Development Commission · Wednesday, April 19, 2017 · City Council Digest

1. CALL TO ORDER

Commission Membership

packet pp.3

Open packet at p.3 ↗

Staff report:

Development Commission About Staff Liaison Created in 1983, this commission reviews all land Christopher Wright, use actions requiring a Level 3 review. The Project Oversight Manager Commission further serves as an advisory board to Email the City Council on land use actions requiring council approval (Level 5 review). Regular Members 2018 - Vacant The appearance of fairness doctrine prohibits 2018 - Raymond Leong Development Commission members and City 2018 - Richard Sowa Council members from discussing the merit of 2019 - Michael Brennan specific land use development applications outside 2019 - Randolph Harrison of the formal public meeting process. Citizens, 2020 - Melvin Morgan however, may discuss any issue with the City's 2020 - Kevin Price Development Services Department. Written comments are also welcome. Alternate Members 2017 - TJ Ginthner Membership 2017 - Vacant The…

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Minutes of April 5, 2017 Clustered Housing Development Agreement, File No. DA 16-00001

packet pp.5–10

Topics: Housing

▶ Watch from 1:51 Open packet at p.5 ↗

Staff report:

CITY OF ISSAQUAH DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION MINUTES April 5, 2017 City Hall South 135 E. Sunset Way Council Chambers Issaquah, WA 98027

Staff Presentation

▶ Watch from 2:44

Public Hearing Comments

▶ Watch from 3:37

Applicant Presentation

▶ Watch from 4:30

Commission Discussion

▶ Watch from 5:24

Staff Presentation Development Agreement

▶ Watch from 6:17

Applicant Presentation - continued

▶ Watch from 7:10

Public Hearing Comments - continued

▶ Watch from 8:03

Commission Discussion - continued

▶ Watch from 8:56

Commission Decision/Recommendation Attachments

packet pp.11–219

▶ Watch from 9:50 Open packet at p.11 ↗

Staff report:

Windward Development (Bergsma) Clustered Housing Development Agreement File No.: DA16-00001

3295 segments .txt ↗

0:09 ↗ Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome

0:15 ↗ you to the public hearing for the Windward-Bergs McCluster

0:21 ↗ Housing Development Agreement File Number DA1600001. It's great to see you all

0:27 ↗ here. We have agendas, a few copies of agendas on the table up here. We

0:31 ↗ know that there are people that are going to be wanting to speak, so if

0:35 ↗ you do want to speak, we'd like you to come up and sign in, and

0:39 ↗ then we'll just call you in the order that you sign in. We're going to

0:42 ↗ be timing people because of the number of people that may want to speak, and

0:46 ↗ we're going to be giving you five minutes, and we have some new technology that

0:50 ↗ we'll be using that has some lights on the front of the DS there where

0:54 ↗ you might be standing when you talk and it'll start you'll have a green light

0:58 ↗ for the first four minutes a yellow light for the last minute and then a

1:03 ↗ red light means you have to stop and we would really encourage you to not

1:07 ↗ invade the other people's time that would choose to speak. We've divided the hearing into

1:12 ↗ a couple of different staff presentations, the first one being the overview and the TALIS

1:18 ↗ connection, which seems to be the high interest, and then there will be a staff

1:23 ↗ presentation after some Public hearings or public discussion and Commission discussion and and then a

1:28 ↗ staff presentation on the remaining components of the development agreement and then at the end

1:32 ↗ of the meeting we'll be making a recommendation or be making a motion I'm assuming

1:37 ↗ to make a recommendation to the City Council so with that we have one one

1:41 ↗ piece of business that we have to take care of and that's the approval of

1:46 ↗ minutes from April 5th meeting Commissioners have you had a chance to read those? Does

1:51 ↗ anybody-- would somebody-- CHRIS RODGERS: Mr. Chair, move we approve the minutes of the April

1:56 ↗ 5th meeting. CHRIS RODGERS: I second. CHRIS JERRAM: Great. All those in agreement, say aye.

2:01 ↗ CHRIS RODGERS: Aye. CHRIS JERRAM: Opposed? And so the minutes pass unanimously. And Chris will

2:05 ↗ turn the time over to you. CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT: All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My

2:10 ↗ name is Christopher Wright, and I'm with the city's Development Services Department. And I will

2:15 ↗ be presenting the project this evening. Welcome, everyone. It's a good crowd. There's a few

2:20 ↗ chairs right there. You can move them back if somebody really needs to sit down.

2:25 ↗ I'm sorry we don't have enough chairs right now. But I will start by introducing

2:29 ↗ the project. And it is, as the chairman said, it's for the Windward-Bergsma Development

2:35 ↗ Agreement and the file number is DA16-00001. And this is the open record public hearing

2:41 ↗ with the Development Commission. And as you said, at the end of this, the Development

2:47 ↗ Commission will be making a recommendation to the City Council who will be making the

2:53 ↗ final decision on the Development Agreement. this is a vicinity

2:59 ↗ map that shows where the project is located and it is as you can

3:04 ↗ see it has the newport way northwest is to the east as is the

3:10 ↗ central issaquah to the north and to the west is king county open space

3:16 ↗ And to the south is there's a city-owned property that has a water tank and

3:22 ↗ Harvey Manning Park. And then there's single-family residential kind of to the southeast. And then

3:28 ↗ the Talas neighborhood is to the south.

3:34 ↗ So the reason that this development agreement is coming to the Development Commission and then

3:40 ↗ ultimately the City Council is because they're proposing what we call a cluster development. And

3:46 ↗ for any cluster development that is larger than five acres in size, it requires a

3:51 ↗ development agreement. And that's the piece of it that we are reviewing this evening. And

3:57 ↗ the purpose, this is from the land use code, the purpose for cluster housing

4:03 ↗ is to one, achieve the maximum allowable density that's allowed in that

4:08 ↗ particular zone on the developable land while preserving critical areas and other

4:14 ↗ pervious surfaces. Another purpose is to provide more common usable and native

4:20 ↗ forested open space. Another purpose is to encourage affordable housing. And

4:25 ↗ then finally, to provide a more efficient arrangement of structures and infrastructure. So

4:31 ↗ basically what all that says is for a cluster development, the point is

4:37 ↗ to have the lots and the houses, the lots smaller, usually the setbacks

4:43 ↗ smaller, so they're clustered closer together so that there's more open space that's

4:49 ↗ ultimately preserved. So that's the reason for doing a cluster

4:55 ↗ development. This particular proposal is for a maximum equivalent of

5:01 ↗ 78 single-family homes on a little over 45 and a

5:07 ↗ half acres. As proposed, this plot would have 74 detached

5:13 ↗ single-family homes and then four cottage duplex units. duplexes

5:18 ↗ with two units in each building and those will be the affordable housing piece that

5:24 ↗ that I'll talk about later and in addition to the new roads and frontage improvements

5:30 ↗ and the lots themselves this particular proposal also includes some neighborhood parks a significant amount

5:35 ↗ of open space trail connections and a stormwater vault The site includes

5:41 ↗ 25 and a half acres of environmentally critical areas. This includes steep slopes, wetlands,

5:47 ↗ streams, and their buffers is included in that area. And that means that the

5:53 ↗ remaining 20 acres are what we call developable area. And the site will be

5:58 ↗ accessed from New Public Street off of Newport Way. And the secondary access is

6:04 ↗ proposed off of Bear Ridge Court Northwest, providing a connection to TALIS.

6:10 ↗ That last bullet there is why I suspect most of you are here.

6:16 ↗ The zoning of this site is it's actually split zone. So there's two

6:22 ↗ different zoning designations within the project area. And the western side is zoned

6:28 ↗ SFE, which stands for single family estates. And that is zoning that allows

6:34 ↗ single family residences at 1.24 dwelling units per acre. And then the

6:40 ↗ eastern side is on single family suburban, which is 4.5 dwelling units per

6:46 ↗ acre. Here is the conceptual site plan for the

6:51 ↗ plat and as you can see it has the road from Newport Way again

6:57 ↗ Newport Way is there on the right hand side on the east side and

7:03 ↗ then you see the red boxes there are essentially the house footprints. Again this

7:09 ↗ is in the early stages and conceptual but that's roughly how the houses will

7:15 ↗ be laid out. The lighter gray color is mostly critical areas and

7:20 ↗ buffers. And then the darker gray is, I mentioned the additional open

7:26 ↗ space, but those are areas that are developable. In other words, they're

7:32 ↗ outside of the critical areas and buffers. And if this plat wasn't

7:38 ↗ going through a cluster development agreement, then those are areas that could

7:44 ↗ be developed under a more traditional plat. And then at the bottom

7:49 ↗ is where the connection is made to TALIS at the bottom of

7:55 ↗ the screen. Now there are a few pieces to this puzzle that

8:01 ↗ is the Bergsma-Winward development. And each of these pieces can be reviewed

8:06 ↗ and decided independently, but in the end, they are all going to

8:12 ↗ need to fit together. And those few pieces are, first there was

8:18 ↗ the SEPA mitigated determination of non-significance that was issued in February. And

8:23 ↗ then there was the critical areas variances were approved by the hearing

8:29 ↗ examiner also in February. Now I will say about that that we the staff have

8:35 ↗ asked for clarification and possible reissuance of the decision from the hearing examiner and so

8:40 ↗ we expect that sometime in the next week or two. I'm not sure how long

8:45 ↗ that will take but it's important to note that again the Development Commission can go

8:50 ↗ ahead and make your recommendation to the council on this on the development agreement piece

8:56 ↗ because like I said they're kind of separate pieces. It's a little confusing. There's a

9:01 ↗ few different processes, few different ways we could have done this. For example, we could

9:05 ↗ have done the development agreement first and then the variance and then the plat. We've

9:09 ↗ done the variance and the plat at the same time. We've done all three at

9:13 ↗ the same time. So there's a few different ways we could have done it. And

9:18 ↗ so about the best way I can explain it is there are individual pieces, but

9:22 ↗ like I said, in the end, they're all going to need to fit.

9:28 ↗ So again, the MDNS was issued, the critical areas variance was decided, and what we're

9:34 ↗ looking at tonight is the development agreement for the clustered subdivision. And then as I

9:39 ↗ mentioned earlier, the next step after you make your recommendation to the city council and

9:45 ↗ if the city council approves the development agreement, then the next step will be going

9:51 ↗ to the city's hearing examiner again, but this time so he can review the preliminary

9:57 ↗ plat. So there's again, there's some other steps involved, but

10:03 ↗ after the development agreement will be the preliminary and final plat review.

10:09 ↗ And that will involve public hearings as well. So this hearing this

10:15 ↗ evening, we decided to break it up into two parts. The first

10:21 ↗ part was to talk specifically about that connection to TALIS because we

10:27 ↗ knew that was the piece that people were most interested and concerned

10:33 ↗ about. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the staff recommendation, and then

10:38 ↗ we'll give you an opportunity to ask questions to the staff about just this piece.

10:43 ↗ And then we'll open it up for the public comment. Again, the public comment in

10:48 ↗ this first part will just be about the connection to TALIS. And then, like I

10:53 ↗ said, if you have any additional questions at that point, you can ask. And then

10:58 ↗ we would ask that the commission make a recommendation or a motion just about the

11:03 ↗ connection. before we move on to the second part. Again, I think that's because that's

11:08 ↗ what most of the people here are interested in. And so then after we're done

11:13 ↗ discussing the connection piece, then we'll go on to the rest of the the rest

11:17 ↗ of the development agreement. And I will continue my presentation about the other pieces of

11:21 ↗ the development agreement after that. So that's kind of how this is this is going

11:26 ↗ to be laid out. So in my staff report I did reference a few of

11:31 ↗ the comp plan policies that support the connection, the road connection to TALIS. One

11:37 ↗ of them says to maintain and enhance a connected grid street system to provide

11:43 ↗ alternative routes, reduce congestion, and contribute to the vitality of neighborhoods. Another policy is

11:49 ↗ to maintain the continuity of the street pattern by avoiding dead ends and half

11:55 ↗ streets. And then finally to provide additional opportunities for not just

12:01 ↗ vehicles but also pedestrians for paths and trails connecting neighborhoods. And this is

12:06 ↗ an aerial photo that shows where that connection is going to be made,

12:12 ↗ where Bear Bridge Court Northwest currently exists. And we see where the road

12:18 ↗ kind of goes off to the left up there. That then leads into

12:23 ↗ the parking lot for Harvey Manning Park. But the connection for Do

12:29 ↗ we have a... - You need to use the mouse. - Use

12:35 ↗ the mouse, can you see it? Oh, there you go, okay. So

12:40 ↗ the new road connection would basically be coming in and connecting right

12:46 ↗ here. So there's also been some questions and some talk about how

12:52 ↗ this road connection was discussed, was it discussed, early on with

12:58 ↗ the talus when talus was being formed and so i did pull out

13:03 ↗ this paragraph from the original talus development agreement and it says that concurrent

13:09 ↗ with the preliminary plat applications the city shall evaluate whether a street connection

13:15 ↗ shall occur adjacent to adjacent non-east village property non-talus property The decision

13:21 ↗ to connect shall be based on the consideration of topography, anticipated compatibility of the

13:27 ↗ use of the adjoining parcel, other alternatives for access, public safety, and whether the

13:32 ↗ connection would result in adverse impacts to either of the properties. And then also

13:38 ↗ about that time, so that was that was part of the development agreement that

13:44 ↗ was approved in 1999. And then subsequently when the actual plat was approved, the plats

13:49 ↗ that were approved that northern part of Talus, this was part of the city council

13:55 ↗ notice of action that approved those preliminary plats in particular i would point out the

14:01 ↗ bottom paragraph here that says tract r which is the tract where the road connection

14:06 ↗ is being made tract r may be used for street right-of-way purposes only at such

14:12 ↗ time as it is included as part of the roadway link completely connecting east village

14:17 ↗ and newport way And then another condition that was added stated that the

14:23 ↗ prior to issuance of the building permits for the neighborhood, the applicant will place a

14:29 ↗ sign located immediately behind the right-of-way in tract R, identifying that the possible future street

14:34 ↗ connection could occur. So this again is just a snapshot of what that plat looked

14:40 ↗ like at the time. Again, here is the connection place that we're talking about.

14:46 ↗ And then ultimately here is the sign that was installed, I believe in 2001 as

14:51 ↗ a result of that condition.

14:57 ↗ So I do have a couple of letters that I wanted to read and then

15:03 ↗ there are a few members of the staff that will also be commenting on the

15:08 ↗ connection piece. And first I wanted to read this letter from Brett Heath, who is

15:14 ↗ the Director of Public Works Operations and he's also our Emergency Management Director for the

15:19 ↗ City. Dear Commissioners, as the Emergency Management Director for the City of Issaquah, I

15:25 ↗ would like to address the Development Commission regarding the proposed Bergsma development street connection to

15:31 ↗ the Tallis neighborhood. In the fall of 2015, the Tallis neighborhood experienced a slide on

15:37 ↗ which on what is known as parcel 9 property, which impacted and threatened to close

15:42 ↗ the Tallis Drive and Shangri-La intersection. Had this intersection been closed, the entire Talus area

15:48 ↗ north of the intersection would have been forced to use the James Bush Road as

15:53 ↗ its primary access route. While James Bush Road may serve as an alternate route for

15:58 ↗ emergency vehicles, it was not designed nor intended to be used as primary emergency point

16:03 ↗ of ingress and egress for all of the homes north of the intersection and is

16:08 ↗ woefully inadequate for such use. One must look no further than an aerial map of

16:13 ↗ the TALIS neighborhood and place an X through the TALIS Drive Shangri-La intersection to get

16:19 ↗ an appreciation for the complete dependency of the North TALIS neighborhood on this single juncture.

16:24 ↗ While the slide was an unfortunate event, it did highlight the need to address this

16:29 ↗ fundamental dependency issue and underscored the importance of providing a second improved TALIS access point.

16:35 ↗ In addition to events such as mentioned above, the single access point of Talus Drive

16:40 ↗ can be a point of constraint during snow events and when streets become impassable from

16:46 ↗ stalled cars, inhibiting access by snow removal equipment and potentially impacting police and fire access.

16:52 ↗ The Bergsma development proposal provides an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity, to resolve this access

16:58 ↗ issue by providing a connection from the north end of Talus through the Bergsma

17:03 ↗ development to Newport Way. And it is for this reason that I strongly encourage

17:09 ↗ the development commission to favorably consider the Bergsma-Talus connection. The second letter I would

17:15 ↗ like to read, and both of these are being entered into the packet as

17:21 ↗ the letter from Brett Heath will be entered as attachment 12. And then this

17:27 ↗ letter is from the Issaquah School District that I will enter as attachment 13.

17:33 ↗ says, "Dear Mr. Wright, I'm writing to support a full service connection to TALIS through

17:38 ↗ Berksmouth Development off Newport Way. When TALIS was originally developed, there was one major ingress

17:43 ↗ and egress off of SR 900. The entrance exit is a steep grade and the

17:48 ↗ neighborhood streets are increasingly difficult to maneuver a 40-foot school bus through safely. Over the

17:53 ↗ years, our school buses have experienced temporary and complete blockage entering and exiting TALIS. A

17:59 ↗ full service connection would make a positive impact on providing transportation services to the neighborhoods

18:04 ↗ in TALIS. We would be able to relieve lengthy delays waiting in traffic on SR

18:10 ↗ 900. It would provide another access in the event of incremental weather and other emergencies.

18:15 ↗ It would provide an opportunity to route buses more efficiently by allowing us to travel

18:20 ↗ in a direction that may lessen mileage and could eliminate maneuvering some narrow streets and

18:26 ↗ help avoid a challenging right turn. The biggest safety benefit may be the option during

18:31 ↗ snow or ice events to pick up and drop off on Newport Way and SR

18:37 ↗ 900. The district serves, that serves TALIS with five large buses, student capacity 52 to

18:42 ↗ 78 and nine small buses, student capacity of one to 12. And it is our

18:47 ↗ desire to have full service road connection to safely and efficiently ingress and egress the

18:53 ↗ TALIS community. So as I mentioned that was from the Issaquah School

18:59 ↗ District from Jake Cooper who's the Chief of Finance and Operations. As I mentioned

19:04 ↗ this the city administration does recommend approval of the road connection through TALIS as

19:10 ↗ part of the approval of the development agreement but as I mentioned there are

19:16 ↗ a few other staff members that would like to speak to this recommendation. First

19:22 ↗ we have Kurt Seaman from the Public Works Engineering Department.

19:28 ↗ And I'd just like to say there are four seats,

19:34 ↗ four chairs up here that you can slide back if

19:40 ↗ you don't feel comfortable sitting in. At least four people

19:45 ↗ could be sitting down. So they're not magic seats or

19:51 ↗ anything. I've also been told I speak softly, so I'll

19:57 ↗ try to speak up. I don't know. Is that louder?

20:03 ↗ Is that any better? Up more? Getting higher.

20:09 ↗ I'll just I'll try to speak as loud as I can. So again, my

20:15 ↗ name is Kurt Seaman. I'm the transportation manager here at the city and I'm

20:21 ↗ just I'm not going to give you too much new information. Just highlight a

20:27 ↗ couple things that Christopher's already spoken to and the folks that wrote the letters

20:32 ↗ as well. Why the connections and from a transportation from the city's transportation standpoint,

20:38 ↗ just highlighting that this is in fact a planned connection. The city has policies

20:44 ↗ and practices that encourage and support neighborhood connections. And so we're always looking for

20:50 ↗ those opportunities to connect neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. It's the emergency access

20:56 ↗ that was spoken of earlier. That's for emergency vehicles. That also provides for resident

21:01 ↗ emergency exit and entrance into the area. So this is a way to obviously

21:07 ↗ to link the two neighborhoods, to connect the two neighborhoods. The street connection we're

21:13 ↗ talking a lot about. I know that's of concern to many of you. It

21:19 ↗ also, but But importantly as well is connecting the two neighborhoods in non-motorized ways

21:24 ↗ as well. So if as people move into this new neighborhood and it develops,

21:30 ↗ there's likely to be families and friends that need to connect to each other

21:36 ↗ between the neighborhoods. And so by providing this connection, that does that. And just

21:43 ↗ Just to reiterate the comp plan policies that Christopher mentioned, there is

21:48 ↗ the policies are very clear about the goals of the city to

21:54 ↗ strengthen and provide for a street network and to avoid dead-end streets.

