the result of all
these work to be an improved traffic flow over the length of Newport and
we were told no, that's not gonna happen. Where do the turns
-- do the improvements for approved developments, how do they show up there? Okay. Again,
here's the vicinity map that kind of shows that area. It's about the best I
have right now. But I would like to ask Doug Schlepp, the city engineer, to
maybe talk about those road improvements that are happening all along Newport Way in association
with the other developments. Both east and west of Newport. So my name is
Doug Schlepp. I'm with the City of Issaquah Development Services
Engineering and with this project starting at SR 900 there
are There's no development proposed here and therefore the existing
condition which is essentially three lane road section I believe
leading up to the intersection with center left turn lane
and then westerly and easterly or northerly and southerly travel
lanes along the Bergsma development While the frontage improvements
typically would require this developer to do frontage improvements
along their side, we've worked with them to grade
out the area for sidewalk along their property line,
but actually make the trail improvements on the opposite
side of the road. There's no development that's anticipated
along this corridor due to the fact that Tibbets Creek runs
along there. So we worked with them to put in the,
to design and construct the multi-use trail along that side of
Newport. And then continuing on, and I don't know why this, I
keep losing the arrow here. You then come up on the this side
of the road is the Riva development and I'm not sure if you've
seen plans for that. This project depending on who gets there first, they
would extend their frontage improvements for the trail along the
their frontage for Riva and then if Bergsma comes in after them
they would tie into that so you'd have a continuous multi-purpose trail
all along here through the Bergsma and Riva site and that would
include and I think we've got figures for the the Newport
Parkway. It would be starting from this side of the
road. I'm losing my, the This side of the road,
you'd have the 10-foot multi-use path, a 5-foot planter strip, 5-foot bike
lane, travel lane, a planted median, or a left turn pocket, another
travel lane, and then a bike lane. And then in this particular
case for Bergsma, a graded out section for a future sidewalk. And
we're working to figure out how to make that happen. sooner rather than
later. And those cross sections were included in the development agreement as exhibit 11. Okay.
And also we're working, we have met with the county. This parcel
here is not within the city and the city's border is along
the right of way. They're proposing, you heard comments about parking along
Newport Way. They're proposing a new trail head. They went out for
grant funding last year and received that grant funding. We've yet to
see them since we met with them last, but they will need
some sort of right away access permit. But for the most part,
all the design and permitting is within the county. But we'll be
working with the county to develop that parking and trying to work
with the county also on getting sidewalks along that stretch of road
as well. Since they are not within the city, the city does
not have purview over requiring that they put in sidewalks. Then you
get to, we heard some people speak that are from the Smammish
Point condos here. And then there's also Oak Crest. And then we
have the, I'm drawing a blank here. Anybody from this community?
Spyglass, excuse me. Yeah, so Spyglass. So this is an area where
the road would transition back to its existing configuration that it is
today. And then as you get to the Gateway project here, there's
a proposed frontage improvements along this stretch. This is a separate parcel
and the Gateway Senior Housing goes is right here so that you
essentially have Newport Way improvements from this actually this point right here
all the way to this transition back to existing and then transition
to new all the way to a point right here and then
transition back to existing. The city at this point is working
with, this would be Public Works Engineering, is working with consultants
to review the entire corridor from SR 900 to 54th up
to this point right here. So they'd be looking at all
of the improvements that are not being done by the developers.
So that's in the development. data gathering and preliminary design phase.
I'm not sure how far along the design will get, but the
city would be working with a consultant to look at those areas
that aren't improved by the developments that I've mentioned. Okay. And just,
there's a, there's a, significant transition area too so it's
not an abrupt change there's a required distance by standard on
transitioning back so if you have a center turn lane or
a median there's a certain distance that's required to transition back
to the two-lane road section. Mr. Chairman In the interest of
time, I wonder, for public input, do they need to sign up for
another sheet for public input? Is there another sheet or the same one?
We're losing folks here, and that's fine. I just want to make sure
that if they need to sign in, they have signed in already. Thank
you. Other comments, or should I? I'll open it up, and we'll get
the public comments. Our first commenter is Ken Eisman. Eisman. Eisman, sorry.
Christopher, could I ask your help again? There it
is. Thank you. Ken Eastman. I think I mentioned
before I'm a Issaquah taxpayer. I have two objections.
Where do they send the bill? What's your address?
I know we're going to get a race. I
have two objections. The first is, once again, we're
developing on steep slopes. So The elevation difference between Newport
Way and Harvey Manning Park is 250 foot. And here's some pictures of
what Bergsma looks like from Newport Way. If you haven't been there, I
would suggest that you take a good look at the terrain here. I
did a research search of the Issaquah Press website for landslides. in Issaquah,
98 hits. And I was quite surprised because I knew there had been landslides before,
but I was quite surprised at how many I found over the last 30 years.
And here's newspaper headlines. They happened in 2017 all the way back to 1989. And
the common thread here is virtually all of these happened because of development on steep
slopes. And then the king daddy of all of them, for all our TALIS residents,
the 2015 landslide on parcel 9 and I have to ask the question
does the city really have the expertise to regulate development on steep slopes
well you know there's eight situations here where I would imagine when asked
is this going to be safe is this development going to not cause
landslides the experts including the city no doubt said it's going to be
fine I heard the same thing at the preliminary plat hearing for parcel 9 and
7 and 8. It's going to be fine. All the brightest minds have said it's
going to be fine and the hill slid. And so I can only determine from
this that there is no certainty when you develop on steep slopes. So why are
we taking a risk again? And who gets to foot the bill? The taxpayer.
And there's headlines here about how the city is agonizing out of all these
problems about how to remedy landslides that went awry and developers leaving and the
city having to bail things out. And they go on and on and on.
And one of the things I would ask is that you ask the question,
how much is the security bond that is going to be required in this development
because i can tell you the security bond for talus parcel 9 was a pittance
it's not going to pay to permanently stabilize that hill when that developer decides not
interested anymore which it appears like he's not interested anymore 17 months later there's the
slide it doesn't look any different now than it did 17 months ago when it
slid and that's what we have to look at in talus
And one of the other speakers talked about the anti-aircraft creek culvert replacement. Well,
that was needed because of development as well. Here's a million dollar project that
taxpayers have to pay for. And you want to talk about development that stalled,
here's Talus Parcel 7 and 8. This is three years after the preliminary plat.
There's not one home being built up there. It stalled. Lawsuits. Steep slopes.
And our pump station, eight months they broke ground on this. We've had to look
at this for eight months. A beautiful community park here in Talus. Look at that
ugly building that they parked in there. That's our playground. That's what got done to
us because of development on steep slopes. And across the street, here's the pipeline. Six
months we've been looking at this, stalled. So why are we
doing this? Once again, we're anticipating and talking about development on steep slopes. It's complex,
it's disruptive, it's risky, and where's the benefit to us as residents? I understand the
benefit to the property owner and the developer, but as residents, where's the benefit to
us? Because at the end of the day, we take the risk and we have
to pay the bills. 88,000 cubic yards of topsoil have to be trucked down. There's
20 yards in that truck. You do the math. The noise, the mud, we had
to deal with this in TALIS, and it was only 20,000 cubic yards taken off
of Parcel 7 and 8. Those squealing trucks going down the hill one after another.
Do the math on 88,000 of the yards of this. Think about how many trips
this is. How do we come out ahead on this? I understand how the property
owner comes out ahead. At the end of the day, this is
not a good idea. There's too much risk and there's not enough
benefit. At the end of the day, shouldn't development really benefit everybody,
including the residents? Thank you. Thank you. Christy Anderson, you've been patient.
Well, I'll keep it very brief. My name is Christy Anderson. I
live at 2444 Northwest Stony Creek Drive in Tallis. And I would
just basically like to reiterate everything that Ken said. I'm one of the residents
at TALIS that drives up the hill every day and looks at what we've come
to call the white plastic mountain and it's been 18 months now and then I
come into my home, walk into my kitchen and there it is out my window
24/7 with the white plastic mountain and it's a steep slope and I'm wondering if
this is Bergsma's future and I hope it is not and at the very least
if you approve this project I would at least ask you
to when they start clearing land, don't do it
in November. Thank you. Larry Thornburg. Lori. Was I
not next? I said Larry, but I-- Sorry. I
was anticipating, but there's Larry, so I'll wait till
my turn. Sorry. I was just excited. You didn't
look like Larry. Good evening, my name is Larry Tornberg. I live
at 13422 209th Avenue SE in Issaquah. That's in unincorporated King County, another resident of
the May Valley Road. You've heard from at least two of us and there's several
of us in the audience and my wife who has left because we have a
grandchild that's being delivered here tonight or early tomorrow morning. So she would have been
passionate about this discussion. A lot has been said about May Valley Road. A couple
things that wasn't said is that there's some blind curves on the road. There's very
few, if any, shoulders on the road. There are some bridges that exist, and one
is on the county's urgent list to replace, but there's no money for it. So
this is a county two-lane road that has been served as a spoils route,
courtesy of Gateway for months and months and months. So that's my topic with all
of us tonight. This developer is proposing to remove 88,000 cubic yards of just soils.
That doesn't include the trees and everything else that might leave the site. So who
knows if that's doubled or not. Whatever amount it is, it's a lot. If you
were just to assume that you have 10 yard loads, You have at
least 8,300 trips leaving your development and through perhaps TALIS, perhaps through
other routes, but most likely if it's been like Gateway, it's gone
south on SR 900. Why did it do that? It's because the
city found that these truck trips were too onerous, too numerous, and
too disruptive, and they elected to kick all of those trucks off of city
streets and the only alternative was to send it south and SR 900 when it
goes far enough south on S 900 they take the easiest way to their route,
which is the May Valley Road and we saw thousands of truckloads come through us
for months and months and months. If this is proposed as a development here, we're
going to see as many as 150 trucks a day go right past our house.
That is a lot. And we saw a truck six days a week. And I
would urge you to, if you're going to move forward on this, to set some
conditions. And this is what I would like to see, that the contractor, the developer,
be required to develop a materials management transportation plan, that that plan would monitor truck
traffic in and out of the site, that haul trucks should log their destination and
their route, and this is for both incoming and outgoing trucks. What we said is
that there could be as many as 8,300 trucks if there were 10 cubic yard
loads. That's one way and most of us talk about round trips but really it's
a separate trip coming back again. Many of these trucks will come back with structural
fill material. As many loads as you take off, I'm going to bet that there's
70 or 80% of that amount that will come back in as structural fill material
for this development. I think the truck should be covered by tarps that was mentioned.
We don't see that we've lost two windshields ourselves told by the Trucking company that
you have to stop the trucker you have to get his ID you have to
get his truck number And if you don't have those things they won't pay for
the windshield so very disruptive and and Again, we were covered. We were not covered
twice and We also believe that these trucks should be prevented from hauling
on weekends, that five days a week is enough, and we should at least have
two days of peace on weekends. There are alternative routes to the May
Valley Road and it's imperative that May Valley not be one of these
truck routes. We need to move this spoils to major traffic routes and
these are the options. I-90 going east to SR 18. It can go
west to 405 and then south. It can go on SR 900 continuing
south past May Valley Road. It can go on 167 and 169 and
all of these routes match the destinations where much of this material has
been going and is likely to go on this route.
These are primarily our concerns. Again, if my wife was here, she might
have some other passionate comments to offer, but I would at least like
to have you consider these conditions should you decide to move forward on
this development agreement. Thanks for this opportunity to comment, and I appreciate your
service. Thank you. Karen? Porterfield. Now it's
your turn. And you look like a Karen. Yeah, that looks like Karen.
Karen Porterfield, Tallis resident and a citizen and taxpayer of Issaquah also. And
I will just start with, I was a multifamily affordable housing developer and
community facility developer for the Salvation Army for more than 10 years in
Washington, Idaho, and Montana. I've heard no a lot. Doing that kind of
work. So I understand what I'm saying tonight when I have this conversation with you
I want to start out by saying that is a clock committed to the central
is a clock plan It's a really good plan. A lot of us worked really
hard to craft it This does not meet nor support the central is a clock
plan this particular proposed development requires significant variances Let us note that anytime a
variance is requested, you can say no. Many times we get the feeling in
this community that developers get to always hear yes and citizens get to hear
no. So please understand you have this opportunity tonight when we're looking at looking
at a clustered site request. This is a variance. You can say no.
There were significant variances that the hearing examiner gave that requires a vote
by the city council. That's pretty unprecedented to have to go back to
the city council. So when the city council says how come we are not
meeting our goals for the Central Issaquah plan, that is because we are happily handing
out variances on steep slopes so people can build in marginal land. If we said
no to these types of developments, we would see more development going on on the
floor here in the valley as part of the Central Issaquah plan. I
also want to point out, we have talked also about roads. Well,
this is a steep slope with marginal land that will require a lot of fill.