22:00 ↗ And again, the idea of providing the non-motorized connections is important as

22:05 ↗ well. So that's just in a nutshell, that's what I have to

22:11 ↗ say. reiterate and stress. Okay thank you. Then we also have the police chief and

22:17 ↗ the fire chief here this evening to speak to this.

22:38 ↗ Thank you for allowing me to be here tonight and just to be a part

22:43 ↗ of this discussion. I recognize the importance of it to our community. But I am

22:49 ↗ here tonight to speak solely from an incident management or emergency management perspective on the

22:54 ↗ support of a connection between TALIS and the Bergsma Windward. Volume? Volume in. Would you

22:59 ↗ introduce yourself? I apologize. I'm Chief Scott Beerbaum of the Issaquah Police Department. So I

23:05 ↗ apologize for that. So I am here to talk about the incident management,

23:11 ↗ emergency management of aspect of this connection of potentially one word, Burisma to TALIS.

23:16 ↗ Plainly availability of multiple access points is important to first responders. That's that's first and

23:21 ↗ foremost for us. From the initial response to the ongoing investigation there are several reasons

23:26 ↗ for the need for multiple access points. When we respond to an incident one of

23:30 ↗ our first priorities is getting to the location safely and quickly determine the scale and

23:35 ↗ the scope of the incident. There are times when we are not able to

23:41 ↗ get to that incident because of blocked access, whether it's a collision in an intersection,

23:46 ↗ down trees, power lines, or a hazmat situation where it's not safe to approach from

23:51 ↗ downhill or downwind. Another aspect for us to consider is the duration of incidents. There's

23:57 ↗ often when we have investigations or incidents that last for hours, several hours, and where

24:02 ↗ we're blocking access for residents to and from their, to their homes. We want to

24:08 ↗ be able to provide that access in those long incidents such as finding we might

24:12 ↗ need to do an evacuation and to do that safely we need multiple access points.

24:16 ↗ And this is not just a discussion about TALUS but it's also for the new

24:21 ↗ development as well. So the people coming out of the Bergsma Windward development potentially as

24:25 ↗ well needing a way out or in during emergent situations. Ultimately we are concerned about

24:31 ↗ the safety of our community and having an additional access point

24:37 ↗ could increase that safety for our emergency response. So with that

24:42 ↗ thank you very much for me being a part of this

24:48 ↗ discussion tonight. I'm sorry it's not public comment. Okay this is

24:53 ↗ our Fire Chief for Eastside Fire and Rescue Jeff Clark.

25:00 ↗ Hi thank you as you said excuse me I'm not with the city I'm with

25:03 ↗ Eastside Fire and Rescue and uh and we do serve the city and and uh

25:07 ↗ City of Issaquah is one of our key partners And I'm here to speak tonight

25:11 ↗ about specifics to this access road and the fire code. Everything the police chief said

25:17 ↗ about emergency management and having emergency access more than one way into a neighborhood to

25:22 ↗ evacuate and to get in for our responders and everyone else is of paramount importance,

25:28 ↗ all right, having that access. Now that said, as I understand the conversation is going

25:32 ↗ to go tonight, I do want to make a few things clear about access. And

25:36 ↗ if you have an access road going in there and you start talking about emergency

25:40 ↗ access, the fire code starts to come into play for minimums. And I know James

25:44 ↗ Bush Road has come up. That road is not wide enough for many of our

25:49 ↗ trucks to get up and down safely the way it is set up right now.

25:53 ↗ The minimum is 20 feet wide that we need to have in order to have

25:57 ↗ access. And then when it comes to access, if you were to set up an

26:02 ↗ emergency access system between the two neighborhoods, then it's being able to control that access.

26:07 ↗ And bollards versus automatic gate openings, there's a big difference from a fire response perspective

26:12 ↗ for emergency access there. And an emergency fence that can open automatically with our emitter

26:17 ↗ system or with the clickers is much more important to us than a bollard system

26:21 ↗ when it comes to accessing that. But we're definitely-- we need more than one way

26:26 ↗ into a neighborhood in order to be safe. As the police chief said, I completely

26:32 ↗ agree with that. And we're proponents of the access. And then how that access is

26:37 ↗ played out, if you alter the plan at all, then there are fire code implications.

26:42 ↗ And I'll be here. I'll be happy to answer any of those as it goes

26:47 ↗ on. OK. OK. We wanted to give the commission a chance to ask the staff

26:52 ↗ any questions before we turn it over to the public comment. I guess first question,

26:57 ↗ is the traffic engineer here? Yes. Can we ask some

27:03 ↗ questions of him about the traffic study itself? If it's

27:09 ↗ related to the connection, yes. It's related to the addition

27:15 ↗ of the TALIS traffic. Okay. Yep. That's appropriate. Good evening.

27:21 ↗ I'm Brad Lincoln with Gibson Traffic Consultants. So I'm the

27:27 ↗ engineer of record on the traffic impact analysis and happy

27:33 ↗ to answer your questions. So in the study there's, in

27:39 ↗ the executive summary, It states that the intersection SR 900

27:44 ↗ Newport Way and site access will operate acceptable levels during AM and

27:50 ↗ PM peak hour with the reassignment of the TALIS development trips. The

27:55 ↗ only exception to this is the driveway in the opposite side of

28:01 ↗ the site access will operate at a deficient level of service with

28:07 ↗ the TALIS development trips. In going through it, it appeared to me

28:12 ↗ that left-hand turns on eastbound AM on Newport

28:18 ↗ Way fell from an E to an F.

28:24 ↗ Just to be clear, you're referencing the February

28:29 ↗ 2017 report, correct? Or which report are you

28:35 ↗ referencing? So I make sure I have the

28:40 ↗ right one. Yes, February 17th. Exactly. So on

28:46 ↗ page 20 in the chart, SR 900 at

28:52 ↗ Newport Way, eastbound left turns in the AM

28:57 ↗ peak, With the development commissions, it's level of service E. With development

29:03 ↗ commissions with TALIS, it drops to level of service F. And the delay

29:09 ↗ goes from 78 seconds to 170 seconds. As I understand from reading your

29:14 ↗ report, level E is the minimum for a state road. And so when

29:20 ↗ I read that, it seems to me like that's failing. I just want

29:26 ↗ to make sure I'm in the right place. You're talking about table 5?

29:32 ↗ Table 5, correct. And you're referencing the eastbound left turn at

29:38 ↗ the intersection of SR 900 at Newport Way? Correct. So the

29:43 ↗ intersection level of service as jurisdictions utilize it to determine what

29:49 ↗ intersection is operating acceptably and not acceptably, it's not based on

29:54 ↗ one movement. It's based on all of the movements. So the

30:00 ↗ staff asked us to summarize the level of service in the typical terms,

30:06 ↗ how we would typically do it for any of the surrounding jurisdictions when

30:12 ↗ you look at intersection level of service. And that's in Table 3 for

30:17 ↗ the AM and Table 4 for the PM, so the page prior to

30:23 ↗ where we were just discussing, page 19.

30:30 ↗ Okay. So those two tables show the operations during the AM and

30:36 ↗ PM peak hours, and that shows the intersection overall. It's a combination

30:41 ↗ of the whole intersection. Right. Okay. So the staff asked us to

30:47 ↗ also summarize operations for each movement, which... Quite honestly,

30:53 ↗ typically we don't do, but it's all in the attachments. So summarizing it is--

30:59 ↗ it's like we're not trying to disclose anything. So when you look at one

31:05 ↗ movement, yes, you're correct. That one movement does experience a change in operations, but

31:11 ↗ that doesn't constitute the whole intersection operating at-- deficient level of service. Okay, thank

31:16 ↗ you. And then as I do understand that the baseline condition for 2017

31:22 ↗ would be for that eastbound turn would be a delay of 70.7 seconds

31:28 ↗ and it would go up to 78 with the development but if we

31:34 ↗ add in TALIS it goes up to 169.5, is that right? So that's

31:40 ↗ more than doubles the delay to about three minutes that intersection? Yes.

31:46 ↗ And then, and I hope I'm not getting too far into

31:51 ↗ the weeds, but I think this was important to you. I

31:57 ↗ live in the weeds, it's okay. So in looking at, let's

32:03 ↗ see on page, this would be, it's figure 11. Yes. So

32:08 ↗ this is the future with TALIS, and then to compare that,

32:14 ↗ and this is the, make sure I get these straight. So

32:20 ↗ this is the PM peak with TALIS.

32:26 ↗ the PM peak without TALIS was figure nine. Yes. And so I guess

32:32 ↗ one of the questions I had was why did the, so this would

32:37 ↗ be if I understand this right, the right hand turn from Newport Way

32:43 ↗ to the new development is 15 in the PM peak, is that right?

32:48 ↗ Yes. Okay. And then in the new one with Burgsma added, it's

32:54 ↗ still 15. So I was wondering why would that not change

32:59 ↗ with the increase in potential people taking a right turn from

33:05 ↗ there to go to Burgsma? It's based primarily on just where

33:10 ↗ trips are anticipated to go based on the model we received

33:16 ↗ from City of Issaquah and See if I can find that

33:22 ↗ information. So do I read that right? It would mean that there

33:28 ↗ would be no additional trips going into TALIS taking that right hand

33:34 ↗ turn from southbound Newport? That's what that-- yes. OK. So let me

33:39 ↗ look through a couple of-- get to where I can show you

33:45 ↗ what I'm talking about here.

34:04 ↗ So a couple of things went into that. One is where trips

34:09 ↗ are anticipated to travel to and from. And like I said, we

34:15 ↗ received that information from the traffic model for the City of Issaquah.

34:21 ↗ And that's shown in figure seven for the PM peak hour. I'm

34:26 ↗ sorry, what page is that on? That would be on page 12,

34:32 ↗ figure seven. Page 101 of 219 in our

34:38 ↗ document. Okay. So the baseline is 12 taking a right-hand turn

34:43 ↗ in? That's well no what I want to. There's nobody there

34:49 ↗ right? Yeah what I want to discuss is the where trips

34:55 ↗ would be anticipated to travel to and from. So 25% the

35:00 ↗ model showed 25% of the talus of the excuse me of

35:06 ↗ the Bergsman trips traveling along Newport Way northwest of the site.

35:11 ↗ So you have that factor plus the factor

35:17 ↗ of trying to anticipate one we had to try and estimate the

35:22 ↗ number of trips from the talus development that could utilize the connection

35:28 ↗ and then where are those trips likely to travel to and from

35:34 ↗ similar to the bergsman development and the those assumptions were primarily that

35:40 ↗ trips that would use this connection from talus trips are going to

35:46 ↗ be trips really traveling to the north along 900. And so the

35:52 ↗ majority of trips that would use the connection were assigned essentially as southbound

35:58 ↗ right turn, this is during the PM peak hour, southbound right turn on

36:04 ↗ Newport, sorry, at 900 onto Newport, and then left turns into the site.

36:10 ↗ Okay. So in other words, assuming people won't get off at

36:15 ↗ Further up at Lake Mont and take Newport Way from the west. That was

36:21 ↗ one of the assumptions. And I'd have to go back and double check. I

36:27 ↗ think initially we didn't have as many trips traveling along Newport Way to the

36:32 ↗ northwest. But then the model, utilizing the city model, added more trips that way.

36:38 ↗ So it's just a combination of assumptions. Okay. And quite honestly

36:44 ↗ the the volumes on a daily basis are going to fluctuate.

36:50 ↗ So it's 15 but may it be 20? Yes. May it

36:56 ↗ be 10? There is going to be some fluctuation there. So.

37:01 ↗ Okay. And then I guess to summarize the total, sorry, I

37:07 ↗ gotta get the right page on here. If I have this

37:13 ↗ right, so the so in 2017 when I add them up

37:19 ↗ the the For the AM outbound, without TALIS 49,

37:25 ↗ with TALIS 131, so we go from 49 to 131. I

37:31 ↗ think you're on your figure 10. Is that what you're looking

37:36 ↗ at? Well, actually, I added up a couple different figures. And

37:42 ↗ this matches up with what you have on page 13 for

37:48 ↗ your summary. Commissioner, could I ask you to identify in our

37:54 ↗ document which one you're looking at? So it would be page 102 of 219.

37:59 ↗ Okay, got it. Thank you. Do you have the summary there, the ampeak hour?

38:05 ↗ Oh, yes, yes. So 21 inbound and 82 outbound. And so that 82 outbound

38:11 ↗ is going from what I calculate without TAL is 49 up to 131, so

38:17 ↗ an increase of 167%. And then the... PM outbound

38:23 ↗ goes from 20 to 41, which is the 21 increase you show, 105%.

38:29 ↗ And then the PM goes 54 in without TALIS to 128 with TALIS.

38:35 ↗ So that goes up by 74, which you show above, which is 137%

38:41 ↗ increase. I add all these together, and I get an increase of, in

38:47 ↗ the morning, 149%, in the evening, 134%. Does that-- which would

38:53 ↗ match up with your total in year 21 and-- - I'd have to double check,

38:59 ↗ but yes, there's the number of trips that would be going through the Bergsma development

39:05 ↗ would be higher from Tallis than generated by Bergsma. - And by Bergsma, right. -

39:10 ↗ I don't know, I can double check those percentages, but I think that's what you're

39:16 ↗ after. - Yeah, they all matched up with, yeah, with your total, so. Okay, thank

39:22 ↗ you, that's all the questions I had on that. Yeah. While

39:28 ↗ we've got you up there, let me ask you to

39:34 ↗ try to put this into non-engineer terms for the folks

39:39 ↗ that are here. And what-- a follow up to Commissioner

39:45 ↗ Morgan's question. And if you want to do this with

39:51 ↗ an average number, that's fine. I understand there are going

39:56 ↗ to be fluctuations. But for TALIS, extant TALIS residents now,

40:03 ↗ What do you predict will be the number of increased trips going out

40:09 ↗ of Talus through this connector road and coming back into Talus from the

40:15 ↗ Bergsma property if this connector is put in there? And I want to

40:20 ↗ make sure I understand. I think you're asking me how many trips from

40:26 ↗ Bergsma will travel through Talus? Here's what I think we'd like to start

40:32 ↗ with. What will the TALIS residents see in terms of

40:37 ↗ increased traffic if that connector road is put in there? Any way you

40:43 ↗ want to do it, percentage, average number, AM, PM, whatever. Because I think

40:49 ↗ my understanding from reading through the significant amount of input we got from

40:55 ↗ people up there, that's the concern. Right. I've

41:01 ↗ got those numbers handy if you want me to jump in. No, I think I'll

41:07 ↗ do it, try and, I'm going to try and do it in a- It's fine

41:12 ↗ if, it's fine if, Commissioner, I just wanted to get some numbers out there so

41:18 ↗ that we can discuss them. Essentially, we, when we looked at how TALIS is laid

41:23 ↗ out, and we counted the trips that occur at the TALIS access, we estimated 100,

41:29 ↗ what would, typically be generated by 120 single family residential units would

41:34 ↗ use the connection. So 120 TALUS trips or 120 units from TALUS

41:40 ↗ would roughly use the connection. So that's roughly equivalent when there was

41:46 ↗ the discussion earlier about the landslide and I forget the intersection, but

41:51 ↗ there was the units that would be blocked off. It would essentially

41:57 ↗ be equivalent to all of those units using the connection because

42:02 ↗ in part the units that are not adjacent to the connection, it's

42:08 ↗ not the most it's not easy to get there. I've driven it.

42:14 ↗ It's if you don't know it's there, you're not likely to find

42:20 ↗ it. Even if you know it's there, the street connections are within

42:26 ↗ TALIS. They're narrow. There's two lanes with parking and then

42:32 ↗ you're not even necessarily a typical public intersection getting onto the connection. It's

42:37 ↗ a curb cut. It's a driveway cut more than anything. So all of

42:43 ↗ those factors led us to essentially 120 units from TALIS using the connection.

42:49 ↗ And that's two cars a unit is the basic expectation. They're not all

42:55 ↗ going to be going at the same time, obviously. Correct. So during, it

43:00 ↗ would be During the PM peak hour, essentially each unit

43:06 ↗ generates one trip, one vehicle. Some are inbound and the majority

43:12 ↗ are inbound, the others are up on. Okay, so there's also

43:18 ↗ been a concern expressed about the water and traffic finding the

43:23 ↗ path of least resistance. and that the fear that if this connection

43:29 ↗ is put in there that folks will discover it as a way of getting

43:35 ↗ around anything that's going on at Newport 900 in an accident or anything that

43:41 ↗ would cause people to believe that they're going to save time or actually be

43:46 ↗ moving by going through the neighborhood using a connector to get onto Newport or

43:52 ↗ Newport to 900 with us. Well, I think the response to

43:58 ↗ that is similar to the discussion we had earlier about the impact of going through

44:04 ↗ Bergsma and going on to Newport and having to turn left on to SR 900

44:10 ↗ and that increase in delay. So theoretically getting through Bergsma might be quicker, but you're

44:16 ↗ going to run into a situation where you're now at the eastbound left turn, and

44:22 ↗ that goes back to the discussion that we had earlier.

44:29 ↗ Well, Commissioner Harrison, just to give you the numbers too.

44:35 ↗ So in the morning, the AM peak hour-- this is

44:40 ↗ combined in and out-- AM peak hour without TALIS, 69,

44:46 ↗ and with TALIS, 172, or an increase of 103 due

44:52 ↗ to TALIS. And the PM peak, 88 in and out

44:57 ↗ without TALIS, 206 with TALIS, an increase of 118 trips.

45:06 ↗ Mr. Chair, are you done? I have a question. I'm sure everybody's

45:12 ↗ concerned about the traffic, but getting back into the history, maybe Chris,

45:18 ↗ maybe you can help us on this. When TALIS was developed, you

45:24 ↗ know, it was done then we don't have this

45:29 ↗ issue about school bus, far access, police access to it. So why

45:35 ↗ was it allowed that there's only one access from TELUS going down

45:41 ↗ to 900? Why wasn't there a second? We always try to

45:47 ↗ do that. Was that not part of Issaquah? We are fortunate

45:52 ↗ to have one of the original planners and founders of TALIS,

45:58 ↗ Keith Niven, who is the director of development services. But

46:04 ↗ you know, thanks. So what I can say is this, I was actually

46:10 ↗ the planner that did the subdivision plat that this road is going to

46:16 ↗ connect into. So I can answer pretty much almost any questions about that

46:22 ↗ conversation about the other access point. What happened at that hearing, the original

46:28 ↗ planning for talus and why it only has one public access. It does

46:34 ↗ have, as was mentioned earlier, I think by the Fire Chief, there is

46:39 ↗ a second, there is an emergency access to TALIS right now. It's James

46:45 ↗ Bush Road. And James Bush Road Not only is it kind of substandard

46:51 ↗ from a kind of an improvement perspective, but it's also my memory

46:57 ↗ is I think it's 22% grade at the lowest portion of

47:02 ↗ the road. So it's not -- it can work in an emergency.

47:08 ↗ And when part of TALIS started sliding kind of a year and

47:14 ↗ a half ago, if we would have lost that piece of Shangri-La

47:19 ↗ away, then that would have been the only way in and out

47:25 ↗ for all the residents that are north of TALIS Drive. The

47:30 ↗ only answer I can give you, Commissioner, is that the

47:36 ↗ developer of TALIS did not own any other property that actually abutted a public

47:42 ↗ street and so therefore there was no connection to which was one of the reasons

47:47 ↗ why when that northernmost subdivision plaque came in that the condition was put on that

47:53 ↗ if you could ever make a road connection to newport that that would be something

47:59 ↗ that the city would be interested in in considering at that time so but I

48:04 ↗ think the answer is the developer only had property under ownership that

48:10 ↗ could really get to SR 900 a public way in one place.

48:16 ↗ Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And I guess this is like in the

48:22 ↗ past. I guess, you know, as you know, when we do discussion

48:28 ↗ about development, there's always utility, garbage, fire, police access, and it's

48:34 ↗ always, in my mind, the primary issue that we have to look

48:39 ↗ at. And if that doesn't satisfy that, then the width of the

48:45 ↗ roadway, that's another issue that I'm hearing that we got issue with

48:51 ↗ Talos being, road being so narrow. The school district, I guess the

48:57 ↗ have a letter that says they would encourage the improvement or the

49:03 ↗ connection of the access roadway. And yet in the past, as I

49:09 ↗ remember, they would not go into a neighborhood development to pick up

49:15 ↗ kids. But now they do. They do. Yeah. So I guess I'm

49:21 ↗ kind of confused, you know, when we need access and they're here

49:26 ↗ to support going into the neighborhood. Is that a change in policy as far as

49:32 ↗ you know? So right now -- School bus into the neighborhood now? So right now,

49:37 ↗ so there's no other place in TALIS to collect kids other than in neighborhoods, right?

49:42 ↗ So right now what happens is a school bus goes into TALIS and because it's

49:47 ↗ basically a big cul-de-sac, they go around in a circle and they come back out

49:52 ↗ again. School buses also go up and down Newport and collect kids from Newport Way.

49:57 ↗ So if there was a connection to Newport from TALIS, they could look at operationally,

50:03 ↗ would there be some efficiencies to, rather than double back the school bus through TALIS

50:09 ↗ coming down to Newport and maybe picking up some kids on Newport. Yeah, and I

50:15 ↗ would, I think that's a good idea to have the school bus go into the

50:20 ↗ neighborhood to pick up kids, but I remember the discussion we had with Gateway, you

50:25 ↗ know, there's a accident there and then we were trying to get the school bus

50:31 ↗ away from Newport Way to pick up kids so it doesn't hold up the traffic

50:36 ↗ as it's going on and what was explained to us was that the school bus

50:41 ↗ would not go into the neighborhood thus you need to widen the road or do

50:46 ↗ something with the roadway so it was not I didn't think it was being practical

50:52 ↗ not going to the the neighborhood. And now we see this issue that the school

50:57 ↗ bus are going in, but then the roadway are so narrow that they cannot maneuver.

51:03 ↗ So, you know, it's a school district changing, you know, one day, you know, one

51:08 ↗ school year, it's, they can't go in. Now they go in and, and we're, we're

51:14 ↗ stuck with trying to, to accommodate the school bus. And I have no problem with

51:20 ↗ accommodating the school bus, but That was what the experience was. And now

51:25 ↗ we're seeing that they're encouraging us to have this connection with full service so

51:31 ↗ that their school bus doesn't have to do a lengthy delay. Well, I guess

51:37 ↗ everybody here knows that when the school bus is around and they're picking up

51:43 ↗ kids, you stop. And you just try to avoid that time frame when the

51:49 ↗ school bus is around. So I guess my point is that I see

51:55 ↗ the need for the access, although, you know, how the talus is coming around, how

52:00 ↗ it's got developed, you know, I guess that's in the past, we can't do anything

52:05 ↗ about it. But the access, you know, I can see that we probably need it,

52:11 ↗ but to change, to add neighbors and talus is adding more and more development in

52:16 ↗ there, which I don't know why it's going on like that. you know they know

52:22 ↗ that there's a problem with access and yet they're adding more uh units

52:28 ↗ in their uh in their building there so i guess i'm a little

52:33 ↗ bit confused why you know this is happening and i'm sure some of

52:39 ↗ the neighbors are concerned also knowing that this is what we're faced with

52:45 ↗ why are we still allowing all this development in talus two we're adding

52:50 ↗ all this eventually And then eventually we'll talk about

52:56 ↗ this neighborhoods up there too. So I'll just leave it at

53:02 ↗ that right now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Other comments? I don't

53:08 ↗ think so. Questions? All right. I'm not real sure that with

53:13 ↗ this new format, Mr. Chair, I'm not real sure. I know

53:19 ↗ we're talking about the connection, but if we're still not clear

53:25 ↗ on some things that we encourage to to use this

53:31 ↗ time to talk about specifics. Frankly, I'd like to know what

53:37 ↗ the options are to a full pass-through. The fire chief mentioned

53:43 ↗ bollards and electric gate, and I'd like to understand more about

53:49 ↗ that, about what the options are, whether or not that's even

53:55 ↗ considerable or worthy of consideration. I just -- So can I

54:00 ↗ help? So I think your choices -- I think you guys have four choices as

54:05 ↗ it relates to the connection on the road, either to approve a connection -- or

54:10 ↗ recommend approval. So you guys are not the decision maker. You're the recommending body to

54:15 ↗ the council. So you can recommend approving the connection. You can recommend not approving the

54:20 ↗ connection. You can recommend approving the connection as emergency access only. Now whether that's bollards

54:26 ↗ or a gate or a sentry, the details of that can get worked out later.

54:31 ↗ Or you can basically say, you know what, we're not going to make a recommendation

54:37 ↗ and just kick it back to the city council and let them make a decision.

54:42 ↗ So those I think are your four choices. There might be others, but I don't

54:46 ↗ know what they would be. I think those kind of cover the gamut. Okay. So

54:51 ↗ let me -- let's go then. Let's go with what the city is saying or

54:55 ↗ what the applicant is saying right now. The connection would be in terms of its

54:59 ↗ physical dimensions if it goes through with what the staff report, what we got in

55:03 ↗ here. Again, so let's get that out so folks will know exactly what we're talking

55:07 ↗ about here. That would be you. It'll be a road, two-lane

55:13 ↗ road, how wide, sidewalks. Yeah, the details really will be worked out at the

55:19 ↗ preliminary plat stage. It will be a road, right? I mean, that's what we're

55:25 ↗ talking about. You might need to say something at this point about your meeting

55:30 ↗ getting out of control. All right. I know there's a lot of interest and

55:36 ↗ maybe some... lack of trust or whatever it is, but I would encourage

55:42 ↗ you to hold your comments. There will be a public opportunity for you. It's

55:48 ↗ real disruptive. Please conduct yourself accordingly. Thank you. So, Christopher, if the connection is

55:54 ↗ approved as a road, it will be, in fact, a two-lane hard surface road

56:00 ↗ with no let or hindrance in terms of warning signs or whatever.

56:05 ↗ It will be a through road open to anybody that wants to use

56:11 ↗ it. That's right. Okay. If it is approved as an emergency connection only,

56:17 ↗ it will have dimensions that will allow the passage of the largest firefighting

56:23 ↗ vehicles as determined by East Side Fire, and it will be blocked. It

56:28 ↗ will have physical impairments to the movement of private vehicles that can

56:34 ↗ be removed in an emergency situation efficiently and quickly by emergency

56:40 ↗ reaction vehicles. Yes. Okay. And school buses would not be able

56:45 ↗ to use it. If it's for emergencies only, that would be

56:51 ↗ the only for emergencies. Fire. Okay. All right. That's what I

56:57 ↗ wanted. Thank you. Other comments? Okay. Let us open the opportunity

57:03 ↗ for public comment. First person on the list is Ken Essman,

57:08 ↗ I believe. Excuse me if I mess your name up. And

57:14 ↗ I'll just remind you, please introduce yourself. Pay attention to the lights in

57:20 ↗ front there. You'll have a green light for four minutes, a yellow light

57:25 ↗ for the last minute, and then a red light, and we'll ask you

57:31 ↗ to stop. My name is Ken Easman. I'm a resident of the Taos

57:37 ↗ community. Already I've got a red light. It's been very much.

57:43 ↗ Thanks for talking to us. 2473 Northwest Stony Creek Drive. I'm also

57:48 ↗ a resident and taxpayer in the city of Issaquah. So I want

57:54 ↗ to talk about Bergsma, Windward, and I think the second road into

58:00 ↗ Tallis would be a huge mistake and I oppose it. And the

58:06 ↗ reason is I think it would change the character of the north communities within the

58:11 ↗ Talus neighborhood and all the ugliness that goes on with a major arterial would be

58:17 ↗ in the midst of a very quiet set of neighborhoods up there. And that's my

58:23 ↗ rationale. If you look at the Talus Road network as it was

58:28 ↗ designed, it's much like the trunk of a tree that feeds the branches, that feeds

58:34 ↗ the canopy, canopy being our neighborhoods. You know, what you're talking about is putting the

58:40 ↗ trunk of the tree straight into the canopy. It doesn't make any sense. I mean,

58:46 ↗ here's the facts about the neighborhood, you know, and the traffic engineer should have understood

58:52 ↗ this. 535 homes are on the north side of Talus Drive, not 120.

58:57 ↗ This new connection would go past three parks and a tight residential street.

59:03 ↗ This is what the street looks like. It's garbage day. That's a lane

59:09 ↗ of traffic trying to get through there. The street is 18 feet wide

59:14 ↗ with a seven foot parking strip and it's classified as a residential street.

59:20 ↗ This is the connection. This is what's between our secondary arterial of Shangri-La

59:26 ↗ Way and Harvey Manning Park where the connection comes in. Here's another shot

59:31 ↗ of it on moving day.

59:37 ↗ Here's another shot with our kids playing on the sidewalk. So this is a major

59:43 ↗ arterial, 500 plus homes with a couple of vehicles each coming in and out through

59:48 ↗ this tight little neighborhood. Here's a shot of our park and our street trees, which

59:54 ↗ are a common problem. They get ripped up by the traffic and the trucks and

1:00:00 ↗ it's bad enough that that happens on Talus Drive where they're almost all killed on

1:00:05 ↗ the street strip. Now we're going to have them coming through this little neighborhood.

1:00:12 ↗ Speaking of Talus Drive, it's known as the Talus Speedway. It didn't take me but

1:00:17 ↗ a couple of minutes to get those shots, 38 miles an hour in a 25.

1:00:22 ↗ That's what happens on Talus Drive. And that's not what we want in this quiet

1:00:27 ↗ little section of our community. And it's a regular comment in Next Door about the

1:00:32 ↗ recklessness and the speeding that goes on there. That's not what we want in our

1:00:37 ↗ neighborhoods. And even on wide Talus Drive, people are hitting

1:00:43 ↗ fire hydrants and taking down light poles. Can you imagine what it would be on

1:00:49 ↗ an 18-foot street? By the way, 18 feet, 20 foot is the minimum requirement for

1:00:55 ↗ Eastside Fire. Interesting. And litter. And the big trucks who can't even stay on Talus

1:01:01 ↗ Drive. It's two lanes wide and they're still in the median. And what happens when

1:01:07 ↗ they have to go through our little 18-foot neighborhood? And this is the problem that

1:01:13 ↗ was also brought up. you know, the shortcut through TALIS for people heading for

1:01:18 ↗ Renton and May Valley. They'll figure that out. So at the end of the

1:01:24 ↗ day, the little bit of extra commute time that somebody might gain is certainly not

1:01:29 ↗ worth the impact to the quality of life in those quiet neighborhoods back there. And

1:01:35 ↗ it's not just Trieres. It's Hawks Ridge and Wilderness Peak and Aliente and Mountain Air,

1:01:40 ↗ Rosecrest and Ascent are all going to be impacted. 500 plus homes because you're going

1:01:45 ↗ to put a major arterial through their neighborhoods. You know, I was looking

1:01:51 ↗ at the sign up there while I was waiting for the meeting to start. You

1:01:56 ↗ know, the city motto and the vision and the guiding principles, all good stuff. You

1:02:01 ↗ know, one of the goals, goal number five is balance community. And the goal number

1:02:07 ↗ one is preserve and encourage viable neighborhoods. Please don't ruin our neighborhoods with this connection.

1:02:12 ↗ Thank you.

1:02:20 ↗ Once again, we'll encourage you to save your applause

1:02:25 ↗ until the end when everybody has time because you're

1:02:31 ↗ using your own time. We'll be here until you

1:02:36 ↗ all get a chance to talk, but you're using

1:02:42 ↗ your own time. Steve Duffy, you're next. Hi, Christopher.

1:02:48 ↗ Steve Duffy. I live on Wilderness Peak Drive and

1:02:53 ↗ I've been a resident there since 2009. I've been

1:02:59 ↗ a resident of Issaquah since 1999. My comments were going to

1:03:05 ↗ be around do we really need more development kind of to your point sir and

1:03:10 ↗ the traffic and the affordable housing option which I think you've covered that the affordable

1:03:16 ↗ housing now it's going to be duplexes so I guess I'm glad you're identifying that

1:03:21 ↗ up front versus changing it at the last minute. On the point of more development

1:03:26 ↗ I mean we have What was it? Plat 9, the landslide lane. We

1:03:32 ↗ have the development above that, another one above that, one above that. So

1:03:38 ↗ that's what that's for. And then we have Forest Heights. I live right

1:03:43 ↗ behind Forest Heights. They started knocking down trees two years ago. The first

1:03:49 ↗ house isn't even finished. I think there's lots of room to build houses to have

1:03:55 ↗ people move in. Why can't we get them done? Do we really need more development?

1:03:59 ↗ Um, so that's that's one of the points I really think this is going to

1:04:04 ↗ go through. I have tried to fight City Hall when I first got the notice

1:04:08 ↗ in February of 2010. I said, oh, let's get organized. Let's go. And all the

1:04:13 ↗ residents who lived on, um, was it bear Ridge? Um, most of them left. unfortunately

1:04:18 ↗ I think they were the smart ones because I stayed and it is a continuous

1:04:24 ↗ continual annoyance so I'm I fully expect this this road to go through and there's

1:04:30 ↗ no upside for the existing residents I think your points were well taken but it

1:04:35 ↗ doesn't matter I really don't think it matters I think it's gonna happen whether you

1:04:41 ↗ want to whether you want it or not I mean that's that's kind of my

1:04:47 ↗ message to my fellow people in the community that roads going through so

1:04:55 ↗ I'm also concerned about Wilderness Peak. So where, let me

1:05:00 ↗ get my road straight here, where Bear Ridge Drive becomes

1:05:06 ↗ Wilderness Peak, that's where it tees into Shangri-La. So people will come through

1:05:12 ↗ this big artery, hit that stop sign and say, "Do I go up this hill

1:05:16 ↗ or do I go straight down into Wilderness Peak?" And that's a hill and I

1:05:19 ↗ have people go through there all the way. It doesn't go all the time. It

1:05:23 ↗ doesn't go anywhere, right? So they come flying down there and they go, "Oh, I'm

1:05:27 ↗ in the wrong spot." So they go whipping around and then back out. So at

1:05:31 ↗ a minimum, I think there should be a sign there that says, "No outlet," or

1:05:35 ↗ something like that. because that's going to be an issue when when you build this

1:05:38 ↗ road people will hit that stop sign and say do i go uphill or do

1:05:42 ↗ i go this way you know that type of thing so i would suggest that

1:05:46 ↗ that's something that uh we do people will cut through uh basically when there's traffic

1:05:50 ↗ on 900 too i mean if if there was a way through i would take

1:05:54 ↗ it because 900 is bad i mean we all we all know people trying to

1:05:58 ↗ get home it's an extra 10 minutes maybe it's five minutes but it's just annoying

1:06:02 ↗ right it's just annoying because there's a lot of traffic and i've called and i

1:06:06 ↗ know a lot of people on a first name basis of the city i'm sorry

1:06:09 ↗ the mayor's not here he's been very supportive i wanted to shake his hand in

1:06:13 ↗ person but some other time this is the second time i've spoken in this room

1:06:17 ↗ by the way so um So those are the those are kind of my main

1:06:22 ↗ points. Do we do we really need more more construction, more development? How am I

1:06:26 ↗ doing green? You know, concern about the traffic and then James Bush. I mean, I

1:06:31 ↗ spoke here June 4th of 2012 and I said, why don't we just improve James

1:06:36 ↗ Bush? That would be our other way out. I didn't know there was going to

1:06:41 ↗ be a landslide, but James Bush seems like another option to get things going i

1:06:46 ↗ know it's narrow there were all sorts of excuses by the way if someone needed

1:06:50 ↗ james bush for emergency access try pushing all the forest heights construction vehicles out of

1:06:55 ↗ the way i mean seriously it's bad right so um but i think james bush

1:07:00 ↗ should be looked at as as an option and um you know hopefully you can

1:07:05 ↗ get out before the road gets through because i'll be gone thank you all right

1:07:10 ↗ thank you next person is going to be christy anderson and i want to encourage

1:07:15 ↗ everybody that We're really talking about the access at this point. That

1:07:21 ↗ will be our primary focus. And we'll talk about the rest of

1:07:26 ↗ the development later. But Christy Anderson? CHRISTIE ANDERSON: I'd like to wait

1:07:32 ↗ till the second part, please. CHRIS JERRAM: OK. Andy Bernstein? ANDY BERNSTEIN:

1:07:38 ↗ My name's Andy Bernstein. Actually, I live in unincorporated King County by

1:07:44 ↗ the Four Creeks area. And my comments do tie into this extra

1:07:50 ↗ row, but also all the development. As I understand it, there's about 88,000 cubic

1:07:56 ↗ feet of debris that's going to be removed here. And what we have seen down

1:08:01 ↗ in our area of May Valley Road has to do with a concern that you

1:08:06 ↗ all had and all stated, which was regarding safety, emergency issues, and traffic flow. So

1:08:10 ↗ with this debris that is going to be removed along with your new access road,

1:08:15 ↗ there's issues on May Valley Road that I think you should be aware of. One

1:08:21 ↗ is safety. May Valley Road is very narrow. It's got narrow shoulders. It's a matter

1:08:27 ↗ of time until there's going to be accidents. So what I'm referring to are the

1:08:33 ↗ double dumper dump trucks that have increased substantially on May Valley Road, and they're going

1:08:39 ↗ to increase even further once this development goes through. So with these trucks coming down,

1:08:45 ↗ many also do not cover their loads. We've stood out there and counted trucks, and

1:08:50 ↗ I'd say about out of 10 of them, two may cover their loads. And their

1:08:55 ↗ loads are full of gravel. And so when they don't cover them, there's rock chips

1:09:01 ↗ that occur on people's windshields. There's rocks that are thrown at the walkers, bike riders,

1:09:06 ↗ horse riders. And also I should mention that May Valley Road is a recreational corridor.

1:09:12 ↗ So keep that in mind with the development that goes on to the number of

1:09:18 ↗ these large double dumpers that are making that trip. The other area again regards safety.

1:09:23 ↗ When these trucks come down May Valley Road and they want to make a a

1:09:28 ↗ right-hand turn onto Issaquah Hobart Road. They have to get into the left-hand lane to

1:09:33 ↗ make that turn because they're too big to actually turn from the right-hand lane. So

1:09:38 ↗ that slows the flow of traffic but also makes it dangerous because a lot of

1:09:43 ↗ people want to go around the right-hand side of those trucks to make their right-hand

1:09:48 ↗ turn on Issaquah Hobart Road. The other issue, again, regarding safety is children walking to

1:09:53 ↗ the bus stop. During the dark times in the morning when they walk, these trucks

1:09:57 ↗ are coming down and I don't know how fast they're going, but I know they're

1:10:02 ↗ not going the speed limit. So again, it's only a matter of time before some

1:10:07 ↗ kids are going to be hit. Road damage. We have seen an increase in potholes

1:10:11 ↗ that has occurred because of these large trucks. And last year we had an area

1:10:17 ↗ of May Valley Road that had a slide on it. It took them, I think,

1:10:22 ↗ almost nine months to fix that slide. And we wonder what the impact of these

1:10:28 ↗ large double-dumper dump trucks are going to have on that part of the road. My

1:10:33 ↗ comments really are they don't pertain to you folks and I'm sorry that you're going

1:10:38 ↗ to be going through this. But where we are, we have seen this increase in

1:10:42 ↗ these trucks and you're going to see them too because I'm sure they're going to

1:10:46 ↗ be they're going to be on 900. They're going to be on Newport. Um they

1:10:51 ↗ are those guys have a job to do. I know, but they're just unsafe when

1:10:55 ↗ they're going faster than the speed limit. They don't cover their loads. They can't make

1:10:59 ↗ the turns on these tight roads. So I don't know what impact or what

1:11:05 ↗ situations you can have over that, but I ask you to keep those

1:11:11 ↗ in mind when these decisions are made. Thanks for allowing me to make

1:11:16 ↗ comments. Susan? Susan Neville? My name is Susan Neville and I live at

1:11:22 ↗ 2825 Northwest Pinecone Drive. And I'm a little intimidated by all the experts

1:11:28 ↗ testimony we've had so far. I can offer being a 21 year resident

1:11:33 ↗ of Issaquah and I live at the same location on Pinecone Drive,

1:11:39 ↗ which is the Newport Way corridor. So, um, okay. We have an opportunity

1:11:45 ↗ to change the way we have handled our poor development decisions in the

1:11:51 ↗ past by not recommending the addition of the connector road from Tallis to

1:11:56 ↗ Newport Way through the Berksma development. A previous mistake was made when

1:12:02 ↗ the developers of Tallis received approval to build 1,700 residential units with only one

1:12:08 ↗ functioning thoroughway. The second mistake is about to occur. The City would like to

1:12:14 ↗ fix Tallis' need for two accessible thoroughways by building a connector road to Newport

1:12:20 ↗ Way. The quality of life among Newport Way and Tallis neighbors will be severely

1:12:26 ↗ affected by this action and most importantly this decision is being made at

1:12:31 ↗ the expense of us, the residents of that area and the environment which

1:12:37 ↗ we haven't even spoken about. The ramifications are currently the four new developments

1:12:43 ↗ planned for Newport Way corridor alone will create 4,000 new trips per day.