If we actually have a significant earthquake, I'm putting my money that Tallis Drive is
going to be in a whole lot better shape than this road is. And if
you're going to count on this road for a secondary access out, I think you're
going to be disappointed. So please do not see that as a significant potential for
saying yes. I also want to point out that we've had the
conversations around affordable housing. Within TALUS we have Rosecrest, which is a wonderful part of
our community, 51 units of between one and four bedrooms, all extreme low income housing.
So I think that within Issaquah, and certainly me working for the Salvation Army, support
this. So when we have the conversation that we should be able to do
clustered housing because we're building eight units when yet we can point to the
Atlas, which is 344 units and no affordable units set aside. We have to
question the vision of the city and how they want to carry out affordable
access for housing. It seems piecemeal and not focused. The last thing I want
to leave you with is One of the things we teach as the basics of
building cities is the further away you get from 90 degree angles, the more expensive
it is to deliver services, whether it's sewers or water. The other thing we teach
is The steeper the slope that you put your resources the sooner they fail
no surprise They're under higher pressure so when we look at sewers when we look
at water when we look at those basic service deliveries that cities are required to
do it costs the taxpayers more money you build housing in a place like this
proposed development than it would on the floor here in the valley and And so
in some ways, some of these conversations can be what I call penny wise and
pound foolish. Wow, we've got a developer who will develop 100 or 200 feet of
our roadway on Newport so we don't have to pay for it. Yet we are
not looking at the long-term impact on the assets of the city and what it
costs to maintain them and replace them. And for cities, that's our roads, that's our
sewers, that's our water. This is a primary requirement for us. And yet we have
not had the conversation about what those costs are going to be, what the long-term
impact is going to be. And frankly, I hope most of us who live here,
we're planning to be here long-term, to be a part of this vital and vibrant
community. But what we are seeing here tonight is you are asking us to accept
additional costs so that a developer can take the money and leave. One
last point, the majority around Berksma owned by King County,
the parks, they are trying to buy more of that
land. They do have grants. They're working on that process
right now. Thank you very much and thank you guys
for being here so late tonight. Much appreciated. Geraldine Carey.
Do I need to give my address? Yes, ma'am. Give
my address. Geraldine Carey, 955 17th Avenue, Northwest.
I wasn't planning to speak this half but in the presentation on the
Bergsma property I came up with some questions. I want to address the
deviation about 30 feet to 10 feet when it backs up to the
park. It's been my experience that most people who back up and have
small spaces next to public property eventually take part of what's
public property as their own. And I want to know how you're going to prevent
the homeowners from encroaching on public property. So that's one. And I want to know,
in streets, you talked about minor deviations, and I want to know, is that narrower
streets? What are you doing for the deviations in the streets? Yes. And water
drainage, I understand that there's a lot of steep slopes. The water, is it going
to be just channeled into the waterways that are naturally on the ground or is
it going to be channeled into culverts that go into streams rather than downhill affecting
other property owners who are below the property? And I want to know about cuts
and fills. When you cut and fill and you fill, to make a
level surface, I think you're asking for slippage in property and who's
gonna be responsible for taking care of issues that arise from properties
that are not stable. I'm concerned about what's happened at TALUS and
I as a citizen do not like the idea that my taxpayer
money is going to cover that when the developer is walking away.
I think there should be something in the development condition that goes out beyond
maybe two or three years that exists now. I think that if a developer
knows he's going to be held accountable for 10 years or 15 years, then
he might not want to develop on steep slopes. And I don't know how
you change the conditions in development, but I think it's something the city needs
to think about. And I think Greg or somebody was talking about improvement. Well, you
know, the road improvement along Newport Way that they're planning is kind of to put
sidewalks and things in. But if traffic, if we have two or three accidents at
this entrance to Newport Way and they decide it needs a signal
a year or two years down the road, who's gonna pay for it?
Again, the city. I think you should say that if we have a
certain amount of accidents or safety issues are present that the developers should
have to pay for a street light or something that takes away the
danger. And I want to know, traffic wise, these trucks hauling the
88,000 cubic yards, which direction are they going to go? Are they going
to go into the intersection at 900? Or are they going to head
west on Newport Way all the way to Lakemont and then head back
on 90? If they come out onto 900 turn right, there's going to
be a significant backup. for that whole distance between their entrance
way and the intersection so i'm hoping i don't want to put
them in somebody else's neighborhood but it's essential that you stagger the
trucks or you do something so that people can move through the
intersection thank you for your time okay thank you steve perrier area
i am steve perera and i have messy handwriting sorry i live
at 170 northeast dogwood street uh here in this quarter about nine
and a half years So three points I think that I
wanted to make, or three topics anyway. The first in ISQA's
standards for how we measure how we're doing, it talks about
retaining your tree canopy at 51% for the entire city.
although that they've refined that a little bit more they're currently only at 48
of standard this proposal scrapes 34 acres worth of covered hillside and removes that
tree canopy permanently so we're going against the city standards and i don't understand
why that isn't being taken into consideration that seems i guess that's something that
should very much be part of your consideration Tied to
that is underneath that it talks about reducing the carbon footprint that Issaquah produces. I
link most ways people think about cars and transportation and mobility, but that's very much
trees that soak up some of the carbon that gets put out, gets absorbed by
the trees. Those trees being gone are not going to be there to absorb that
carbon footprint. So that needs to be part of the consideration. And that's according to
Issaquah's own documents of who we want to be So that's my
first point. The second point is I guess I as a citizen or resident of
Iswa, I don't see what I'm getting out of this proposal. People have talked about
the 88,000 foot of cart of fill that's going to be added. I don't know
what I'm going to get at having this permanent scar that's going to be made
to make this access available uh as well as the tree canopy being removed we're
going to have a steep slope that's going to be built on it's supposed to
be a quiet scenic area that's going to be permanently gone so i guess i
don't know what i'm getting out of this some perceived set and tied to that
i guess i get the idea of the secondary access it seems to make more
sense to me that we're covering up or we're trying to fix the deficiency that
wasn't part of the talus consideration If this existing Bush Road
access can be improved to provide that access, that seems to be
a more relevant proposal. I also haven't heard the idea of can
we allow access through TALUS for a smaller number of units that
would allow some development that doesn't need to have as much destruction
of property that is proposed. A third thought is this talks
about affordable housing to some degree. I haven't heard, and when we talk about affordable
housing, we talk about 70, 10, 10, 10, as far as the percentage and the
economic level of what affordable housing means. I haven't seen the proposal that talks about
what those statistics are of how affordable those are going to be. So I think
there's kind of a red herring here. I think that needs to be part of
the consideration. And part of the proposal I still don't know the eight
affordable units that some unknown affordable account isn't being proposed the other thing
I guess from a process perspective part of what I'm not understanding is
this seems that this should have been the first piece for consideration and
discussion and the second piece should have been the roadway bypass It seems
like if we talked about this piece Needs to be decided before
we do the second that's more logical place instead of already having made a
recommendation that we need to recommend a secondary bypass that seems to add impetus
for allowing the development we've already heard where we were police and fire were
asked for additional feedback on what those statistics were on how often their services
get used and yet we're approving something without having
all the facts. So that needs to be part
of the driver. And again, can we look at
improving Bush Road to allow that secondary access rather
than having a whole new scraped hillside? Thank you.