1:12:49 ↗ The TALIS traffic study concluded only 84 peak trips. We discussed that earlier.

1:12:55 ↗ But this study does not take into consideration that this road will become

1:13:00 ↗ a shortcut. We have to look at today's millennium commuters who will take

1:13:06 ↗ the shortest route per GPS or Siri recommendations. The Tallis residential neighborhoods were

1:13:12 ↗ not built to safely accommodate the new traffic generated by the shortcut.

1:13:19 ↗ The city planners will say this connector road will bring neighborhoods together and increase our

1:13:24 ↗ sense of community. I understand this is the goal of planners to connect neighborhoods where

1:13:30 ↗ possible, but not at the expense of the existing residents. I don't believe the

1:13:36 ↗ future Berksville residents want to be part of a connector development between Talus and Newport

1:13:41 ↗ Way or the northern neighborhoods of Talus were not intended or planned to be connected

1:13:47 ↗ to Newport Way. And most importantly, the residents do not want to be connected under

1:13:52 ↗ these conditions. The existing Newport Way corridor and Talus neighborhoods should not be asked to

1:13:58 ↗ fix the previous Talus development mistakes. We understand the need for

1:14:03 ↗ safety, emergency access, and up until today, TALIS has functioned using James Bush Road as

1:14:09 ↗ their emergency egress. We also understand the need for new development, but it should be

1:14:14 ↗ well planned and in accordance with our new Issaquah vision where possible. We have the

1:14:20 ↗ opportunity to make responsible development decisions, and we need to find a better solution that

1:14:25 ↗ benefits all the communities involved. I have been, since

1:14:31 ↗ March, a group of us have been gathering signatures

1:14:37 ↗ and this is just from Newport Way corridor. And

1:14:42 ↗ since March, we've brought together 72 signatures of just

1:14:48 ↗ that corridor and five neighborhoods. And I'd like to

1:14:54 ↗ officially put it noted that I have the signatures

1:14:59 ↗ here to hand in. I just want to ask

1:15:05 ↗ one more thing just so everyone's clear. If everybody

1:15:11 ↗ that is here today is opposing the Connector Road, could they raise

1:15:17 ↗ their hand? Because I just wanted, I know everybody won't talk. So

1:15:22 ↗ just thank you very much. And thank you for coming. Thank you.

1:15:28 ↗ Thank you for listening. Okay, next speaker is Tim Kimble. I'm Tim

1:15:34 ↗ Kimble, 2825 Northwest Pinecone Drive. Thank you for giving us the time

1:15:39 ↗ to comment, everybody. I appreciate it. So there's been

1:15:45 ↗ a lot of discussion regarding the impact to neighborhoods and to the environment of

1:15:51 ↗ allowing the the Bergsman development and discussion on the the application and the subsequent

1:15:57 ↗ approval of the variances to allow for an access road to the site as

1:16:03 ↗ well as the second point of access that would also join the Taos communities.

1:16:09 ↗ With that said, I'd like to bring to your attention a clause in the hearing

1:16:15 ↗ examiner's decision which followed the public hearing held on February 14th of this year. And

1:16:21 ↗ it's my belief that the decision by the examiner clearly states that the Bergsma development

1:16:27 ↗ shall only have one means of access. I'll read just a couple of short lines

1:16:33 ↗ that I'm referring to, which is exerted from the findings and conclusions of the hearing

1:16:39 ↗ examiner in the matter of application number VAR 16-0001. Summary of decision.

1:16:45 ↗ The request for these variances, for three variances, from City

1:16:51 ↗ of Issaquah Critical Areas Regulations associated with the proposed windward

1:16:56 ↗ development preliminary plat at 1763 Newport Way Northwest is conditionally

1:17:02 ↗ approved. The variances shall only be deemed approved if the

1:17:08 ↗ City Council declines to open alternate access to the site.

1:17:14 ↗ Conditions are necessary to mitigate project impacts and to ensure compliance with

1:17:20 ↗ the Issaquah Municipal Code, etc. In other words, approval is conditional on

1:17:26 ↗ the provision that alternate access is declined and thus should alternate access

1:17:32 ↗ to the site be allowed, the variances would not be approved. I'm

1:17:38 ↗ just a layman, but that seems very clear to me. So the

1:17:44 ↗ hearing examiner is an interpreter of laws and a steward of public

1:17:50 ↗ lands. has offered a well-reasoned decision by reviewing the facts and hearing testimony in

1:17:56 ↗ this matter and I think it's imperative that this provision be given the highest regard.

1:18:01 ↗ Now while I oppose the development and access road for reasons of preservation of old-growth

1:18:07 ↗ forest land and impact to neighborhoods, I think, you know, and I think this concern

1:18:12 ↗ has been made abundantly clear, I'd like to emphasize that it is incumbent on all

1:18:18 ↗ of us to preserve as much of our wild lands and our wildlife as we

1:18:23 ↗ reasonably can. And if the development is forthcoming at the least,

1:18:29 ↗ we not permit a road that would be a little more

1:18:34 ↗ than another means of sending more cars up and down a

1:18:40 ↗ once pristine Cougar Mountain hillside. With respect to the emergency access,

1:18:46 ↗ if the road is eminent, then I would clearly advocate for

1:18:51 ↗ it to be emergency access only. And just one other quick

1:18:57 ↗ note. I think the numbers are just woefully low. And if you

1:19:03 ↗ walk this area between SR 900 and where the driveway would be, the

1:19:08 ↗ math just, to me, it just doesn't play out. When you see all

1:19:14 ↗ the traffic that's coming down SR 900. Please speak into the microphone. Oh,

1:19:19 ↗ I'm sorry. There would be just a serious backup of traffic

1:19:25 ↗ that is going to take that shortcut coming off of

1:19:31 ↗ SR 900 making a left turn onto this drive. So

1:19:37 ↗ I really think it needs to have you know a

1:19:43 ↗ little more scrutiny. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. Joe

1:19:48 ↗ Verner. My name is Joe Verner. Address is 1230 Oakwood

1:19:54 ↗ Place Northwest, Issaquah. It's on the Newport Way Northwest Corridor.

1:20:04 ↗ I have grave doubts on the accuracy of traffic

1:20:09 ↗ analysis. The traffic engineer that was up here earlier

1:20:15 ↗ just addressed himself to TALIS. If you envision this

1:20:20 ↗ as SR 900 and here is Newport, TALIS people

1:20:26 ↗ drive and take a left onto Newport. What the

1:20:31 ↗ traffic analysis engineer fails to mention is traffic is

1:20:36 ↗ coming on Newport this way, pass-through traffic besides Dallas

1:20:42 ↗ people is pass-through traffic that are turning on to Newport

1:20:48 ↗ and from Maple and Gilman they're coming up SR 900

1:20:53 ↗ and turning right on to Newport now if a traffic

1:20:59 ↗ engineer was out there doing his job he'd be out

1:21:05 ↗ there doing it in rush-hour traffic during the school year

1:21:11 ↗ And rush hour traffic on Newport is about 7:00 till 8:00 AM going

1:21:17 ↗ west. It's almost a steady stream of traffic coming up Newport. And I

1:21:22 ↗ live at the other end of Newport, about a mile up the road.

1:21:28 ↗ Newport is two-way traffic in rush hour. There's not a lot of it

1:21:34 ↗ going east. But when there's a break in the steady traffic of westbound,

1:21:40 ↗ and people trying to get onto Newport, have to be concerned

1:21:46 ↗ with the traffic that's going eastbound. I've been at my intersection on many

1:21:52 ↗ mornings taking anywhere between two and four minutes to wait for a break

1:21:58 ↗ in traffic both directions. So it's not just TALIS traffic coming down here.

1:22:03 ↗ We have solid traffic on Newport. And I have serious doubts if

1:22:09 ↗ our city engineers have figured out what the dickens they're going to do to try

1:22:15 ↗ to control traffic coming down from Newport or Talus to make a left turn onto

1:22:21 ↗ Newport Way in the morning rush hour. So I want you to consider that.

1:22:27 ↗ And one of the reasons we're having a discussion here this morning of

1:22:33 ↗ a connector road is the error that the city and its engineers made

1:22:39 ↗ when they approved the plat and the design of Talus. Now you all

1:22:44 ↗ are trying to correct that and dump this onto the folks that live

1:22:50 ↗ in another neighborhood. So I encourage you, Commission, nix this approval process of

1:22:55 ↗ a connector road. And if you don't, then

1:23:01 ↗ the next thing you must do is be

1:23:07 ↗ on the city engineer's case to develop a

1:23:13 ↗ suitable traffic control environment where the new Bergsma

1:23:19 ↗ Road comes into play. Thank you. Julie Clark.

1:23:25 ↗ And then how do I advance the slides?

1:23:31 ↗ If anybody's come in that hasn't signed in

1:23:37 ↗ and you wish to talk, I encourage you

1:23:42 ↗ to come up here and sign this so

1:23:48 ↗ we can make sure you're

1:23:55 ↗ And I'll just remind you, we're only

1:24:00 ↗ taking comments on the connection at this

1:24:06 ↗ point. We'll be talking about the second

1:24:12 ↗ half of the development. We'll probably end

1:24:18 ↗ up taking a short break. That one?

1:24:24 ↗ No. That was Christopher's. Sorry. That's not

1:24:29 ↗ you? That's you, right? No, no, no.

1:24:36 ↗ It should be up there. That one?

1:24:42 ↗ Are you PDF? Okay, let's put you

1:24:47 ↗ back in. I'm sorry. There we go.

1:24:53 ↗ Okay. And then to advance, do I

1:24:58 ↗ just click? Yes. So you can hit

1:25:04 ↗ the enter. Okay. And backspace to go

1:25:09 ↗ back. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I'll wait.

1:25:15 ↗ I want to have them take that

1:25:20 ↗ down there. If you want, you can

1:25:26 ↗ carry that down there or however works best for you guys. That

1:25:32 ↗ table down there and we'll start with her and then I'll come

1:25:37 ↗ back. Thank you. All right, great. Ms. Clark, why don't you go

1:25:43 ↗ ahead and start. Could we get your attention here, please? Shall I

1:25:49 ↗ start? Yes, ma'am, please. Okay, thank you. My name is Julie Clark.

1:25:54 ↗ I live at 915 Bear Ridge Court Northwest in Issaquah. And on

1:26:00 ↗ Monday I was able to submit to the city council a petition I drafted along

1:26:06 ↗ with 44 signatures showing support and opposition to the connector road between Newport Way and

1:26:12 ↗ Talus via the Bergsma Windward development. These signatures come from residents in Trieres,

1:26:18 ↗ Aliente, Wilderness Peak, The Bridges, Ascent, and Hawks Ridge. Tonight I am submitting

1:26:24 ↗ 29 more signatures that I have myself and a neighbor have collected over

1:26:29 ↗ the past day, day and a half. Our neighborhood does not want a

1:26:35 ↗ connector road. It's unfortunate the City Council was so short-sighted when they approved

1:26:41 ↗ the development for Tallis But they failed to recognize the need for

1:26:46 ↗ a second egress and ingress road while permitting the construction of more than

1:26:52 ↗ 1,700 homes. Today, the city council is again approaching a development with short-sighted

1:26:58 ↗ views. Putting in an arterial through the middle of a quiet family neighborhood

1:27:04 ↗ does not make sense for today, nor will it make sense years from

1:27:10 ↗ today. My main concerns are the through road enters Tallis through

1:27:16 ↗ Harvey Manning Park. It connects narrow residential streets as a

1:27:22 ↗ shortcut for State Route 900 and the driveways in Trieras

1:27:28 ↗ connect directly to the residential street. Everybody backs in or

1:27:34 ↗ pulls into their driveway onto these streets. Trieras consists of

1:27:40 ↗ 120 homes with relatively small lots to community parks

1:27:45 ↗ and the Harvey Manning Park. The alley homes have small

1:27:51 ↗ garages and may need to use Big Tree and Bear

1:27:56 ↗ Ridge to park their second vehicles. According to the traffic

1:28:02 ↗ impact study analysis used by the city of Issaquah, it

1:28:07 ↗ says that using aerial data, It is estimated that half of the units

1:28:13 ↗ in the Talus development are between Talus Drive and the Bergsma development and

1:28:19 ↗ that half of these units would utilize the connection through the Bergsma development.

1:28:25 ↗ So that's one quarter of the homes. There are 1,700 residential units. So

1:28:31 ↗ contrary to the traffic study analysis showing 103 total a.m. peak hour trips

1:28:37 ↗ and 118 total PM peak hour trips, the total is

1:28:42 ↗ more like 425 somehow split because that's a quarter of 1700.

1:28:48 ↗ Surely the number would be substantially higher than 100 or 200

1:28:54 ↗ trips. I don't have a picture of Trieras, but at the

1:29:00 ↗ northern end, there's really only about 30 homes that go on

1:29:06 ↗ that northern side. So to assume that they are only

1:29:11 ↗ impacting our traffic by a small amount is not a correct assumption because most

1:29:17 ↗ homes in Trieres don't come down this way to leave and to come home

1:29:23 ↗ in the evenings. They're north of this particular road. I've attached two photos

1:29:29 ↗ here I'll show. So first you saw the Bear Ridge Court which is the

1:29:35 ↗ road between Harvey Manning Park and Big Tree Bear Ridge Drive. That was on

1:29:41 ↗ a Monday on traffic day. Here's the same day on Bear Ridge Drive. Vehicles

1:29:47 ↗ cannot get around that garbage truck and it's just a small congested road as

1:29:52 ↗ is. This is the intersection where that connector will be feeding right out into our

1:29:58 ↗ neighborhood. This is looking on Bear Ridge Court Northwest out at Big Tree to the

1:30:03 ↗ left and Bear Ridge to the right. This is a school stop, a school bus

1:30:09 ↗ stop where kids get on the bus and get off every day.

1:30:16 ↗ OK. So going back to Harvey Manning Park, when we met with the city

1:30:21 ↗ prior to it being developed-- it wasn't there when I moved in-- the city

1:30:27 ↗ assured us that if the park went in, the chances of a road going

1:30:33 ↗ through were minimal. Matter of fact, they were so confident, they planted these arborvitaes

1:30:38 ↗ right in front of the sign. These pictures were there-- or this was there

1:30:44 ↗ then. That is your time. Thank you. This is how

1:30:50 ↗ it looks now, less than six months

1:30:55 ↗ after that. Thank you. Brookie Scholl. Unless

1:31:00 ↗ you want the sign. Hi, my name

1:31:05 ↗ is Brookie Scholl. I live at 544

1:31:11 ↗ Timber Creek Drive, Northwest. I'm a resident

1:31:16 ↗ of Tallis and I'm also the treasurer

1:31:21 ↗ of our homeowners association. I'd like to

1:31:27 ↗ read a letter that was sent by

1:31:32 ↗ our attorney, Peter Eglic, to the commission

1:31:37 ↗ earlier this week. The TRA represents several

1:31:43 ↗ thousand TALIS homeowners who are vitally interested in and

1:31:49 ↗ significantly impacted by the possible proposal to establish a through road connection

1:31:54 ↗ between the Windward-Bergsma development and TALIS. Several TALIS residents have already submitted

1:32:00 ↗ comments pointing out the incongruity and harm that would occur from such

1:32:06 ↗ a connection. These comments on behalf of the TRA incorporate the supplement,

1:32:12 ↗ incorporate and supplement those comments. A fundamental shortcoming underlies the various applicant

1:32:17 ↗ sponsored and staff reports the Commission has been offered on what has been

1:32:23 ↗ euphemistically labeled as a possible Bergsma-Tallis road connection. That shortcoming is illustrated by

1:32:29 ↗ the Gibson Traffic Report, which focuses on peak hour data and LOS ratings

1:32:34 ↗ for intersection operations, but ignores the nature of the Tallis community and the

1:32:40 ↗ roads that would constitute the connection. These qualitative as well as road dimension

1:32:46 ↗ and operation factors are critical to a decision about whether the possible connection is in

1:32:51 ↗ the public interest. The commission requires passage through the narrow street of Bear Ridge Drive.

1:32:57 ↗ This street classifies as a residential street under the Talus Master Development Agreement with a

1:33:03 ↗ seven foot parking strip and a roadway 18 feet in width. The appendix to

1:33:09 ↗ the TALIS master development agreement provides the framework for TALIS road classification and use. The

1:33:15 ↗ plan relies on an ordered system with spine roads feeding into the neighborhood collectors that

1:33:21 ↗ in turn feed relatively narrow and quiet residential streets. The possible extension would nonetheless direct

1:33:26 ↗ arterial traffic onto and through a residential street. Neither the staff report nor the Gibson

1:33:32 ↗ traffic report Report acknowledges this nor do they address how this can be? Responsibly and

1:33:38 ↗ lawfully accomplished when the map talus master development agreement description of residential streets is

1:33:44 ↗ completely inconsistent With their use as vital arterials it states the residential street is

1:33:50 ↗ a neighborhood scale street that allows parking on one side of the street only

1:33:56 ↗ this roadway provides access between residences or buildings and and collector streets. They also

1:34:01 ↗ contribute to the residential character of the neighborhood. Again, with parking on one side,

1:34:07 ↗ these residential streets leave only the 18 feet for a through roadway with limited

1:34:13 ↗ sight lines and geometry that would create substantial impacts of more than neighborhood use

1:34:19 ↗ occurs. The materials presented to the commission do not do justice to the elaborate

1:34:24 ↗ planning that went into TALIS. They focus on consistency with generalized city policies but

1:34:30 ↗ ignore very specific plans. Finally, emergency services have not been cited as imperative

1:34:36 ↗ driving the possible connection. If they're now brought to the fore, they can

1:34:42 ↗ be addressed through a physical barrier allowing limited use in actual emergencies, establishing

1:34:48 ↗ a new constant arterial connection that will encourage pass-through traffic on residential streets

1:34:54 ↗ will only create more emergencies. The Commission in recognition of the public

1:35:00 ↗ interest including and avoiding actions that would undermine the long-standing plan established for TALIS should

1:35:05 ↗ recommend against the possible road connection between Bergsma and TALIS. I'd also like to

1:35:11 ↗ make a personal comment. When we were here a few months ago, when we

1:35:17 ↗ were dealing with parcel nine and the landslide, it was noted to us that

1:35:22 ↗ the James Bush Road was okay for us, that we should feel comfortable that

1:35:28 ↗ the emergency vehicles would be able to be used. So I feel a little

1:35:33 ↗ slighted that today we were told that that's not the case. So thank you.

1:35:39 ↗ Thank you. Larry Thornburg. Okay. Thank you. Karen Porterfield. Since I

1:35:45 ↗ wish to speak for both, would you like me to speak now or

1:35:51 ↗ later? Well, can you speak on the traffic now and later? We'll put

1:35:57 ↗ you down for make sure you get included in the next. Thank you.

1:36:03 ↗ Karen Porterfield, 2498 Northwest Stony Creek Drive. So a typical commute home.