Are there any other public that wish to comment?
Please. I've already signed in, I guess. Yeah, I
didn't see two sheets, so. My name is Mary
Lynch and I reside at 2690 Northwest Oakcrest Drive.
I just want to continue because one of the things that I don't know if
you really fully understood what they talked about, what they're asking the developer to do
is to complete the north side of the road and the multimodal trail because the
city has no funding to do that. and having lived on Newport Way for 30
years, we were promised sidewalks and never got them. My concern is once again, we're
going forward with a development where the city has not identified how they're going to
fund the rework of Newport Way, but they're doing all this development. Also, one of
the reasons I wanted to complete this slideshow was right here, Further
down here is the entrance that's being proposed for Bergsma. Consistently, this is in the
evening. In the morning, we've got cars that are turning or coming straight across here
such that we can't get out of our development in the morning to head westbound
because of the amount of traffic. And I heard thrown out something like 11,000 trips
per day right now is handled on this road, which is to capacity. The only
way we're getting capacity on this road is because we're adding a center turn lane.
And so we're adding real estate. We're really not adding capacity. We're just adding a
center turn lane. But those are the games that you play with. The other thing,
and this is a little bit, picture is bad, but it's the only thing I
could catch, all these cars that come around the corner already, we're talking about narrowing
the lanes down, they already cannot stay in their lanes. Consistently these cars come this
way and they come into the bike lane as much as three feet. Basically I've
almost been hit several times a little bit further up when they're still coming around
this corner and aiming into the garage massage place, driveway where there are no berms.
The other thing that's happening is again, they're consistently blocking this. Nothing's been set up
to say, all right, where Berksmith comes down, how are these people gonna get out
of their development? And it also is on another one of the turns further down,
but this is consistent. The other thing is consistent. I wanna show you this, is
people are bypassing or trying to get around the red light, so they're coming down
into the right turn lane, coming down here and in any one of these entrances,
any one they can find, they're consistently from about 3 o'clock in the afternoon till
after the last car's back up here, are coming down, making a U-turn, going right
back so they can then go slip into the right turn lane and get through
the stoplight that way. The police are never there. They've been told about it, but
it's always happening. And again, these people are swerving in. So if you're walking along
the trail on this side, you have to be careful because you're almost hit by
these cars doing that. The other thing I want to say is the fact that
the sidewalks are on here. There is no proposal to put sidewalks on the south
side. So how are these people that are new up here going to get into
town or any place? You talk about walking, there is no way to safely get
across this street. Nothing has been proposed as far as a stoplight or to get
them there. So there's no walking ways that they can get to the park and
ride. You've got affordable housing proposed, but one of the things in the goals of
affordable housing is a close access to the transit center. If they can't safely get
to the transit center, you're not meeting the goals of the affordable housing. The other
big thing that no one wants to talk about is all of this property for
years, since I've lived here, 30 years, is a major homeless camp. What are we
going to do with the homeless up there? Where are they going to go? They're
existing citizens of Issaquah. They use our community center. They use our food bank. What's
going to happen with those people? Where are they going to go? Who's going to
get them out of there? So one of the conditions and things we need to
acknowledge if this goes forward is we need to find a place for those people
and we have not even started addressing that in the city. So we need to
go back and look to our goals, look to our policies and make sure when
we're planning these things we're looking for mobility, safety, and also treating us, the existing
citizens, with some sort of courtesy that we have knowledge and for 30 years the
city hasn't identified funding so where are they coming with the funding for Newport Way
to make all these changes that's going to make this project be even a viable
project. I don't see how it's going to happen. So you can pass it and
say you approve it. But you're also saying then you believe
that the city has all this funding to
do it, and I don't believe they do.
I'm not sure I've done this before. How
do I get to, sorry about that. First
of all, Chris is working that. Connie had
to leave to go to the airport, but
she said to pass on, We're supposed to be
doing this stuff on the valley floor, the density, and we're going
in that direction. What we're talking about here is the wrong direction,
and we need to be working to get our codes in line
and improve our Central Isabel plan to get the development where the
services are. Thank you. Please introduce
yourself again. Yes, I will. I'm David Kapler. I'm speaking right now
as Vice President for Advocacy at the Guelps Trails Club, if that
will maybe become a little more apparent here if I get this
open. One thing about the,
one of the better things about this proposal is at least it is talking about
clustering and not trying to use every square inch of the property some way or,
and is putting the density for the most on the less less sensitive lands.
It does get complicated because of the road issue and that almost
all the whole corridor of the main road from Newport up is
through critical areas in terms of the steep slopes, creeks, wetlands, and
not so much wetlands there. We are seeing a benefit of 12
and a half acres over here. Where did it go?
There's 12 and a half acres here that will be donated potentially to the, could
be kept by the homeowner association. They'd be crazy to keep it. But I would
think 12 and a half acres that's gonna go to the county or the city.
The county is in the green directly north of it. That's, and then comes down
to the trailhead. The county has just purchased the property that went on the west
side there. That's the end of a five acre parcel. The county is also bought
next to Harvey Manning Park, that two and a half acres strip there, and has
additional property to the west of Harvey Manning Park and the King County Park, actually,
and a lot of other additional property. The solid green line through that 12 and
a half acres is an existing trail. It's a beautiful trail. That's the neatest part
of the property with the big trees, the creeks, the vertical wetlands, practically.
It does need the little dotted area to connect there,
should be a requirement. It would be great to have
a trail down at the south end from Newport up
to there. That would be tricky to do. It's possible. The
green, the red there is, that's in line with Maple. And
if we can tie in the transit center with that bridge,
which Rowley has to eventually build a bridge over, Tibbets Creek,
that's the best place to do it because the creek is narrow, otherwise the
bridge would be several times longer. If that's there, that would be really cool
to connect the park and ride with 3,400 some acres of Cougar Mountain Park.
The upper part of the development there, trying to connect, there's an existing road
actually, trail road to get it over to the park. that's very conceptual.
The idea is connecting Newport to the park that way, getting up and
also connecting the upper part of the development to the park.
The Harvey Manning Park is not on park property. It's on this water
utility property. But the water utility property, the water is letting them be
there. So that is not a permanent park site. But hopefully the city
will never need another reservoir there and they'll continue to get to use
that property rent free from our water bill payers. Okay, the other issue
here, I want to, no, I'm lost here.
Parcel, road A, the main road, it does not need sidewalks
on both sides. And that's the idea of this green having
a trail. And the road and the trail should be between,
there should be a guardrail protecting that trail. They show that
the guardrail is shown outside of the trail. And it should
be-- the guardrail should be protecting that trail from the road. Get
the ice, snow potential on there. You want some more protection. Thank
you. And trucking is horrible. But what you're doing to May Valley
Road is-- that's the worst. I hope you can figure out trucking.
Sorry for going over time. KEN HOWARD: Any other comments from the
public?
Hi, my name is Rigel Ryerson. And I just wanted to, I think, mostly address
three things. One, the hearing examiner's findings of allowing the variances only if a secondary
means of access is not built. If you watch that video that day, I was
here, I was present when he was talking about asking questions and I think, I
don't know if anyone else was present, I think one of the things that he
came up during that discussion was he said, has anybody ever considered just having the
access through TALIS and not needing these roads? Because if you didn't connect to Newport
Way, would you then need all these three variances? And so at that point, I
felt that was when I felt he was like, oh, well, you only need one
or the other. You need this access or that access. Anyways, if you could watch
that video, and also, you guys are going to hear from the hearing examiner, but
maybe I think that that's why he thought, that's my interpretation of why he said
you don't need both. Anyways. And my second point is I guess, you know,
the CPI for Issaquah was it was researched, it was formed, it was
written, and then Issaquah is just going to grant all these variances and
I don't understand why. Like contractors should operate within those guidelines. That's what
the city set forth as their goal. Then you should build to
that and not ask for I don't know how many you know the building variances
and then the variances on each of these the setbacks and the heights of the
buildings. Why so many exceptions? And then my third topic was just more on the
steep slopes. So I live down here off Newport Way and on Good Place which
is the first road to the right up Cougar Mountain after
this Newport Way. I know that there have been houses condemned up
there and that are still condemned because the hillside is slipping. I
can't point them out. But I know that there are two separate
occasions that there are residences up there that have been condemned. And
one of them is just sitting vacant. It's like a squatter house
now because they can't fix the road. So I think that's it.
CHRIS JERRAM: Anybody else feel compelled to make a public comment? Or
awake? CHRIS JERRAM: Anybody awake? No. So let's close the public comment
period and open it up for commissioner discussion. Questions? Comments?
Mr. Chairman, I guess I want to express my appreciation for the neighbors
coming over to express what you desire. At times, we just don't know
what we may have in our own mind. This is what you want,
but you got to come down and tell us what your thoughts are.
I appreciate the neighborhood input. The other thing I thought was that our recommendation here
tonight is going to go to the council. I would urge you to go to
the council and let them know if it's a repeat of what you said tonight,
that's great. Go and tell them about it, regardless of what our recommendation is. I
think the council needs to hear what you have to say. This is getting late
and I understand that. We stay up, you stay up. This is our neighbors,
this is our city, so let's do something positive
out of that. My concern is, We have a lot
of development going on and I'm hearing this from the neighbors tonight too is
that Newport Way, there's a lot of development going on, Gateway, Riva, and then
there's some other development that's going on. We've always stressed the traffic issue. As
you know, that's the primary priority problem that the city is trying to solve.
Whether they're successful or not, we're working on it. There's roundabout, there's stoplights
issue that we can put in there. But seems to me, we haven't seen that.
And now we're, seems like we're throwing another development in there and all the traffic's
gonna go down into Newport Way during morning rush hours and then in the afternoon
everybody's gonna come up and run through all the streets and stuff like that. So
that seems to be contrary to what we're trying to do here.
and it just doesn't seem right, especially when we have an accident with the kid
getting killed a couple years ago. And what is the city doing about it? You
know, we put a slow down sign there, and yet some of you folks, somebody
mentioned that there's no police officer there. just a sign that says you're
going over the speed limit, slow down. Most of us slow down, but
yet we're not doing anything physically to improve the traffic flow in there.
Now we have this development. So I guess I'm a little bit concerned
about that. And again, the second thing is that it's a slight area,
deep slope. I'm an architect and things like this happen and you don't
want to get into that and you're playing with mother nature and
you don't want to do that so i have very deep concern about
putting roadway there putting homes in there so that's um that's my comment
so um i'd like to focus the conversation just a wee bit um
so just so that you guys are remembering what the question is.
The question is clustered subdivision or standard subdivision, not clustered subdivision
or no development. So they can develop their property. It's private property. They have development
rights and they have zoning to develop on it. So really the question, the first
question you guys should be thinking about is development agreement. Is there any benefit to
clustering this or should we let them just stay with the standard zoning rules and
do whatever it is they want to do that way? Do we have to get
into that agreement? So there's an agreement that So if you guys think that
clustering, there's some advantages and Christopher identified why the staff feel there's some advantages to
clustering the project, then there has to be a development agreement. And the development agreement
gives the city the opportunity to put some added requirements in there, but also to
potentially deviate from some standards if it makes sense. So it's kind of a give
and take opportunity. if that's what's desired. But if the
site is not suitable for development... That's not your call.
Well, it's our call to recommend no development. No, a
development agreement or cluster development agreement or standard subdivision. That's
the question. So it's the council who would say, yeah,
we want to go ahead with the agreement or not.
Yes. What I'm hearing? You're recommending to the council cluster development
or standard subdivision. It's not a question of development. Yeah, and
I can understand that. Okay. So when the time, when we're
done with the discussion, then we can vote on it then.
Thank you for the clarification. I guess a couple of things.
One, I guess what I wanted to point out, Ms. Anderson
mentioned don't clear land during November. And I did want to
point out that in the, and I just lost it, but in the
requirements, the condition site preparation will be scheduled for drier summer and early
fall months from April to October. That is covered. The question came up,
I think it's a good suggestion and it's covered in the requirements. Mr.