1:36:08 ↗ For most traffic nights, we get stacked up right past Lakemont. It can

1:36:14 ↗ take me 40 minutes to get from past Lakemont to my home in

1:36:20 ↗ Tallis. So never let it be said that traffic does not look for

1:36:25 ↗ a quicker way. Traffic is indeed like water, and I can easily see

1:36:31 ↗ people going from Lakemont to Newport through Bergsma through Tallis to 900.

1:36:37 ↗ That's a lot quicker than the 40 minutes it's been taking me. So to

1:36:42 ↗ hear the conversation say, oh, this will only be used by a few people

1:36:48 ↗ who live in the community, they truly have not been part of the evening

1:36:54 ↗ commute. A main concern I have is safety, safety for our children, safety for

1:36:59 ↗ our pedestrians. And it should be noted that we have a significant senior community

1:37:06 ↗ housing kind of project, Timber Ridge. Our seniors are active, they're out in the

1:37:12 ↗ community, but they're out there as pedestrians. So seniors and children both are being

1:37:17 ↗ put at risk by this conversation. In addition to the safety of our children

1:37:23 ↗ and the safety of our seniors, we know from studies, and I say this

1:37:29 ↗ as a faculty member in public administration at Seattle University, arterials bring crime.

1:37:35 ↗ We have had challenge challenges like many of the neighborhoods have

1:37:41 ↗ with problems with people taking mail with taking packages. Having an

1:37:46 ↗ arterial also raises the question of additional crime. Putting the connector

1:37:52 ↗ road as proposed It goes by the one large park we have in

1:37:58 ↗ all of TALIS for our kids to really get out and run around in.

1:38:04 ↗ And again, this drives back to the safety of our children. I can't say

1:38:09 ↗ enough, and I appreciate and I understand what staff is doing when they came

1:38:15 ↗ and quoted the 1999 "Here's what we were talking about," because they're trying to

1:38:21 ↗ put together their best argument. But I want to point out to everybody here,

1:38:26 ↗ when they say "shall be considered," when we were talking about other egress points, "shall

1:38:32 ↗ be considered," and for any of us who've had kids, when we say "maybe," does

1:38:38 ↗ not mean "yes." It means we will consider it. So I would encourage all of

1:38:44 ↗ you here on the Commission to hear it that way. This is an opportunity. It

1:38:50 ↗ is not an automatic "yes." And I just want to wrap with

1:38:56 ↗ two things as we finish this. The first one is, as a consultant, I

1:39:02 ↗ work with regional cities, and I'm working with multiple regional cities in this area

1:39:08 ↗ right now. It hurts me, because this has been my career, to have people

1:39:13 ↗ stand here and say, it doesn't matter what we tell you. The city is

1:39:19 ↗ going to ignore us. And that's not OK. So I don't know

1:39:25 ↗ what your final decision will be, but I hope it will be open and

1:39:31 ↗ transparent. I hope there will be strong clarity so that people can understand what

1:39:36 ↗ your decision is and why you made it. Because that's how we are going to

1:39:42 ↗ solve this. We can't trust our government. And the last thing that I will say

1:39:48 ↗ to all of you is I heard one of the commissioners tonight say, well, what

1:39:53 ↗ are our options? You should not have to ask for that. The staff who supports

1:39:58 ↗ you should provide all the options, all the pros and cons, and then their recommendation.

1:40:03 ↗ But you shouldn't have to ask for it. You should expect it and you should

1:40:09 ↗ be staffed at that level and so I hope going forward you will make that

1:40:14 ↗ request because you deserve that as a volunteer of our community. You put in a

1:40:19 ↗ lot of time. I could tell from the questions being asked you didn't just pick

1:40:23 ↗ this report up on a Sunday afternoon and spend 20 minutes reading it. There are

1:40:28 ↗ a lot of hours there. and for the time you invest

1:40:34 ↗ you need to be supported respectfully and appropriately so

1:40:40 ↗ please demand that thank you Geraldine Carey hi my

1:40:45 ↗ name is Jeremy Carroll I live at 913 Bear

1:40:51 ↗ Ridge Drive and my garbage cans have been photographed

1:40:56 ↗ about four different times during this so I can

1:41:02 ↗ speak for myself and Julie we are directly impacted

1:41:08 ↗ by this idea I also need to apologize in

1:41:13 ↗ advance I tell my wife I'm never responsible for things I say when I'm hungry

1:41:18 ↗ and I'm starving right now. Traffic will definitely be routed right in front of my

1:41:23 ↗ home on already incredibly narrow streets. I think the pictures that you've seen today with

1:41:27 ↗ trucks knocking down trees, light poles going out on the main TALIS roadway there are

1:41:31 ↗ all very real, and they happen all the time. And I'm sorry. I didn't know

1:41:36 ↗ I was speaking tonight. I have some notes on my phone, but I wish I

1:41:40 ↗ would have made a PowerPoint like everybody else. I think we can all agree that

1:41:45 ↗ everything you've heard tonight about the traffic report in no way makes any sort of

1:41:49 ↗ sense whatsoever for the residents of TALIS. We live there. I deal with it every

1:41:53 ↗ day. I cross those intersections. I take the bus into downtown Seattle and back home

1:41:57 ↗ every single day and then deal with 900. We live in a very social society.

1:42:01 ↗ Raise of hands. Who knows what Waze is in this room? Cool. Somebody named that

1:42:05 ↗ little hill that is covered in plastic sliding hill on a social network that people

1:42:10 ↗ use for turn-by-turn directions over a year ago, and it's still looking that. I look

1:42:14 ↗ at a plastic muddy hill and have been for over a year and a half

1:42:19 ↗ now. The fact that that's not done and we're considering adding an additional layer of

1:42:23 ↗ traffic through our neighborhood absolutely blows my mind. Taliesin itself has some really oddball

1:42:29 ↗ issues with how it's cut into a very large hill. There's all sorts of drainage

1:42:33 ↗ issues. All of our parks are always sopping wet. I can't imagine what is going

1:42:38 ↗ to happen to the community if we're going to remove more material, allow more houses

1:42:43 ↗ to be built, and we don't even have sufficient enough drainage through the area as

1:42:47 ↗ it is. I just want to say, and I'm sure everybody in this room knows

1:42:52 ↗ it, landslides are a real thing. they've impacted a lot of people in our state

1:42:57 ↗ in the past and i get the sense that it's really not being looked at

1:43:01 ↗ as closely as it should considering we've been looking at sliding hill as it's called

1:43:06 ↗ for almost two years now i also don't understand the upside in putting this in

1:43:10 ↗ based on what i've heard today and based on what i've experienced living in talus

1:43:14 ↗ i don't know if it's Yeah, I don't know what the upside is in connecting

1:43:19 ↗ these two neighborhoods at all. It doesn't sound like the neighborhood that's going in. It's

1:43:24 ↗ a good deal for them and it's definitely not a good deal for us. I

1:43:28 ↗ will take the path of least resistance and any given chance I get in traffic

1:43:32 ↗ just like anybody else would. And it's it doesn't make any sort of sense to

1:43:37 ↗ me that that only a handful of cars are projected to go through this neighborhood.

1:43:41 ↗ Waze is a perfect example. We all know what it is. Everybody here uses it

1:43:47 ↗ on a daily basis. I use it every single day I get in my car.

1:43:52 ↗ And it routes people through the fastest possible way, period. It's how it works. This

1:43:57 ↗ entire, I think, idea of putting a road in here is doubling down on a

1:44:03 ↗ very bad idea. I understand that when Talos was originally designed, it may not have

1:44:08 ↗ been thought through as we would all really like. but for the most part adding

1:44:13 ↗ this road is not going to improve the situation if there is no benefit to

1:44:17 ↗ us as residents and there is absolutely no benefit to this new development that's going

1:44:21 ↗ in it's just going to cause more problems with that being said thank you i

1:44:25 ↗ really appreciate the time here and i really do hope that you guys listen to

1:44:28 ↗ everybody's concerns here and i appreciate some of the questions that you guys have been

1:44:32 ↗ asking because you're having the same thoughts that i am that not a lot of

1:44:36 ↗ this makes any sense whatsoever and it doesn't seem like it's very well thought out

1:44:40 ↗ yet now I don't think the road is a good idea. I'd like to default

1:44:45 ↗ to whatever somebody else said about if we're going to do this, it's for emergency

1:44:48 ↗ access only. I do agree that that should be an electronic gate if that's the

1:44:51 ↗ way that it goes. But at the end of the day, there hasn't been any

1:44:55 ↗ discussion around on these emergency services and having access. How many times has that been

1:44:58 ↗ a problem? Anytime you see a moving truck, as you guys all know, it's almost

1:45:02 ↗ impossible to get around them. I personally don't try, try not to drive because I'm

1:45:06 ↗ aware of when the school buses are going to be going through there. So I

1:45:10 ↗ just waited out until they're all gone. But this is not going to improve anybody's

1:45:15 ↗ way of life. This is only going to make it worse. And we have a

1:45:20 ↗ great little quiet community. If you're going to to Treyarch where I live, it's because

1:45:25 ↗ you live there. And if you offer a way to cut that entire corner of

1:45:30 ↗ 900, everybody is going to take it. There's not a single person that's not going

1:45:36 ↗ to drive through that neighborhood. And to be honest, they're going to drive through it

1:45:41 ↗ a little more reckless than the residents of Taliswood. Thank you. All right. I was

1:45:47 ↗ calling for Geraldine Carey. Not Jeremy Carvell. Sorry. My name is Geraldine

1:45:52 ↗ Carey and I have been a resident in the same place in Issaquah for

1:45:58 ↗ 40 years so I think I'm an old timer by now. I've come before

1:46:04 ↗ the Development Commission a lot of times and this project concerns me because of

1:46:10 ↗ its access point on Newport Way. I live really close to the access point.

1:46:16 ↗ My driveway is between the intersection of 900 and the landscape business. I

1:46:22 ↗ am right there at the corner and I think when you add all these

1:46:28 ↗ cars into the line of traffic either going north, I mean east or west,

1:46:33 ↗ it's going to make getting out of my driveway impossible. I think the numbers

1:46:39 ↗ are off. I started to look at one of the documents, the city

1:46:45 ↗ used in their presentation and everything I read said complies, complies, complies. And

1:46:50 ↗ it offended me because the city has all these things and yet the

1:46:56 ↗ developers are able to push them aside and do what they want to

1:47:02 ↗ do. There's no respect for the people who live in the community. There's

1:47:07 ↗ no respect for what is happening to our city. I know development has

1:47:13 ↗ to happen, but it has to be done responsibly. And what's happening is totally disrespectful

1:47:19 ↗ to the people who live here. I mean, I have been coming up here for

1:47:24 ↗ 40 years. And you know it's kind of disappointing the one fellow said it's going

1:47:29 ↗ to happen you have no control over it and it's sad you know to go

1:47:34 ↗ before all these commissions to be told you're at the wrong meeting you can't do

1:47:39 ↗ this you know and so I really support what everybody says about this development that

1:47:44 ↗ it's not a good thing especially the connector that will bring traffic onto Newport Way.

1:47:49 ↗ Newport Way, if you're going to do that, needs to have a fund set

1:47:55 ↗ aside by the developers that if there's more than 100 cars a day, they

1:48:00 ↗ are responsible for putting in a signal. They're responsible for something that makes it

1:48:06 ↗ safe for the people who need to access Newport Way. I hope that if

1:48:12 ↗ you put in and okay a connector road to TALUS, which I don't think

1:48:18 ↗ is good for TALIS and I don't think it's good for traffic on Newport Way,

1:48:23 ↗ that it is a gated and it is electronically activated so that the people who

1:48:29 ↗ live in Bergsma are not subject to being a pass-through community. I mean, I would

1:48:35 ↗ not want to live in that community knowing that a road is going to carry

1:48:40 ↗ traffic traffic from a major, I don't know what you said, 120,000 residents. I mean,

1:48:46 ↗ I just think that you need to let people know what's gonna happen. So I

1:48:52 ↗ know you need an emergency road, but like people have said, TALIS, when it went

1:48:58 ↗ in, should have provided that road. I mean, if you're willing to haul out

1:49:04 ↗ 88,000 cubic yards of gravel now. You should have done

1:49:10 ↗ it then. You should have made them put in a

1:49:15 ↗ road for their safety issues. Thank you. Thank you. Barry

1:49:21 ↗ Hamadie? Hamadie? Hammerly. Hammerly, sorry. I'm Mary

1:49:27 ↗ Hammerly. I live at 1230 Oakwood Place, Northwest. Oakwood Place is in a

1:49:32 ↗ development called Summer Hill that is the first left right now after you

1:49:38 ↗ pass the landscape business. Those of us that are living on Newport Way

1:49:44 ↗ are experiencing the nightmare, and I don't use it lightly, of all the development that's

1:49:49 ↗ already been authorized to go onto Newport Way. You have a huge development in the

1:49:55 ↗ process that is apartments. You have another development that's being put in across the street

1:50:01 ↗ from the entrance to Summerhill. And as far as I know, that always was wetland,

1:50:06 ↗ but it's been approved for development. And now you're talking about this Berksma development, and

1:50:11 ↗ now you want to take all the talus traffic and run it through Newport Way.

1:50:16 ↗ The bottom line is Newport Way cannot handle it. I've gone to meetings and talking

1:50:22 ↗ about how are we ever going to handle the traffic on Newport Way for the

1:50:27 ↗ development that's approved, and you're going to put all of the talus traffic on there.

1:50:32 ↗ Your traffic studies are absurd. And I don't say that lightly because you do not

1:50:37 ↗ take into consideration the reality of what happens on Newport Way. The traffic on

1:50:43 ↗ Newport Way, a large portion of it comes down Lakemont, goes all the way down

1:50:48 ↗ Newport Way, gets to SR 900 and turns right to go out further. If you

1:50:54 ↗ put this development through, this traffic isn't going to be going back to SR 900.

1:50:59 ↗ It's going to continue right down Newport Way and clog up the only entrance that

1:51:04 ↗ those of us that live on Newport Way have to get in and out. It

1:51:09 ↗ is not a benefit in any way, shape or form to put the Taos traffic

1:51:14 ↗ onto Newport Way and if you even seriously consider it, take a look at all

1:51:20 ↗ the development you've already authorized on Newport Way and look at the meetings that I've

1:51:25 ↗ been attending saying what in the world are we going to do with the traffic

1:51:30 ↗ with these other developments and you think that Newport Way can handle this all the

1:51:35 ↗ thousands of cars from TALIS. It's absurd. And be reasonable. I hear the traffic person

1:51:40 ↗ saying well the city gave us this model. The model city gave you is not

1:51:45 ↗ in any way shape or form accurate. If you have a thousand houses that's 2000

1:51:51 ↗ cars. You look at the number of cars when I hear the traffic studies

1:51:56 ↗ for all the other developments on Newport Way. It's always grossly underestimated. You have a

1:52:02 ↗ senior development that doesn't even, that is being authorized for not even having enough parking

1:52:08 ↗ places for the number of units. And the comment is they'll take public transportation.

1:52:13 ↗ It's not going to happen. Don't put any more traffic on Newport

1:52:19 ↗ Way. Don't put the Tallahassee traffic on Newport Way. And if I

1:52:25 ↗ had my druthers, I would prefer you not even put the Bergsma

1:52:30 ↗ traffic on Newport Way. Ms. Connors? Mitch? I don't think I have

1:52:36 ↗ that right. good

1:52:42 ↗ evening my name is mitch connors i've been a resident of the issaquah area for

1:52:46 ↗ about three years now on may valley road which i think someone else had mentioned

1:52:51 ↗ earlier on i'd really love to support the connection in the neighborhood as someone who

1:52:56 ↗ has to commute southbound on 900 every day to get to may valley road in

1:53:00 ↗ the pm it does take me sometimes as much as 45 50 minutes to get

1:53:05 ↗ four miles which is worse than my commute through downtown seattle on game day So

1:53:10 ↗ I would love to have a route that bypasses that and Bergsman sounds fantastic. I

1:53:15 ↗ recognize that's probably not the intention. But you know, as a plan B, I'd love

1:53:20 ↗ to take that. No, in all seriousness, this is not a well thought through idea.

1:53:25 ↗ The traffic moves at less than five miles per hour at rush hour down that

1:53:30 ↗ corridor. It is infuriating. There's evidence of road rage every single day. People honking, getting

1:53:36 ↗ cut off, demonstrating their use of fingers. We see accidents on a regular basis.

1:53:42 ↗ And so thinking that that traffic is not going to bypass using this corridor,

1:53:48 ↗ I think is just naive, unfortunately. I did want to kind of tell a little

1:53:53 ↗ bit of a story about my time on May Valley Road and I hope that

1:53:57 ↗ it's a cautionary tale for the Tallis community and potentially for the Bergsman community if

1:54:01 ↗ it exists someday. Three years ago I moved to May Valley Road. It was a

1:54:06 ↗ quiet, peaceful area. You could see on a regular Saturday, I don't know if they,

1:54:11 ↗ they haven't done this in a long time, but a horse-drawn carriage, I think they

1:54:15 ↗ might have taken rentals or something like that, would go down my road, this sort

1:54:20 ↗ of ugly white thing, but very quaint. There were horseback riders who would ride between

1:54:25 ↗ the trail systems of Cougar Mountain and Squawk Mountain. There are still to this day

1:54:30 ↗ many cyclists who ride by. It's actually part of the upcoming flying wheels race, not

1:54:34 ↗ race, Cascade Bicycle Club ride. It's a beautiful part of the route and it's a

1:54:39 ↗ very popular ride with cyclists even to this day. But over the last three years,

1:54:44 ↗ sadly, that community has changed. It's not what it was. The horseback riders are no

1:54:49 ↗ longer even risking the road because traffic is moving so quickly. Just in the last

1:54:53 ↗ year, we saw approval of the Gateway Project brought I don't know how many thousands

1:54:58 ↗ of cubic yards of gravel down our quiet road in giant trucks. Recently the City

1:55:03 ↗ Council decision to close truck routes within Issaquah City, which for the city was probably

1:55:08 ↗ a great decision, meant that more truck traffic was pushed onto our quiet road. We

1:55:12 ↗ were told by the city that we're not their problem, which I respect. We were

1:55:17 ↗ told to go to the county, we went to the county, we were told that

1:55:21 ↗ we're not their problem either. We seem to be no one's problem, unfortunately. Now this

1:55:26 ↗ project could potentially add even more heavy traffic to our once quiet road. We've

1:55:32 ↗ seen graffiti increase as a result of the increased traffic, break-ins to mailboxes. The

1:55:38 ↗ guardrail that goes along the road near my house was broken three months after

1:55:44 ↗ it was replaced by heavy truck traffic and is still not replaced. The moral

1:55:49 ↗ of this story, I hope, is twofold for you. One is that you can't

1:55:55 ↗ tell in advance how a thoroughfare is going to be used. You just don't know.

1:56:00 ↗ May Valley Road was never intended to be the route for thousands of gravel trucks

1:56:06 ↗ each week. It was intended to be a quiet, calm place with country farms and

1:56:11 ↗ backwoods trails. But that's not what it has become today. So I'd really urge you

1:56:16 ↗ to consider that example as you consider putting this passage between the two neighborhoods here.

1:56:21 ↗ I'd also like to ask that you start considering more sustainable development practices Newport

1:56:27 ↗ Way 900 May Valley Road Front Street these are not appropriate places for huge

1:56:33 ↗ construction equipment to be driving every day these are appropriate places for cyclists in

1:56:39 ↗ some cases for horseback riders we have been for 50 years a wonderful

1:56:46 ↗ It's not suburban. What's the word rural community? a great place to

1:56:52 ↗ escape from the urban areas of downtown and We're beginning to lose

1:56:57 ↗ that because of the focus and aggressive development without focusing on development

1:57:03 ↗ of infrastructure that can really support those practices So I would encourage

1:57:09 ↗ you to vote no on both counts Jesse Hartman was that that

1:57:14 ↗ was that was Jesse Hartman right Kimberly Brown That was

1:57:20 ↗ Mitch, so I need Jessie Hartman. All right, she's

1:57:26 ↗ coming. Hi, my name is Kimberly Brown. I live

1:57:32 ↗ in the Wilderness Peak subdivision of Tallis. I will say I

1:57:38 ↗ am skeptical that we won't get the road. So I would say if you feel

1:57:42 ↗ obligated to push this through, because I know the developers also have rights, that I

1:57:46 ↗ would ask that you please put it through with only emergency access. And my reasons

1:57:51 ↗ are twofold. I'm hoping to tell a story, but maybe not as eloquently. As a

1:57:55 ↗ mom, I'm astonished that our city who less than two years ago lowered speed limits

1:58:00 ↗ on Newport and arterial because a child was hit in a crosswalk would even think

1:58:04 ↗ of routing through traffic through 18 foot roads. My kids walk to Harvey Manning Park

1:58:09 ↗ on a regular basis with parent supervision, but you never know what's going to happen.

1:58:14 ↗ It scares me as a parent. We actually moved into Talos in July of last

1:58:18 ↗ year. So we're pretty recent residents of Issaquah proper. We spent 10 years out on

1:58:23 ↗ Tiger Mountain in the Miramont neighborhood. And the Waze app has come up a couple

1:58:28 ↗ of times tonight. And what's interesting is Waze had a significant impact on that space

1:58:33 ↗ out there. Issaquah Hobart Road, as everyone in the region knows, is one of the

1:58:39 ↗ worst roads in all of the county. Waze, through Google's amazing technology, started routing everyone

1:58:44 ↗ coming northbound in the morning onto Tiger Mountain Road. What we saw was a significant

1:58:49 ↗ increase and obviously lots of next-door conversations and email threads and whatnot. Significant increase not

1:58:54 ↗ only of traffic but in speed. These are pass-through people. They're excited that they're no

1:58:58 ↗ longer sitting in bumper-to-bumper for the seven miles it takes them to get to I-90.

1:59:03 ↗ So they buzz up and over Tiger Mountain Road. We saw a significant road deterioration

1:59:07 ↗ in a very short period of time because the road was not built to handle

1:59:12 ↗ that kind of volume. And then finally, It's a right turn, which is even easier

1:59:17 ↗ than what we're talking about if I'm going on the morning commute out of Tallis

1:59:22 ↗ on this new road. It was a right turn back onto Iziquahobart Road. I started

1:59:26 ↗ counting, my daycare is and was right there. There were more than 50 cars waiting

1:59:31 ↗ to turn right on a typical morning. So you can imagine the wait time. People

1:59:35 ↗ had a great idea, it's gonna save me some time, but ultimately it was at

1:59:39 ↗ a significant cost. You can say a lot of that was maybe local neighborhoods getting

1:59:43 ↗ really concerned because it had an impact on them. And we never like it when

1:59:47 ↗ change has an impact on us personally. But the county actually got enough gripes, if

1:59:51 ↗ you will, and they came out and they did studies. And what the county ultimately

1:59:55 ↗ did is they made it a no right turn onto Tiger Mountain Road on the

1:59:59 ↗ south end. during the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. morning commute with the exception of

2:00:03 ↗ school buses. That included residents, so all of us residents then were now sitting in

2:00:07 ↗ the Zocco-Hobart road traffic if you had any reason to be coming from Maple Valley

2:00:12 ↗ or Hobart. What I want the city to consider is apps like Waze are going

2:00:17 ↗ to impact travel patterns. I find a lot of fault in the traffic study. I

2:00:21 ↗ read a significant portion of it. It's not my area of expertise, but I think

2:00:26 ↗ we need to consider that if we put it there, they will come. And is

2:00:31 ↗ the city willing to deal with the increased response to traffic accidents, increased medical response

2:00:36 ↗ when some adult child, elderly person is inevitably hit by a car that's cruising through

2:00:42 ↗ there? And also the increased infrastructure cost that will undoubtedly happen as those roads are

2:00:48 ↗ beat down significantly faster than they were intended to be and designed to be.

2:00:54 ↗ So thank you. My ask again,

2:00:59 ↗ if you have to put it

2:01:04 ↗ in, please, please make it emergency

2:01:10 ↗ access only. Thanks. All right. I

2:01:15 ↗ called Jessie Hartman. No, that was

2:01:20 ↗ Kimberly Brown, right? Jessie Hartman? Okay.

2:01:26 ↗ How about Tina Conforti? Good evening,

2:01:31 ↗ everyone. My name is Tina Conforti,

2:01:37 ↗ and I live on 1220 Oakwood

2:01:42 ↗ Place, northwest Issaquah. And I appreciate the

2:01:48 ↗ time you're taking the commission and all of the

2:01:53 ↗ city employers. My concern, I have a very big

2:01:59 ↗ concern about this project, the Bergasma project.

2:02:05 ↗ The proposed set of clusters in 78 single-family lots with

2:02:11 ↗ the excess road near Sur 900 and Newport Way. This

2:02:17 ↗ cluster development will impact traffic and safety for all of

2:02:23 ↗ the vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. We really don't want to

2:02:29 ↗ see any more children murdered on Newport Way, killed by

2:02:35 ↗ accident, If you drive along on a peak time down a

2:02:41 ↗ new pathway, it is a dangerous road to drive down. They have

2:02:46 ↗ cyclists on one side. The cars, when they take the curve, they

2:02:52 ↗ go over the wide line because they have not enough road to

2:02:58 ↗ take the turn. And many times I've seen very close cyclists to

2:03:04 ↗ be hurt by cars. So when we think about a holiday project

2:03:10 ↗ going along the Danau Newport Way, we can't take anymore. I invite the

2:03:15 ↗ whole of the city public work and the commission to come down one

2:03:21 ↗ weekend and spend some time. We exchange neighborhood. If you come in right

2:03:26 ↗ now, you can get out from our Summer Hill residence. There are truck

2:03:32 ↗ parks across the street, utility road. You come in on weekends, There

2:03:38 ↗ is a King County trolley down to our road. We

2:03:44 ↗ need to stop. We need to stop. The construction, it's

2:03:50 ↗ impact enormously. Our piece of our neighborhood has been taken

2:03:56 ↗ away. Another thing that I am very concerned about it

2:04:02 ↗ is the Bergama project is too risky for a land

2:04:07 ↗ slider. With the heavy rain falling this past

2:04:13 ↗ winter and the damage done to trees and slope

2:04:19 ↗ down the soil, you can see up the hill

2:04:24 ↗ and the mountains because the heavy rain that we

2:04:30 ↗ had this past winter and the trees damages.

2:04:36 ↗ land sliders are naturally occurring by environmental hazards and increase

2:04:42 ↗ the frequency in most project activity, human activity. That means

2:04:48 ↗ all these projects, we are in risk of land sliding

2:04:54 ↗ in Newport. Are you taking that into consideration for all

2:05:00 ↗ of the residents around the area? Don't see the city

2:05:06 ↗ of the city government taking consideration taking all of this project and

2:05:12 ↗ just pile them up on newport way newport way it's too near

2:05:18 ↗ a road it's two way we don't have a four-way road so

2:05:24 ↗ we gotta go before another child get killed a new part away

2:05:30 ↗ another person get killed It's unbelievable. Please,

2:05:36 ↗ please, this project cannot be approved. And it's

2:05:42 ↗ more study, a better solution for alternative roads

2:05:48 ↗ and not new pathway entrance because it's going

2:05:54 ↗ to become the shortcut for everyone. So we

2:05:59 ↗ don't want to see that. And I appreciate

2:06:05 ↗ very much of your time. Thank you very

2:06:11 ↗ much. Rival Ribertson. Sorry, was that even close?

2:06:17 ↗ Rival. Oh, it was close.

2:06:24 ↗ My name is Rigel Ryerson and I also live at the corner of SR 900

2:06:29 ↗ Newport Way. And I guess I have two points. One of them was already touched

2:06:34 ↗ on. It was the hearing examiner's findings. And I just want to reiterate what his

2:06:38 ↗ findings were because on that slide earlier during their processes, for the process it said

2:06:43 ↗ the variances were approved. But the hearing examiner, the very next sentence is the variances

2:06:47 ↗ shall only be deemed approved if the city council declines to open it, open alternate

2:06:52 ↗ access to the site. I just want to like reiterate that that's what he said

2:06:57 ↗ so I don't understand why there's still talk about the variances and the alternate site

2:07:03 ↗ both happening but um and I guess my second point would be uh traffic on

2:07:08 ↗ this road that's going to be using Newport Way because they will because people use

2:07:14 ↗ things like Waze and Google routing, they're going to come down from Tallis through Bergsma

2:07:19 ↗ and want to turn left to get to I-90. Right now that's how I get

2:07:24 ↗ to I-90. I don't go, because I live at the corner of Newport Way and

2:07:29 ↗ 900, I don't go 900. Even though it's maybe eight blocks to I-90, it'll take

2:07:34 ↗ me ten minutes to just go that that little stint. So TALIS is going to

2:07:39 ↗ do the exact same thing. They're going to come straight through Bergsma and want to

2:07:43 ↗ turn left on this double lane road. That's going to cause more traffic accidents right

2:07:48 ↗ there and it's going to cause a backup into Bergsma. Second of all, traffic coming

2:07:53 ↗ eastbound on Newport Way, backs up past the entrance of this driveway. At the intersection

2:07:58 ↗ of Newport Way it backs up way past that so I'm not sure, you know,

2:08:03 ↗ and turning left on that road is a nightmare. And then you're going to have

2:08:09 ↗ people wanting, going the other way to Tallis at rush hour traffic instead of waiting

2:08:14 ↗ to cross Newport Way. They're going to want to turn right on Newport Way and

2:08:19 ↗ left into the, through the Bergsma And they're going

2:08:24 ↗ to be crossing that traffic again, and it's just

2:08:30 ↗ going to cause more accidents. So that's all I

2:08:36 ↗ have. Kay Haynes. Kay Haynes, 2830 Northwest Pinecone Drive.

2:08:41 ↗ So I'm not going to say anything different from

2:08:47 ↗ what's been said, but I'm just going to underline

2:08:52 ↗ it because I support what people are saying tonight.

2:08:58 ↗ I live along the corridor on Newport Road, off

2:09:04 ↗ of Newport Road, and, you know,

2:09:10 ↗ The context of all of this is a larger context than just

2:09:15 ↗ the connector road. I mean, people have pointed that out. There are

2:09:21 ↗ other mitigating things that are affected that the connector road affects. So

2:09:27 ↗ for example, we are being subjected to 650 plus units of new

2:09:33 ↗ housing along Newport Road. And that is going to

2:09:39 ↗ result in 1,000 new cars, 900 to 1,300 additional

2:09:44 ↗ vehicles, and over 4,000 new trips a day, 400

2:09:50 ↗ trips at peak hour. This is a lot of

2:09:56 ↗ traffic along Newport. And personally, I have supported all along that the idea

2:10:01 ↗ of building housing on the in the valley floor so that we're not taking away

2:10:07 ↗ our critical areas, our hillsides, our forested areas. And I know there's a price that

2:10:12 ↗ goes with that. I don't think this was done well. I think the fact that

2:10:17 ↗ we're talking about access and problems with access and here we're building all of these

2:10:23 ↗ units. the connector road and the problems with the connector road are going to

2:10:29 ↗ be nothing compared to the problems of what's going to happen on Newport with all

2:10:34 ↗ of this new traffic from these 650 additional units that are going to be pouring

2:10:40 ↗ onto Newport. And seriously, there's no other egress besides Newport. That's it. There's no other

2:10:46 ↗ egress. And so I think then what happened with the Bergsma property It was kind

2:10:52 ↗ of the tip of the iceberg in a couple of ways. One, we've already got

2:10:56 ↗ this explosion of traffic going on in Newport. We're gagging under this possibility. I'm willing

2:11:01 ↗ to live with that. I understand the philosophy for building on the valley floor. But

2:11:05 ↗ then we turn around and we desecrate the hillsides, we create developments

2:11:11 ↗ that are completely contradictory to our philosophy of building on the valley

2:11:17 ↗ floor and leaving the hillsides and the critical areas as they are

2:11:23 ↗ now. So the added traffic with the connector road was like the

2:11:28 ↗ tip of the iceberg. And the insult of building on the,

2:11:34 ↗ of developing on the hillsides when we're sacrificing our neighborhood because of

2:11:40 ↗ this enormous new traffic, which is understandable and justifiable, I think, in

2:11:46 ↗ terms of the new development. Not in terms of the planning and

2:11:52 ↗ the lack of secondary egress from Newport Way for those developments.

2:11:57 ↗ You just have to understand the total context is really impacting people.

2:12:03 ↗ So I wanted to say and I understand because it is all

2:12:09 ↗ part of a larger context. I just want to add that this

2:12:15 ↗ having to accept this is doubly, triply difficult because of the things

2:12:20 ↗ that are going to go along with this. So we have the

2:12:26 ↗ 600 units coming along. And yet we have sites like

2:12:32 ↗ the Bergsma Windward project, forested hillsides being destroyed, except now the word

2:12:38 ↗ for destroying a forested hillside is called mitigation. Whereby we can find

2:12:43 ↗ a way to build on 40% slopes, create 12% grade roads, then

2:12:49 ↗ build storm water detention vaults for runoff of water. Remove 88,000

2:12:55 ↗ cubic yards of materials for the development. Remove existing vegetation on 30% of

2:13:01 ↗ a site. Impact streams and buffers. Destroy forested canopy. Increase chances of mudslides

2:13:06 ↗ due to climate change. And create a visual scar from the valley floor

2:13:12 ↗ in perpetuity. And this is what we thought we were avoiding by allowing

2:13:17 ↗ development on the valley floor. So... So I

2:13:23 ↗ can only say personally, my family and I, we can't support the connector road.

2:13:29 ↗ We can't support the cluster housing. We can't support anything that goes on with

2:13:35 ↗ the Bergsma property, even though I know people are of good intention. Even the

2:13:40 ↗ hearing examiner for the Bergsma site, only approved the

2:13:46 ↗ requested variances, including the Bergsma Roadway, if

2:13:51 ↗ there was no other alternative access, which

2:13:57 ↗ implies, that implies that the proposed variances

2:14:02 ↗ were less than ideal to begin with.

2:14:08 ↗ So we really hope that you'll consider

2:14:13 ↗ the larger picture when you're looking at

2:14:19 ↗ the Connector Road and the rest of

2:14:24 ↗ the site. - Jeff Richards. - I'm

2:14:30 ↗ sorry, no sweat.

2:14:36 ↗ Thank you for this process. Thank you for your time tonight. I don't

2:14:42 ↗ know how many of these meetings go this long, but you guys are

2:14:48 ↗ civil servants and you're not entertaining these projects to bug the heck out

2:14:54 ↗ of us. So we appreciate your service and I appreciate this process.

2:14:59 ↗ I wasn't exactly sure which portion of this to speak to. It's a little more

2:15:05 ↗ general. I think it speaks to the connector a bit. So forgive me. Yes. Excuse

2:15:11 ↗ me. Would you introduce yourself? I'm sorry. Jeff Richards. I am an Issaquah resident. I

2:15:16 ↗ live in the Cougar Ridge development, which is just up 54th. And I'm a proud

2:15:22 ↗ but concerned Newport Way resident. I just I have a simple message

2:15:28 ↗ of empathy and of gratitude and a challenge for our civil servants and then

2:15:34 ↗ I think for us as well as as a quah residents. I grew up

2:15:40 ↗ in on the east side I was born in Bellevue moved my family moved

2:15:46 ↗ to Woodinville that's where I grew up that's where I went to high school.

2:15:52 ↗ Went to school in Seattle, lived in Seattle forever. My wife and I had two

2:15:57 ↗ little kids and we said, "Where do we want to live?" For me, it was

2:16:02 ↗ not a question. It was Issaquah. I'm 39 years old and since I can remember,

2:16:07 ↗ Issaquah is one of those cities on the east side, maybe the city on the

2:16:12 ↗ east side, where you can say, "That's a place I want to live." They have

2:16:17 ↗ a tremendous balance. uh... things to do infrastructure uh... but it's

2:16:22 ↗ the gateway to the wilderness it's the perfect city it's the perfect city

2:16:28 ↗ in the northwest uh... but as a resident as i've lived now lived

2:16:34 ↗ here for a little over three years uh... i've seen the plans for

2:16:39 ↗ development i've immersed myself in every t_i_a_ every uh... strategic vision plan uh...

2:16:45 ↗ i'm i'd i'm growing more concerned I'm empathetic. You guys take pride in your

2:16:51 ↗ work. You want to do the best. You probably love this city maybe more than

2:16:57 ↗ I do. So I can appreciate that. So please don't hear my message thinking

2:17:03 ↗ that I don't appreciate the hard work, the long hours, the consideration, the many

2:17:09 ↗ moving pieces. One of the main reasons development happens is to bring revenue to

2:17:14 ↗ the city so that we can provide better roads, better schools, more attractive space

2:17:20 ↗ for commercial development, which benefits us. So progress is necessary, but my challenge

2:17:26 ↗ to both our leaders of the city, but also to ourselves, being

2:17:32 ↗ a city, you know, to an extent on a hill, being that

2:17:37 ↗ beacon on the east side, are we progressing as a great city?

2:17:43 ↗ Are we going about it in the right way? Are we doing everything

2:17:49 ↗ we can to dot every I, cross every T? As I've looked through

2:17:54 ↗ many TIAs, looked through many development proposals, I'm encouraged by the level of

2:18:00 ↗ depth that are there, but I'm concerned with the inconsistencies from TIA to

2:18:05 ↗ TIA. With so many developments, especially here on Newport Way, There's a game

2:18:11 ↗ of leapfrog that seems to be going on And while I'm sure there's

2:18:17 ↗ great care being taken to consider step A and step B and all

2:18:22 ↗ the way through to step Z, but I see holes in the plans.

2:18:28 ↗ There are pieces that don't consider other developments. And so while I know

2:18:34 ↗ there are great plans, great aspirational plans for Newport Way, there's plans to

2:18:39 ↗ widen it. There's plans to make that a true parkway. But as

2:18:45 ↗ I read through some of the initial thoughts on that, I come back to that

2:18:51 ↗ concern of, are the I's being dotted and T's being crossed?

2:18:57 ↗ I would challenge us as residents to help the city find alternate

2:19:03 ↗ ways to generate that revenue rather than building more and more unnecessary

2:19:09 ↗ and probably not the right developments. So again, progress is necessary. We

2:19:15 ↗ are a great city and I would just challenge our civil servants

2:19:20 ↗ and ourselves, let's progress as a great city. Thanks. Carol Lopez.

2:19:41 ↗ Good evening. I just also want to thank you, the commissioners, for serving our community.

2:19:46 ↗ I know it's a lot to listen to. In the interest of time, I scribbled

2:19:50 ↗ a few notes here so I could be a little more brief than I usually

2:19:55 ↗ would be. So my name is Carol Lopez. I am a resident of Sammamish

2:20:00 ↗ Point Condominiums, 2262 Newport Way Northwest. I'm a former board member. I served on the

2:20:06 ↗ board for five years on our HOA, and I'm also a former HOA president. Jesse,

2:20:12 ↗ who is our current president, had to leave a little early, so I'm going to

2:20:18 ↗ tag team with him as well. I just basically want to agree

2:20:24 ↗ with the previous speakers and appeal to you, the Commission,

2:20:30 ↗ to recommend against this proposed connector road. That's really the

2:20:35 ↗ net. Newport Way along this stretch is increasingly becoming a

2:20:41 ↗ fire hazard. And I really want to make that point and

2:20:46 ↗ let it sink in because more and more vehicles are being dumped onto this little

2:20:52 ↗ stretch without much of an outlet. We who live on Newport Way Northwest, especially in

2:20:58 ↗ Sammamish Point and some of the other communities, have really no other way to get

2:21:04 ↗ in and out. We're stuck. And we didn't ask for all this construction. It

2:21:10 ↗ has been put upon us. So we are basically stuck. One of the things that

2:21:16 ↗ I noted at the outset of the applicant's presentation is that they had a number

2:21:21 ↗ of speakers who came forward and endorsed this second access egress road in and out

2:21:27 ↗ of Talus. But I'm wondering, and I understand the rationale, we should have two

2:21:33 ↗ entrances, two exits, but I'm wondering where those voices were when the Gateway Apartments

2:21:40 ↗ was designed, proposed, and approved with one entrance and egress for 400 units. Where were

2:21:46 ↗ the voices then? We need another entrance and egress for the Gateway Apartments. And I

2:21:51 ↗ encourage the Commission to continue to go back to the City to appeal for another

2:21:57 ↗ entrance to the Gateway Apartments because right now it is emptying onto Newport Way. And

2:22:02 ↗ if this road is approved, it will also empty onto Newport Way.