Pereira mentioned scraping 34 acres, I thought I heard. but I think
it's 34%, not 34 acres. So I just want to be clear,
we're not scraping more than 50% of the site. And Ms. Lynch
mentioned, I think Mary said no sidewalks on the west side of
the development, but from what I read, there's a five foot sidewalk
that would be built on the west side. So the requirement says,
Condition two, one 10-foot sidewalk on the east side of Northwest Newport
Way and one five-foot sidewalk on the west side of Northwest Newport
Way. And then I guess a question, Mr. Kepler, could you explain
more? Is it okay if we bring him up to explain more
about the guardrail and the trail? I want to be clear because
if we want to consider putting some condition Regarding that tour. - The
idea is, where there's a guardrail, so that for all protection for vehicles, put that
in between the pavement and the pedestrian facility and not on the other side of
the pedestrian facility. - Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I wanted to kind of
see where that was and where the other, where there are two sidewalks and where
a sidewalk would be taken out and so forth.
Because we don't have very much detail down at that street level
from a top down view. Right. Now, this is the uphill deal.
So if a car kind of loses it there, you're up against
retaining wall. And if you look at the things I've seen, they're
talking most of that that road, a road from Newport up to
where the houses start, has some form of retaining wall on the uphill side
and also on the downhill side in many cases. But if a downhill car
loses it, you're on that sidewalk with a retaining wall and you're trapped. And
I just don't see a need to have two sidewalks. We're got a,
there's no houses on for 1,000 some feet or whatever
on this thing. So it's not like you need to
cross in the middle of it. If you kept one
sidewalk and... Okay, I swear I saw... Okay, that's right.
Okay, so what you want, but I would say you would want the sidewalk over
on this other side. Excuse me. Yes, they've got it down. The idea was they
could go to one sidewalk if they had a trail that kind of duplicated that
same route. But what my thought is, is you... have a guardrail say there
and a sidewalk right there. So you have some protection from a car
that's going down on this north facing, fairly steep. You'd rather have the
sidewalk on the downhill side. Yeah, and have a guardrail between the sidewalk
and the cars. And then the sidewalk, there'd be nothing to prevent you
from the sidewalk falling down the hill? Well, there'd be a retainer. Yeah,
the downhill side? So that you don't fall down the hill, you plunge down the
hill. Well, yeah, okay, so maybe you'd have the, there'd be a guardrail to keep
the cars from there and perhaps a fence at places where it's a big drop
down. So if there's a significant drop, and I forget exactly what the vertical feed
is, I think it's four, I think it requires a handrail. So there'd be the
guardrail for the cars, there'd be the pedestrian facility, and if there's a potential fall
opportunity, there'd have to be a handrail. A handrail, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's not... I
guess the sidewalk up against the retaining wall would be much like the retaining wall
behind Fred Meyer. We've got a downhill slope and a sidewalk and a retaining wall
there. Yeah. It doesn't have a guardrail, but... I'm just trying to
give the pedestrians some protection in not being trapped. Right. Okay.
It's amazing how many retaining walls they have to do. Thank
you, David. Thank you for calling me back. Any comments? Any
questions? Yes, Mr. Chair. I'd like to point out something, and
that is that I moved to Issaquah in 1989. And
my first civic involvement was to participate in vehement opposition
to TALIS and the Highlands. Because my house looked out
at the forested hillsides and I was irate that we
were going to mow down trees to put in these
cluster houses and so, The point is that I've
learned that development growth is absolutely unavoidable. The only question
is how do we handle it? And folks, if you
want to know why it's unavoidable, get yourself the February
2014 edition of Sunset Magazine, the title of which is
Best Places to Live. And Sunset Magazine, Best Birb in
the West, Issaquah. That was three years ago. So the
point of this is we are faced here at the D.C. tonight with
a decision about how do we accommodate growth with someone who owns the
land, has complied with the code, and it's a very clear choice. It's
a compromise, and that's the way this system is supposed to work. We've
had a tremendous amount of your input today, and we can't tell
you how much we appreciate this. And frankly, a lot of the input that we've
seen tonight is the best prepared that I think we've seen in a long time.
So, are we going to be able to please everybody? No, we're simply not gonna
be able to do that. Individually and collectively, we try to make the best decision
that we can about how to accommodate the people that want to do business in
Issaquah and that want to live here. And, you know, frankly, I believe the primary
duty of government, me personally, is the same as medicine. Do no harm. But it's
really a question when you live in a place that is as popular as this
of how little harm are you going to do. And that's what we're trying to
get through here. I have reservations about this application as I've had reservations
about many earlier applications, but you do the best that you can. I
think that everybody involved here, and I particularly think that you should realize
that your input tonight will have an effect, a positive effect in a
lot of regards from your presentations here. That's it. - A couple of
thoughts I had too was that one is that Ms. Ryerson brought up
the question about why so many variances and it's a, my understanding, well part of
the code it says development agreement may deviate from underlying district standards identified in the
land use code in order to achieve components listed above. Part of this whole thing
with the idea of clustering development instead of having development spread out over the entire
site is if you get the benefits of clustering, you can then have variances from
what the code might say. And so typically we don't get into variances for things
and it is rare, but it's one of the tradeoffs that's built into it. And
the idea of, to me, of saying that we should only, we should not allow
development on any slopes because everything should be in the valley floor doesn't fit with
what's allowed in code and zoning. By the centralization plan we didn't intend to say,
Any new development will only be in the valley floor and
nothing else on the hills. I don't think that was an
intention of it. It's a tough site, but again, the decision
for us is this development agreement, recommending this development agreement, or
if we were recommended against it, they would not do cluster
development. Then it would be a standard plat. I guess one
other question that came up. Mr. Eastman was the bonding
of slopes, roads, things like that that get built.
If a road fails in three years on a
steep slope, is that the city's responsibility or? So
the city has increased our geotechnic review of properties
following the TALIS slide. And there's a condition that
was in SEPA
So there's the geo, so 29 on page
35 of your packet. So it talks about
doing test pits every 200 feet. To make sure that
because what we found when they were building the Sunset Interchange is they did a
bunch of borings, but they missed the big boulders. So then they had to go
back in dynamite that was unexpected. So what we do know is, and I would
agree with the testimony, construction is not a guaranteed thing. And, you know, you can...
do as much as you can and the city has increased its level of
safety by adding the number of geotechs that actually look at these things before
we allow for clearing and construction. And that's a higher bar than was in
existence when the TALIS projects went through. You know, is it foolproof?
No. But we are relying on the experts in that field
at this time. So what I can say is, you know,
the surety bond, to answer your question, Right now, we
have provisions in the city code for how much that is,
but this is a development agreement. And if the commission is
concerned about that, it can make a recommendation to the council
to consider added financial securities related to restoration. The comment that we should
put something in place for 10 years so that if the road fails
10 years from now, my guess is financially the contractor's not going to
be able to do that. You can't tie up cash that long. So,
but to cover a potential if they got into the property, found
some soils that they didn't know about and basically wanted to walk
away. That's really what the security is intended to cover is going
back in and basically revegetating a parcel that's a walk away parcel.