2:22:10 ↗ So that's it. Thank you. Mary Lynch. I'm Mary

2:22:15 ↗ Lynch and I'm loading this. I just want to

2:22:21 ↗ support what the others have said tonight and in

2:22:27 ↗ the interest of time I will go through some

2:22:33 ↗ of these pretty quickly.

2:22:44 ↗ I just want to support what Carol said is we've been before you for almost

2:22:48 ↗ two years, and especially with Gateway, consistently. And a lot of us went down and

2:22:53 ↗ talked to the fire and the police and asked them to support us with Gateway

2:22:58 ↗ with a second entrance. And we was told it was designed to code, it was

2:23:02 ↗ not needed. We came to the hearing, it was not needed. Why

2:23:08 ↗ has, if James Bush isn't a successful road, why has the city continued to allow

2:23:14 ↗ development on James Bush Road? The comment tonight was saying construction's blocking that. That is

2:23:19 ↗ a safety hazard and a violation. That should be noted and something should be done

2:23:24 ↗ with it immediately. Why has the city continued to allow parcel seven, eight, and nine

2:23:29 ↗ to have access if it is such a hazardous place to live? I also

2:23:35 ↗ -- I've already covered those. Let me get to the next one. We need an

2:23:40 ↗ entrance on Poplar for Newport Way for the same reason why TALIS needs a second

2:23:44 ↗ entrance and we should be given that. It's already been brought up and I would

2:23:49 ↗ ask you that you read the hearing examiner's conclusion because you will note that the

2:23:53 ↗ city staff failed to read that to you. But there's the link. You can go

2:23:58 ↗ to it. I won't go to that. But the variances in there and which I

2:24:03 ↗ responded to is the fact that the city staff did not require the developer to

2:24:08 ↗ even look at an access through TALIS as being the only way in. That wasn't

2:24:14 ↗ even studied and presented. So the hearing commissioner had to rule on what the city

2:24:19 ↗ showed him. And that was very frustrating to us. But part of those variances, which

2:24:24 ↗ also since they didn't present that to you, involved relocating a creek. a glacial fan

2:24:30 ↗ creek and also reducing down the buffers for that and the other existing wetlands

2:24:35 ↗ and creeks. My opinion is we should not allow the project to move forward

2:24:41 ↗ with the connection to Newport Way.

2:24:47 ↗ And I think this should be also considered for the 70 to 80 homes that

2:24:51 ↗ are going in there, that this is not the ideal place for them. And why

2:24:55 ↗ isn't the home or the developer and property owner presenting here tonight? What is in

2:24:59 ↗ their best interest? They want to get a big development so they can get a

2:25:03 ↗ bunch of money. Why aren't we looking at this piece of parcel as being parkland

2:25:07 ↗ and other things, or saving as a green space?

2:25:13 ↗ One of the reasons I bring up the creek is just this week the city

2:25:18 ↗ approved close to a million dollars to create a fix on our development in Summerhill

2:25:23 ↗ when again the city approved to relocate a glacial fan stream. And guess what? The

2:25:28 ↗ city did not require the developer to do it correctly. So we have had continual

2:25:32 ↗ flooding. Our homes have been flooded. The city did not stand behind us. They supported

2:25:37 ↗ the developer and allowed the developer to pull out of the development without redoing the

2:25:42 ↗ stream to what was code. So for years the cities having been doing public works

2:25:47 ↗ projects to clean up the flooding, the homeowners had to pay for their own insurance

2:25:51 ↗ due to the flooding and the city right now has just approved over or close

2:25:56 ↗ to a million dollars to temporarily or to partially fix the problem, not even all

2:26:01 ↗ the problem. Landslides, that's already been talked about. December of '10 in

2:26:06 ↗ Talas, there also was one this year in James Bush. So what are we doing?

2:26:11 ↗ We're digging into the same basic type of hill and what are we gonna create?

2:26:16 ↗ Who's gonna pay for the, the city hasn't even identified who's gonna pay for the

2:26:21 ↗ Talas Court yet. So what are we doing with the development agreement to, if we're

2:26:25 ↗ gonna allow this, to make sure that this road and the developer and the homeowners

2:26:30 ↗ pay for whatever mess they create? Also, speed. The traffic study has a

2:26:36 ↗ lot of flaws that people already put up. One is that right now on Newport

2:26:40 ↗ Way, the city is not enforcing the speed limit. We knew that wouldn't happen unless

2:26:44 ↗ the city enforces it. We're getting the average speed to be between 35 and 45

2:26:49 ↗ miles an hour. And we've continued to ask the city to do a speed study

2:26:53 ↗ to show that. But I did not see in the traffic study that a new

2:26:57 ↗ traffic study has been done, but they did assume for this entrance that the speed

2:27:02 ↗ limit has been lowered. Some of the things that are commonly occurring there, as

2:27:08 ↗ people said, people drive on the shoulder to get around the corner here. They're just

2:27:12 ↗ going to turn and go up that access road. They block lanes. A couple of

2:27:17 ↗ people that are here tonight live in these homes. There is a big do not

2:27:22 ↗ block intersection. On any given day, you will see that blocked. Let me just quickly

2:27:27 ↗ go through these other slides. The traffic does not abide by those intersections. So all

2:27:32 ↗ I would say is... I'm very disappointed with the city. I spent a

2:27:38 ↗ lot of my time here and to have city staff come in here and be

2:27:43 ↗ two faced with what they say that all of a sudden this is not a

2:27:48 ↗ safe, TALIS is not safe but Gateway is safe I think is a total travesty.

2:27:53 ↗ Thank you. All right. That's the last person that I have that signed in. If

2:27:57 ↗ anybody else wishes to speak could I get them to sign in and we'll continue

2:28:02 ↗ on. But I do want to remind you that right now we're just talking about--

2:28:08 ↗ just talking about the connection, the Alice Berksma connection.

2:28:14 ↗ And after we get done this, we'll be taking

2:28:19 ↗ a short break and then moving on to the--

2:28:25 ↗ I know several of you said that you wanted

2:28:31 ↗ to comment on the second portion. And we'll persevere.

2:28:37 ↗ We will eventually get there. CHRIS JERRAM: Yeah, he's

2:28:42 ↗ going to . CHRIS JERRAM: No. CHRIS JERRAM: Yeah.

2:28:48 ↗ CHRIS JERRAM: - I ask, I ask, I ask this

2:28:54 ↗ if you guys have written that three days. - I also

2:29:00 ↗ want to speak with you. - Yeah, that's what I can

2:29:05 ↗ do. - Sure. - They're two for one coupon. - Correct.

2:29:11 ↗ - And then we're gonna have to go to the bathroom.

2:29:17 ↗ - Connie? - Yeah. - Okay. - Hey, Connie? Do you

2:29:22 ↗ want to take this down and then he can start and

2:29:28 ↗ you guys can fill it out down at the table? Okay.

2:29:35 ↗ I don't know

2:29:39 ↗ how many months. Jack

2:29:45 ↗ Goldberg, 19437 SE 57th Place in Cougar Ridge. I realize it's late and I will

2:29:51 ↗ be brief, but I think you need to realize that there's a whole other class

2:29:56 ↗ of people who are not here who would be impacted by the Connector Road, and

2:30:01 ↗ that's all the people who live in Bergsma. That's another 70-odd people who will see

2:30:07 ↗ the additional traffic of TALIS going through their neighborhood, and that's not what they were

2:30:12 ↗ expecting. So, that's something else to consider. It's a whole group of people who can't

2:30:17 ↗ talk because they're not here yet. They're not around. But they would see the impact

2:30:23 ↗ of the TALIS connector if it goes through. And I don't think that subdivision is

2:30:29 ↗ designed to be a major arterial as the rest of them. That's all I have.

2:30:35 ↗ Well, thank you. Dave, Dave Kapler.

2:30:43 ↗ Good evening, David Kapler, 255 Southeast Andrews Street. The hearing examiner decision

2:30:49 ↗ is unclear and does need to be updated or clarified. I did

2:30:54 ↗ submit by email this evening a picture to Chris of the taken

2:31:00 ↗ May 3rd, 2015 of the sign being invisible, blocked by the plantings.

2:31:06 ↗ I was on the City Council when we did TALIS and before I was on

2:31:10 ↗ City Council I was a big advocate of TALIS East Cougar back in the early

2:31:15 ↗ 80s when I was on the New Castle Community Plan and lived in May Valley.

2:31:21 ↗ We've said that would be an option, but 20 years ago, we had

2:31:27 ↗ no idea that SR 900 would still be a two-lane road with no

2:31:32 ↗ shoulders and would be completely plugged up as it is now. That's going

2:31:38 ↗ to force cars to go up through Talus, I'm afraid, if the road

2:31:44 ↗ is built or the connection is there. I think the Earlier, speaker

2:31:49 ↗ said, what's the balance? Delayed response is one potential of

2:31:55 ↗ having a gate, even if it's electronic. But by having

2:32:01 ↗ all that traffic going through those narrow roads and the kids there and

2:32:06 ↗ all the rest, there's a much more, maybe more risk from increased need

2:32:12 ↗ for responses. So how do you balance that? And I would say you

2:32:17 ↗ have a gate. And electronic gate would make the most sense. and see

2:32:23 ↗ how it goes. But I think you would just be

2:32:28 ↗ driving way too much traffic through those narrow streets in

2:32:34 ↗ this north part of Tallis. Thank you. Connie Marsh. Hey,

2:32:40 ↗ my name's Connie Marsh, and I live on Squawk Mountain.

2:32:45 ↗ When I read the staff report, there was very, very

2:32:51 ↗ little about how the decision would be made on whether

2:32:56 ↗ to have this connection or not. The information that was

2:33:02 ↗ presented to you was mainly policy support. for the road where

2:33:08 ↗ there's an entire comprehensive plan that has a lot of policy language in it

2:33:14 ↗ that is about maintaining neighborhoods and not allowing arterials to degrade neighborhoods. And so

2:33:19 ↗ it is unclear to me, one, why this is coming to development commission when

2:33:25 ↗ the people who have the history of the road connection is urban village development

2:33:31 ↗ commission. and I believe their development agreement even says it's supposed to go to

2:33:37 ↗ UVDC yet you are supposed to somehow either make this decision or push

2:33:43 ↗ it off to City Council and I don't think that it was a

2:33:48 ↗ fair representation that was provided to you by City staff to enable you

2:33:54 ↗ to make a wise decision especially in the face of so many people in

2:34:00 ↗ the public who are not interested in having the road connection. So if I was

2:34:05 ↗ sitting in your chair, I would a ask for clarification as to how you were

2:34:11 ↗ supposed to be making this decision and by what criteria because I don't see that

2:34:16 ↗ you're in a position to be able to decide based on on

2:34:22 ↗ much. So personally, I don't think that it is a

2:34:27 ↗ wise road connection as quality of life in the community

2:34:33 ↗ needs to be a priority now because we are losing

2:34:39 ↗ our soul. Thank you. Greg Crabb. Good evening. My name

2:34:45 ↗ is Greg Crabby. I'm here on behalf of Windward Development,

2:34:51 ↗ the applicant. And I just wanted to say that, you

2:34:57 ↗ know, we We are showing the full connection into TALIS in

2:35:02 ↗ a spirit of cooperation with staff. We understand the needs of connectivity, but I

2:35:08 ↗ think here tonight the community has made it clear that they have concerns about

2:35:14 ↗ having full access through both developments, and we are sensitive to that as well.

2:35:20 ↗ And so our recommendation would be to make it a limited access, emergency-only access

2:35:26 ↗ with gates, and that's it.

2:35:31 ↗ CHRIS RODGERS: Thank you. Last call. Anybody else from the public

2:35:37 ↗ wish to make comment? On this half of the piece, correct?

2:35:43 ↗ CHRIS RODGERS: Yeah, right. On the access or the connection. I'm

2:35:49 ↗ sorry. Connection. I'll get it straight. We have a number of

2:35:54 ↗ people that want to speak on the rest of the development.

2:36:00 ↗ So commissioners, go ahead. Yes, Mr. Chairman. On the emergency response

2:36:06 ↗ time to the existing talus, do we have records of those? How many

2:36:12 ↗ times emergency were called and how long did it take for you to

2:36:18 ↗ get to the talus? We have records of traffic flow and stuff like

2:36:24 ↗ that. So we have anything for emergency, police call, fire?

2:36:30 ↗ And I see the fire chief coming up to the mic. I was going to

2:36:34 ↗ try and field that one, but if you want to go for it, Jeff, go

2:36:38 ↗ ahead. Normally, it takes less than three minutes. I don't have it here tonight, but

2:36:42 ↗ that's certainly something we can query and get to you. The number of calls, the

2:36:47 ↗ response times up into the TALIS and any of the other areas, yeah, that's easily

2:36:52 ↗ attainable. Would you introduce yourself, please? Excuse me. I'm sorry. Jeff Clark, Fire Chief with

2:36:58 ↗ Eastside Fire and Rescue. Yeah. Can I? Chief, I have another question for you. Could

2:37:03 ↗ you tell us, please, the maximum number of firefighters that are on duty in the

2:37:08 ↗ city of Issaquah at any time? That would be 11. 11. So I think that

2:37:14 ↗ my experience is that most folks that hear that are dumbfounded that they assume that

2:37:20 ↗ there are more police officers and more firefighters than is actually the case. So you've

2:37:26 ↗ got a tremendous amount of responsibility in terms of the area that you cover because

2:37:31 ↗ would you Tell us that too in terms of the responsibility for,

2:37:37 ↗ there are three fire stations in municipal Issaquah, is that correct? That's correct.

2:37:43 ↗ Okay. Those trucks respond to an area that includes the city, but it

2:37:48 ↗ also includes unincorporated King County, is that right? Yes. We actually have nine

2:37:54 ↗ stations within Eastside that are career stations and we respond to May Valley. Sammamish,

2:37:59 ↗ Issaquah, North Bend, and Carnation. That's 190 square miles that we respond to. Okay. So

2:38:05 ↗ the Commissioner's question about the frequency of emergency call responses to TALIS is something we

2:38:11 ↗ could be provided with at some point in the future? Yeah, that's absolutely something we

2:38:17 ↗ can do. The large number of the calls to TALIS, a large number of them

2:38:23 ↗ are in Timber Ridge. which is the, uh, yes. But, uh, but yeah, we do

2:38:29 ↗ have the data. That is something that's easy for me to get to you. And

2:38:34 ↗ how about for police? Um, call. I know the police chief had to leave, but

2:38:40 ↗ that is data that it should be easily attainable as well. Yeah, we can get

2:38:45 ↗ that right. Other comments, questions. Thank you. I think that a couple of us have

2:38:50 ↗ this question for the staff. Could you please address the hearing examiner issue about, uh,

2:38:55 ↗ is finding that if, uh, the three variances are contingent on not

2:39:01 ↗ having a connector road i flagged that when i was reading it

2:39:07 ↗ too so i'm not real clear on that sure um so in

2:39:12 ↗ um In reading through the hearing examiner's decision, so there's three variances

2:39:18 ↗ that were part of that hearing. One of them was to put the detention

2:39:24 ↗ vault for the project basically down at the bottom of the hill closest to

2:39:30 ↗ Newport, which is in a steep slope. The second was for the road. And

2:39:36 ↗ the third was to actually the road intrudes within a stream buffer more than

2:39:42 ↗ what's allowed by right through the code. So those three variances. So the city's

2:39:48 ↗ opinion is that the hearing examiner somewhat overreached his authority

2:39:54 ↗ in that the legal access for those parcels is on

2:40:00 ↗ Newport and it's not clear to the city how he

2:40:05 ↗ can remove that legal access. through a decision for a variance hearing. So

2:40:11 ↗ we ask for clarification on that point. The point, the first variance for the detention

2:40:16 ↗ vault has absolutely nothing to do with access. The location of that vault is at

2:40:22 ↗ the low point of the plat and whether there's access from Newport or from Talus

2:40:27 ↗ or both really is somewhat irrelevant to the location of that vault so we're not

2:40:33 ↗ sure why he also would negate the approval of that variance if the

2:40:38 ↗ council were to connect these two neighborhoods. So we've asked for

2:40:44 ↗ that. Don't know how long that's going to take to get,

2:40:50 ↗ but Christopher and I had a conversation with him about that

2:40:56 ↗ about three weeks ago. And so that's coming. Thank you. At

2:41:02 ↗ this point, that's going on. Question, Mr. Chair. If the road...

2:41:09 ↗ the connection who's going to pay for that right now i take it

2:41:15 ↗ as the developer who's going to pay for the roadway the access between

2:41:20 ↗ the newport way and then the talus yes okay but if it's just

2:41:26 ↗ the the access road with no developer involvement in that would the city

2:41:32 ↗ pay for that uh connector yeah just the connector with access emergency access

2:41:38 ↗ who's going to pay for that So if the decision,

2:41:44 ↗ if I answer this not what you intended, please let me know. Okay.

2:41:50 ↗ So if the recommendation from the commission is it's emergency access only, right?

2:41:56 ↗ They would build that including whether it's a gate or bollards or whatever

2:42:01 ↗ means for emergency access. That would be part of the plat improvements that

2:42:07 ↗ the developer would pay for. And in return, the developer would get what?

2:42:13 ↗ Right now, the developer would get, if we approve the neighborhood, all

2:42:19 ↗ those homes, then they would get the homes built. and then they would

2:42:25 ↗ build that roadway. Yes. But if we say we just need the access and we

2:42:29 ↗ don't want the housing in there. So the city would have to use eminent domain

2:42:33 ↗ to condemn the property to get the right of way because we don't have the

2:42:38 ↗ right of way to make that connection without it being part of a development project.

2:42:42 ↗ Okay. So the developer would not just come in and say I'm a nice guy

2:42:46 ↗ and I'll put in that road for you. Not likely. I have not asked him

2:42:52 ↗ that question. All right. Okay. All right. So either that, then

2:42:57 ↗ the eminent domain, or we would, the city would have to

2:43:03 ↗ find another location for the second access then. And there probably

2:43:09 ↗ is not one on this side of Cougar. There's not one?

2:43:15 ↗ Because of slopes. It's difficult to get this one in. Okay.

2:43:20 ↗ Gotcha. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions?

2:43:27 ↗ So how about discussion? What, uh, you know, I guess sort of between us,

2:43:33 ↗ one of the things that I don't think has come up is, um, the

2:43:39 ↗ idea of the benefit of a connection with or without the emergency only factor

2:43:44 ↗ for pedestrians and bicyclists. It seems to me that, you know, I did a

2:43:50 ↗ count of who was for and against. I think they were mostly for just,

2:43:56 ↗ Slight majority of people out there. So I mean it doesn't seem like there's anybody

2:44:01 ↗ except from some people at the city that are for this not even the developers

2:44:06 ↗ for it although I did hear a lot of people say they would accept a

2:44:11 ↗ an emergency connection which would meet the what we would need from fire and police

2:44:16 ↗ and Perhaps other things but the benefit of it too is is providing some say

2:44:21 ↗ bicycle and pedestrian access to from this neighborhood down to Newport Way or vice versa.

2:44:27 ↗ And I'm all for cut through bicyclists and pedestrians if they want to go that

2:44:32 ↗ way. But I don't know if you guys have thought about that. Well, I saw

2:44:37 ↗ it the other way. I felt there were more folks who are against the development.

2:44:41 ↗ I'm just talking about the connection. Just talk about the connection right now. Yeah, there

2:44:46 ↗ are more folks who are against the connection. Right, that's what I said. That's what

2:44:51 ↗ he said. Okay. Yeah. I don't believe that

2:44:57 ↗ you can have, it seems to me that providing, if it is an

2:45:03 ↗ emergency only with a gate or bollards or something, and we have any

2:45:09 ↗ kind of a seismic event or anything that blocks the primary, the only

2:45:15 ↗ extant exit in and out of TALIS, it would be beneficial to have

2:45:21 ↗ an alternative that could be used in the state of an emergency.