So I don't disagree with the statement that Ken made that maybe the security amount
that the city is collecting may not be enough for these complicated pieces of property.
So if the commission is concerned about that, I would definitely highlight that for the
council as one of your recommendations. And then we could address it with the council
in terms of whether what value might make sense. - Keith, I
recognize that May Valley is, not only do we not deal with
traffic as a commission, but this is in King County, but is
it, possible for the city and King County to collaborate on addressing
the concern, the specific concern about May Valley Road being used now
that the city has taken the step that it's taken to remove
those trucks from city arterials to come up with some kind of
guidance for, if not rules, for contractors, not just in Issaquah, but in,
you know, in this general area, but specifically for, in time for this to be
in effect. And I know that there's a jurisdictional nightmare, but it still seems to
me to be an opportunity to see if there is an alternative, specifically 90 to
18, and then out without putting that traffic on May Valley. I mean, it's,
it's a result of the city decision. It is. So the
city was, I mean, I think sunset was one of the
biggest issues that the city was facing in terms of cut through
trucking activity. And so, you know, when we kind of got into that
issue, you know, basically what we did is we cannot control SR 900,
we cannot control I-90, those are state facilities, right? And so the contractors
basically have those two routes to bring material in and take material out
of the city if it's not going to be sourced locally.
You know, once it goes down 900, if they choose May Valley, because that's the
easiest thing for them to do, the city, it starts to get really hard for
the city to even monitor that, and let alone have any kind of enforcement activity.
The county has not come to us and asked for any kind of conversation about
that issue. Um, it doesn't mean that it's not a problem for the folks living
on May Valley. Um, but I don't have a better answer than that tonight. Um,
I think that the 88,000 yards is a concern for the city council as well.
And I guess as you guys start to tick off kind of issues that you
that are red flags for you, um, I think that that would be definitely part
of the benefit for the city council is understanding of these conversations and the components
of this project. What are the things that, you know, besides just whatever recommendation you
make at the end of the day, if it is to support a development agreement
in the clustered project, what are those issues and topics that you want them to
spend more time on? Shine a spotlight on it. So that's going to give staff
the opportunity to dialogue with the mayor's office and see if we can come up
with some maybe mitigations or proposals for something like that. But I don't have one
off the top of my head. Excuse me, Mr. Chair. What is the city doing
about the traffic on Newport Way now? Do you know? Is it? In a
study mode right now or? In what way, Commissioner? So the traffic that's there.
On Newport Way. So it's traffic-y. Yeah, with all the development that's going in
right now. So all of the, so it's obviously there's more, well, so right
now, and I live in Bellevue and drive Newport myself many times. So right
now it's a mess because of the construction. It's not just the construction at Gateway,
it's the anti-aircraft construction. It's going to be followed by the Riva construction and maybe
by the Bergsma construction. So the construction traffic is the biggest impact right now. But
as I was mentioning to Geraldine, you know, you get an accident on I-90 and
everybody peels off. right and they're either using Newport or they're using Westlake Sammamish depending
on which way they're going whether they're going to Sammamish or whether they're going to
Renton or May Valley or you know Maple Valley or whatever so so under normal
times and there might be normal times somewhere in the future you know the the
main traffic impact of all these projects isn't here yet right because there's nobody living
in Gateway right It's not worse yet, but it's bad. Right. And most of it,
as you heard tonight, you know, when TALIS -- so I used to
live in Kent, and I used to actually drive SR900. And before TALIS,
SR900 was horrible. And then Talus came along and they built a bunch of
capacity in SR 900. And over the 15 years that has been Talus, it's
now filled up again, right? So there's so the mayor hosted a transportation
summit last year to talk about these regional traffic issues because they're a problem
and they're only going to get worse as Izuquac continues to grow, as Maple
Valley continues to grow, as people are driving through our community. There are no
answers yet, but a lot of people are trying to figure out how to
work on those bigger transportation commuting issues. Okay, okay. So for the
citizens that's here and for this citizen of Issaquah, they're wondering, we had
an accident, kid got killed, it was traffic and now we got more
development going in. What is the city doing about it? It sounded
like there's not a whole lot of -- So there was a traffic study done
on Newport, and part of the reason that the -- so the speed limit got
reduced. Part of the reason why there's a roundabout going in as the traffic control
device on Gateway instead of a traffic light is coming out
of that safety study. And so I guess I wouldn't say nothing's
being done. I think there actually was things that have been done.
But part of -- and I would agree with Ms. Lynch's comments,
part part of what you need to get on Newport is a complete road with
sidewalks on both sides. And you know, then it is going to start to function
more like a city street and less like a throughway from here to Bellevue. Because
right now there's no driveway, there's very few intersections, there's a few driveways on it,
but a lot of the reason why people go as quick as they do is
because they're not worried about somebody pulling out in front of them. As some of
these things start to infill, I think you're going to see some of the driving
habits change a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit.
Thank you. Okay, sorry, but I still got questions. I would be surprised
if you didn't. So the development agreement itself, there are a couple things.
Sorry to bring these up before. Open space tracks in item three mentions
all open space tracks shall be owned and maintained by the homeowners association.
Does that mean those would be private open spaces for only use by
the homeowners or? So there's -- so the open
space -- so, well. So there's going to be a variety of open
space tracks, right? Some of it is just preserved forested property. Some of it will
be actual recreation space, right? So the forested places, there's conditions in here about like
where there's trails that there needs to be a public access easement for those trail
locations so that the public can use those trails as a whole. Usually like on
a neighborhood park space, we usually don't get like an easement to the full
public, right? And it's part, it's paid for by the HOA, it's on private
property. It's most likely that, you know, you or Richard aren't gonna drive to
this neighborhood and use that little green space. - Right, right, okay. Yeah, I
just wanted to clarify, I guess. And then in item six on the park
dedication,
I guess the wording on it says the owners agree to dedicate to convey
track day should the city or King County decide to accept such dedication and
should that say should the city or King County decide to require such dedication?
Just the verbiage of it. In other words, it's sort of like well if
the county decides to accept it but should it actually say require it?
I could see that either way. Yeah. Sorry, just minor wordsmithing. I know it's
late at night. And then in item D on page 10 of 35 of
the agreement, just to point out on affordable housing and Mavis changes, but the
first item in D is principal with PAL, not PLE. And then the last
point, I think my last question, in item 14, general provisions, It says the
term of the agreement shall remain in effect for a period of five years. And
then that's C. And then D says the terms of this agreement are intended to
be and be a binding agreement and a covenant running with the land. So I
got confused there. Is it just a five year agreement or does it run with
the land? So I think that I'm not looking at the words.
So the development agreement I think is intended to last for five years. The covenant
on the affordable housing will be the long-term thing. So this is the terms of
this agreement are intended to be in shall constitute a binding agreement and a covenant
running with the land. Senator D? Is that 14? That's D. That's 14 D.
What? No, I'm sorry. Oh, in 14D on page 197 of 219. So
item C says the term of the agreement is five years. Right. And
then it says agreement is binding and runs with the land. Does that
mean they only have five years to act on it? That was the
intent is that they would need to process their preliminary plat within five
years. Otherwise the agreement would expire. then it sort of sounds
like even if they didn't do something, it would still
be running with the land and restricting them. So, yeah,
I think, I mean, I think D, so the term
of the agreement, so under C, I think it's, so
term, the length of this agreement shall remain in effect
Or the duration. I mean, it's so I think I think what C is is
really about duration and not terms. I think terms is wrong in C. I think
that's really talking about the duration of this agreement shall last for five years. But
then The terms of this agreement are like the benefits that are granted
to the public through easements and covenants and whatever is granted to the developer.
That's intended to run with the land. If it's implemented, right? Should C actually
say that if the development agreement is not acted on within five years that
it expires? I think you could, if you want it to be that clear, I
think we could say that that's the intent of that section. And I don't feel
like we need to make that kind of change, but because I'm assuming that's something
you can do just internally to make clear. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll get that
one. Yeah, I think it was confusing. Okay. Okay. All right. I want to ask
you more questions. Ask away. Any other discussion, questions? Anybody care to make a motion?
Mr. Chair, based upon the application draft agreement and
associate exhibits did... Sorry. Mr. Chair, I move that
the Development Commission recommend approval of the Windward-Bergsman Development
Agreement, file number DA16-00001, as presented in the staff
report dated April 19th, 2017, subject to the following
conditions. Condition 1: All of the conditions
of the variance file number vary VAR 16-0001 and
the conditions from the mitigated determination of non-significance file
number SEP 17-00002 must be met. Condition 2: The
V Newport Way section under capital facility shall be
revised to the following as shown on page 12.
Condition 3: Section 10 on
affordable housing shall be amended as shown
in DA 16-0001, attachment 10. Condition 4,
the city council shall consider stronger bonding
requirements for any road work or work
in steep slopes. And condition 5, the
city council shall consider more extensive truck
route restrictions. V. V.
Um, need a second. There be in addition, part of that truck
route or the construction traffic, uh, restrictions. Could there be a part
of that that says that it's- You're not, you're not on Randy.
Uh, could there be a part of that condition that, or, or
a subsequent separate recommendation that the city, uh, initiate, uh, discussion with
King County? regarding construction traffic that is now affecting
King County residents. It's not, they're out of our
hair, but I just really think that there ought
to be a proactive effort and if the county
isn't stepping up and doing that, then I think
I don't think it should be a condition, frankly. I don't think it should be
a condition. I think it should be worded as a, and we also recommend that
in light of the public input. Well, first of all, actually, I think we need
probably a second to the motion. I second. Okay. And if I could just funnel
your broad request down a little bit. So how about rather than impacts to the
county specifically to May Valley residents? Because that's, I mean, I think that's, it would
be easy to have that conversation with King County as opposed to countywide trucking impacts.
I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. I meant May Valley. Just trying to
lessen my load. Yeah. All right. And that's not-- and I think that I
personally would rather see that as a recommendation, not as part of a
condition. But our condition is just part of a recommendation. So that could
potentially be, here's what we recommend on this application, and the commission recommends
that the city reach out to King County to discuss the impacts of
trucking from Issaquah on our neighboring May Valley residents. - So I
guess just to push back a little bit, to me, 88,000 week
arches is a lot of, I mean, this is a big, you
mentioned it, Jerry, this is a whole lot of truckloads going through
town. And I'd feel strong enough to have actually wanted in our
recommendation to them. But I would feel like if the
City Council considers more extensive truck route restrictions, and I would say instead of saying
they have to go talk to King County, tell them what they have to do,
I'd rather say, especially with regard to May Valley Road. That's fine. And what kind
of outcome do you want to see? You just go talk to them and say,
okay. No, I just think I want to express our opinion that it's a lot
of truckloads. We think maybe they should. Because it's a bigger question. I think
it's beyond our pay grade. It's absolutely beyond our pay grade. I mean, the
ideal that is implicit here is that there would be alternative routes identified by
this cooperative effort that would alleviate the pressure that has been put on May
Valley Road and residents as a result, primarily as a result of a City
of Issaquah decision. Yeah. I don't know what kind of
results we'd-- I don't either. Yeah. I mean, that's not our-- we're just recommending that
we understand that this is a significant issue that is a result of development in
Issaquah. And we think there ought to be a discussion about alternatives. Yeah. That's about
all I think we can do. So I'll amend my condition. to say
the City Council shall consider more extensive truck route restrictions,
especially with regard to May Valley Road. Is that acceptable
to the second? Because it'd have to talk to King
County to do that. Yeah. Does that need a second?
No, the second agrees. That's the discussion after the second.
Thank you. Further discussion? I was going to mention, I'm
concerned about slides, but Your comments a few minutes ago
about the city already increasing the number of geotech surveys that
have to take place, that's henceforth for all future developments, right?
That's not specific to Bergsma. No. So that was a direction from the mayor's office
after the parcel nine that we needed not just suspenders, but belt and suspenders. So
we have two geotechs in our stable right now, Shannon Wilson and Golder Associates, to
do double peer reviews on the geotech reports that come in on development proposals. Yeah,
that's good. Okay. Then I don't think we need to do that.
So all those in favor of the motion signify
by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed. All right. So
your next meeting, April 5th, I believe. May 5th.
May 5th. Holy smokes. Architectural consultants for central Issaquah
will be back for round two. So hopefully that
will be a fun meeting. So The few remaining, I once
again want to express our real appreciation. Like Commissioner Harrison said, the input from the
public was excellent, probably as good as we've seen. And really, I hope you can
walk away from this saying, well, at least they listened. At least it changed or
had the-- it did change what our decisions might have been. So we really appreciate
it a lot. Really appreciate you hanging in there. And with that, I'm going to
close the meeting. Anybody for breakfast? I just add one thing. I would really
encourage you to attend the council meeting. As a neighborhood, I think you should. I
don't know if you've attended any of them. You should go attend it.