2:45:27 ↗ That said, I think you were on the commission then

2:45:32 ↗ a long time ago, but I wondered when I lived

2:45:38 ↗ here, when I moved here, and I heard about TALIS

2:45:44 ↗ being proposed, I didn't understand at the time why there

2:45:50 ↗ was only one access. And I expressed some concern about

2:45:56 ↗ that in meetings like this. So I have felt for a

2:46:01 ↗ long time that there is a need for an emergency alternative to the

2:46:07 ↗ only way out of there. But I also think that there have been some

2:46:13 ↗ very legitimate concerns raised here, and I'm particularly impressed by Mr. Krabbe's remarks, that

2:46:18 ↗ there are some very legitimate concerns raised by the extent homeowners who would see,

2:46:24 ↗ even if it's not the worst case scenario, who would see significantly increased traffic

2:46:30 ↗ on streets that weren't designed for it. I think we

2:46:35 ↗ got this from the TALIS development agreement, what Connie had sent

2:46:41 ↗ in, Section 14.2 that talks about plaque connections and that said

2:46:47 ↗ the city would evaluate whether street connections shall occur to adjacent

2:46:53 ↗ non-TALIS property and based on whether the connect, one of the items that would

2:46:58 ↗ be based on is whether connection would result in adverse impacts to either of the

2:47:03 ↗ property owners. It sounds to me like it's obvious it's adversely impacting both TALIS from

2:47:08 ↗ what we've heard from the public and the future members of the Bergsma property. -

2:47:13 ↗ And Commissioner, when I read that same passage, I actually underlined it with a question

2:47:19 ↗ mark. It said, please define adverse. I mean, adverse can mean your property

2:47:24 ↗ value is totally destroyed, or it could mean that it's going to be inconvenient 20

2:47:30 ↗ minutes a day. And there's a huge, I mean, that's kind of one of these

2:47:36 ↗ amorphous words that doesn't really have any significance until you define it. But I would

2:47:41 ↗ think, in my mind, for the future BIRGSMA owners to see the traffic through their

2:47:47 ↗ neighborhood, increased by 130 to 170 percent during peak hour due to

2:47:53 ↗ TALIS people coming through. I'd consider that adverse. More discussion? Anybody feel

2:47:58 ↗ compelled to make a recommendation for a motion? Well, I don't, you

2:48:04 ↗ know, we don't have any wording to go by, so I'll just

2:48:09 ↗ make it up as I go, I guess, so you can fix

2:48:15 ↗ it for me. Mr. Chair, I move that the Development Commission recommend

2:48:21 ↗ approval of the connection as an emergency only with an electronic gated barrier.

2:48:27 ↗ Well, and Mr. Chair. Wait. Let's let him make his motion. Well, I

2:48:33 ↗ was going to say that could be left up. That could be in

2:48:38 ↗ the motion. It could be left up to the fire and security staff

2:48:44 ↗ to determine. How about if I put it this way then? So with

2:48:50 ↗ an access-- approved by the city and Eastside Fire. I need a

2:48:55 ↗ second. CHRIS JERRAM: Chris, did you write that down? Somebody write that down.

2:49:01 ↗ Susan, would you let us-- why don't you read that for us? CHRIS

2:49:07 ↗ JERRAM: But we'll need a second. Move the development commission recommend approval of

2:49:13 ↗ connection as emergency only with an access approved by city and Eastside Fire.

2:49:19 ↗ CHRIS JERRAM: Second. CHRIS JERRAM: All right. Discussion? Yeah. Without the numbers

2:49:25 ↗ for the fire response and police response time and the number of

2:49:31 ↗ calls that they get, I'm not sure if we need that access.

2:49:37 ↗ I'd be curious to find out how are you handling it now

2:49:43 ↗ with one access? I mean, don't get me wrong. I think two

2:49:49 ↗ access is always what we're looking for. We're

2:49:54 ↗ adding a roadway there for access and I'm not sure

2:50:00 ↗ how we're going to go about it. So, you know,

2:50:06 ↗ with one access right now and TALIS has been there

2:50:12 ↗ for how many years? 15, 20 years? How are you

2:50:17 ↗ handling it? Are we having people not getting fire access

2:50:23 ↗ and they're not getting the proper care with one access?

2:50:29 ↗ I mean, you know. Commissioner, I... I believe

2:50:35 ↗ that it is prudent if the opportunity presents itself to

2:50:40 ↗ provide for an emergency alternative to the single access point

2:50:46 ↗ for the community. And if that is done as part

2:50:52 ↗ of a larger agreement that the costs and the dimensions

2:50:57 ↗ of which are part of that negotiation with the applicant,

2:51:03 ↗ then to me it seems like a good alternative to the status

2:51:09 ↗ quo. Right. And I would not disagree with you on that. I think the second

2:51:14 ↗ axis is probably a good thing to have, but do we really need that? um

2:51:20 ↗ we're not going to need it until we need it right and that's why that's

2:51:24 ↗ why i'm asking for some numbers you know is it is it are they responding

2:51:28 ↗ in time you know fire chief maybe you can so because i don't have the

2:51:32 ↗ numbers with me now the only thing that i can ask you to put into

2:51:36 ↗ your mind is our our closest station to here is up on maple and the

2:51:39 ↗ 900 road right on the corner Right. Right. It's just up off this map here.

2:51:43 ↗ Parking right. So right now, what that what that truck has to do in order

2:51:47 ↗ to get to the Tallis neighborhood that's in question here is go all the way

2:51:50 ↗ up to Tallis Road, weave in and out all the way back into this neighborhood

2:51:54 ↗ to get back in there. I'm guessing that that's going to be eight to 10

2:51:57 ↗ minutes. All right. If this access road was here, they would be there in less

2:52:00 ↗ than five. - All right, so when looking at it anecdotally that way, if you're

2:52:05 ↗ the person having a heart attack or your house is on fire here, then that

2:52:09 ↗ difference is a big difference. Now, as far as numbers and that, I can certainly

2:52:13 ↗ get that for you, but if you look at a map, it's just an inherent,

2:52:17 ↗ you can look at the map and understand the difference in response times that would

2:52:22 ↗ happen because that access is there and would only be accessible to us in the

2:52:26 ↗ way that the motion's proposed right now. - So it seems reasonable to me to

2:52:30 ↗ think that The reality is that when TALIS was done, they didn't have right

2:52:36 ↗ away sufficient to be able to provide a second access. This provides a second access,

2:52:41 ↗ and we don't know when it may or may not be needed, but it also

2:52:47 ↗ eliminates the potential of unnecessary traffic from TALIS and Bergsman. So it seems like it's

2:52:53 ↗ kind of the best solution for the opportunity. And Mr. Chair, I also believe that

2:52:59 ↗ this does address a primary city objective, which is to

2:53:05 ↗ promote connectivity. and access to Harvey Manning Park by people, the future

2:53:10 ↗ residents of Bergsma on foot or by bicycle. And if it's not there, then

2:53:16 ↗ it would be significantly more difficult for them to access the park and whatever

2:53:22 ↗ else might be up there. So that's a fringe benefit in my mind, but

2:53:27 ↗ it still fits the city's objective. And I think for a bike rider to

2:53:33 ↗ go from Talus through Bergsma down to Newport Way and head west or vice

2:53:39 ↗ versa versus having to go on to SR 900, way safer route. And I

2:53:45 ↗ don't think it would, personally, I don't think anybody in Talas or Bergsma would

2:53:50 ↗ mind those bicyclists coming through. So I guess what I don't want is tie

2:53:56 ↗ ourselves into a corner where we have that roadway and who's going to pay

2:54:02 ↗ for that? And the developer-- I think it would be a requirement of the development.

2:54:07 ↗ It'll be part of the-- OK. And that's where I'm coming from. If that's one

2:54:12 ↗ of the requirements or in return, the developer would say, OK, we will have that

2:54:18 ↗ roadway. OK, we will pay for that. And in return, then that goes into our

2:54:23 ↗ second session this evening. Are we going to approve that housing? RICK PEDOLSKY: We haven't

2:54:28 ↗ decided that yet. RICK PEDOLSKY: Right. That's what I'm saying is that if we recommend--

2:54:32 ↗ this is a recommendation that we're doing. And if we recommend that there is a

2:54:37 ↗ roadway, a secondary roadway to the council, and the council says, OK, the commissioner agreed

2:54:42 ↗ that there should be a secondary roadway, then we're going to go ahead and do

2:54:47 ↗ it. that goes back to, well, who's going to pay for that? And the developer.

2:54:53 ↗ And the developer comes back and says, OK, since I'm going to put a roadway,

2:54:58 ↗ I would like to have 78 homes in there. CHRIS RODGERS: If there's not 78

2:55:03 ↗ homes there, there's not going to be a secondary access. They're not going to be

2:55:09 ↗ a secondary access. DAVID BURRAGE: That the road is contingent on approval. And if it

2:55:14 ↗ isn't approved, then there's no road. But we're tying ourselves by recommending

2:55:20 ↗ to the council to have a secondary roadway. That's all part of the same process.

2:55:25 ↗ We're only splitting this up so that these people don't have to stay till midnight

2:55:31 ↗ like we do. to go over the second part of it. I think there's, yeah.

2:55:35 ↗ Yeah. And I don't want to belabor this point, but the thing is that I

2:55:40 ↗ think it's your neighborhood, it's our neighborhood. I've seen it grown, you know, and I

2:55:44 ↗ just don't think that we want to tie ourselves In the corner where, one, we

2:55:49 ↗ approve the roadway, and two, how are we going to do the neighborhood? We're not

2:55:54 ↗ going to. We're not going to approve the roadway? I don't know if we're going

2:55:58 ↗ to approve the roadway or not. We're not going to approve one without the other.

2:56:02 ↗ If there's no approval of the development, there's not going to be any secondary access.

2:56:07 ↗ I don't really understand that. The rationale? No. Commissioner, if we approve the road, but

2:56:12 ↗ we don't approve or don't recommend approval of the Berksman development, then there's no road.

2:56:18 ↗ There's no road. Right. And actually, I guess to clarify, we could be-- if we

2:56:24 ↗ decided to not approve the development in general or to recommend against approval of that

2:56:30 ↗ in general, But we had a recommendation for an emergency road. If the

2:56:36 ↗ council decided that they were going to approve the development, then they would have

2:56:41 ↗ our recommendation that if there is a development, that the connector road is emergency

2:56:47 ↗ access only. Right. Maybe we're looking at it differently. Maybe we should

2:56:53 ↗ say, you know, the development of the home, should we approve that or not? And

2:56:58 ↗ then if we don't approve it, then can we just approve an access route? We

2:57:04 ↗ chose to do it the other way. And so we're going to make a decision

2:57:09 ↗ on whether we make a recommendation to the council to approve the connector as an

2:57:14 ↗ emergency route. So the motion should be subject to approval of the housing

2:57:20 ↗ development and the roadway will be provided subject to the approval of the

2:57:26 ↗ housing development. In other words, if the housing, just like what we had

2:57:32 ↗ talked about, if the housing unit is not approved, then there's no roadway.

2:57:38 ↗ So the motion that you have, we have on the table right now

2:57:44 ↗ is to provide access road, the Newport way. And I would- As part

2:57:50 ↗ of the Bergsma development agreement. It is a connector, not

2:57:56 ↗ an access road. It is a connector that would connect

2:58:01 ↗ the existing talus to the proposed Bergsma. If the proposed

2:58:07 ↗ Bergsma is not approved by the City Council, then there's

2:58:12 ↗ no connector. There's no connector. There's no second. No. In

2:58:18 ↗ the purview of this objective, this meeting. So what we're trying to

2:58:24 ↗ do here is identify whether or not the connector road is recommended

2:58:29 ↗ by the commission. And if so, what type of roadway will it

2:58:35 ↗ be? And then after the break, we'll talk about the rest of

2:58:41 ↗ the deal. But if there's no Bergsma development approved by the city,

2:58:46 ↗ there's no connector, right? OK. All right.

2:58:52 ↗ OK. Are we ready to take further

2:58:57 ↗ discussion? So the motion is to allow

2:59:03 ↗ the construction of the connection as an

2:59:08 ↗ emergency access only connection. All those in

2:59:14 ↗ favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? So we--

2:59:20 ↗ fortunately, have approved the first portion of this meeting. So-- and I'm-- CHRIS RODGERS: Only

2:59:25 ↗ three more hours for the second half. DAVID BURRAGE: I just want to say, I

2:59:30 ↗ know there are probably people that are going to go because that was their real

2:59:34 ↗ interest. But I don't mean this to be taken wrong, but it always offends me

2:59:39 ↗ when people say that the commissions or the city doesn't listen. Because this is the

2:59:44 ↗ democratic process that allows us to be able to hear your concerns. And to be

2:59:49 ↗ able to take that into advisement, you've done an excellent job tonight. And I just

2:59:52 ↗ want to express my appreciation to you for doing that. Now, we're going to continue

2:59:56 ↗ on, but several of us are getting old and have issues that we need to

3:00:00 ↗ take care of. And so I would recommend that we take a 10-minute break if

3:00:04 ↗ you can hang with us in there. We had four or five people that really

3:00:07 ↗ wanted to talk on the second portion of this. So I appreciate your time. If

3:00:11 ↗ you can stay, we'd love to have you because your input has been invaluable.

3:00:15 ↗ CHRIS

3:00:26 ↗ RODGERS:

3:00:36 ↗ Absolutely.

3:00:47 ↗ Yeah.

3:00:57 ↗ CHRIS

3:01:08 ↗ RODGERS:

3:01:19 ↗ So

3:01:29 ↗ thank

3:01:40 ↗ you.

3:01:50 ↗ Let's

3:02:01 ↗ take

3:02:12 ↗ a

3:02:22 ↗ 10

3:02:33 ↗ minute

3:02:43 ↗ break.

3:02:54 ↗ All

3:03:05 ↗ right.

3:03:15 ↗ I'm

3:03:26 ↗ going

3:03:36 ↗ to

3:03:47 ↗ bring

3:03:58 ↗ us

3:04:08 ↗ back

3:04:19 ↗ into

3:04:29 ↗ the

3:04:40 ↗ public

3:04:51 ↗ hearing.

3:05:01 ↗ We're

3:05:12 ↗ officially

3:05:22 ↗ started.

3:05:33 ↗ And

3:05:44 ↗ this

3:05:54 ↗ is

3:06:05 ↗ the

3:06:15 ↗ Windward-Bergsma

3:06:26 ↗ Cluster

3:06:37 ↗ Housing

3:06:47 ↗ Development

3:06:58 ↗ Agreement

3:07:09 ↗ File

3:07:19 ↗ Number

3:07:30 ↗ DA1600001.

3:07:40 ↗ We

3:07:51 ↗ just

3:08:02 ↗ got

3:08:12 ↗ finished

3:08:23 ↗ with

3:08:33 ↗ our

3:08:44 ↗ TALIS

3:08:55 ↗ connection.

3:09:05 ↗ And

3:09:16 ↗ now

3:09:26 ↗ we'll

3:09:37 ↗ be

3:09:48 ↗ moving

3:09:58 ↗ into

3:10:09 ↗ the

3:10:19 ↗ staff

3:10:30 ↗ presentation

3:10:41 ↗ on

3:10:51 ↗ the

3:11:02 ↗ remaining

3:11:12 ↗ components

3:11:23 ↗ of

3:11:34 ↗ the

3:11:44 ↗ development

3:11:55 ↗ agreement.

3:12:06 ↗ Chris. Okay thank you Mr. Chair. I just want to before I get into the

3:12:10 ↗ other components of the development agreement I did want to mention I did pass out

3:12:15 ↗ some additional attachments that were not part of your packet that went out a week

3:12:19 ↗ ago and so you each got copies of those so I wanted to formally enter

3:12:24 ↗ those as new attachments. Attachment number 10 is an affordable housing amendment. It's kind of

3:12:28 ↗ the red line legislative document that you have there. I'll talk about that in just

3:12:33 ↗ a minute Attachment 11 is the notice of action. This was that I showed you

3:12:38 ↗ a piece of it earlier today. It was from the 2001 City Council agenda bill.

3:12:44 ↗ And then attachment 12 was the letter from Brett Heath of Public Works Operations that

3:12:50 ↗ I read earlier. Attachment 13 was the letter from the Issaquah School District. And then

3:12:55 ↗ also since the packet went out a week ago, I've obviously received many more public

3:13:01 ↗ comments and those are all being bundled together as additional attachments. And those will all

3:13:06 ↗ be sent on to the city council with your recommendation.

3:13:14 ↗ Okay as we mentioned the the next part of this hearing is going to be

3:13:19 ↗ talking about all of the other components of the development agreement for the Windward-Bergsma Platte.

3:13:24 ↗ And in the city code, it talks about what pieces, what should be addressed

3:13:29 ↗ within a development agreement. And those include project description, site plan, open space, including

3:13:35 ↗ preservation of critical areas and buffers, the uses, affordable housing, the design and building

3:13:41 ↗ standards, and then a capital facilities plan. And all of those have been included

3:13:47 ↗ in the proposal you're viewing tonight. The first component that

3:13:53 ↗ I was going to talk about is the development standards because you see those specified

3:13:58 ↗ in the development agreement. Here we have the setbacks that are proposed. One deviation that

3:14:04 ↗ is requested with regard to the setbacks have to do specifically with the several lots

3:14:10 ↗ that are immediately adjacent to the city-owned property. Long story short, with a cluster

3:14:16 ↗ plat, you look at the setbacks for the exterior points of the entire development

3:14:21 ↗ and use the setbacks for that particular zone. As I mentioned earlier, the single family

3:14:27 ↗ estates zoning has really big setbacks, like 15 or 30 feet, depending on whether it's

3:14:33 ↗ front or side. They're asking to reduce those setbacks adjacent to the city property. And

3:14:38 ↗ again, because it won't really affect anybody, we are supportive of that. The development

3:14:44 ↗ agreement also talks about the pervious and impervious surface. Again, like the setbacks looking

3:14:50 ↗ at the entire site, the maximum impervious surface calculations are looking at the entire

3:14:55 ↗ site as well. So we're just acknowledging that of the developable area, they will

3:15:01 ↗ not be exceeding 30% of impervious surface for the whole site. And they'll be

3:15:07 ↗ well below that. It also addresses the minimum lot size within the plat.

3:15:12 ↗ Again, this is how you do the clustering is to allow lots smaller than what

3:15:18 ↗ the underlying zone would typically allow. And what's being proposed is 3,500 square feet for

3:15:24 ↗ the 74 detached single family lots. And then for the cottages, which will be attached

3:15:30 ↗ units, 3,000 square feet for those. I also wanted to point out that

3:15:36 ↗ the building height calculation is a little different than what is in the land use

3:15:41 ↗ code. That's mostly having to do with the challenging topography of the site and the

3:15:46 ↗ different lots. And I've included how the height would be measured from basically like the

3:15:52 ↗ center line of the road rather than the average of the grade. And again, I

3:15:57 ↗ can talk more about that if you're interested. Another component of the

3:16:03 ↗ development agreement is design standards. The Issaquah Municipal Code currently doesn't really have

3:16:08 ↗ design standards that apply to single family residences, but that's one of the benefits

3:16:14 ↗ we have of doing a development agreement like that, or like this, is that

3:16:20 ↗ we can include some design standards to ensure the quality of the homes. And

3:16:26 ↗ included in this particular development agreement are standards related to the orientation of the

3:16:31 ↗ houses, how corner lots are addressed, parking and driveway standards, garages again this is like

3:16:37 ↗ how far that having the garage set a certain distance back from where the door

3:16:43 ↗ is and stuff like that and home design including some colors and materials included as

3:16:48 ↗ well again with a standard subdivision you don't have a whole lot of possibility of

3:16:54 ↗ instilling design standards both the development agreement we do I've

3:17:00 ↗ also included as you saw in the actual development agreement there are several exhibits that

3:17:05 ↗ have minor deviations to the city street standards. Again those are exhibits 7 through 11

3:17:11 ↗ of the development agreement and we can address those if you have questions as well.

3:17:17 ↗ And I've included them here again if you had questions so we can refer to

3:17:22 ↗ them if we need to. Another component of the development agreement has

3:17:28 ↗ to do with open space and in this particular proposal there is 4.7 acres of

3:17:34 ↗ common usable open space that's being included. When we see the site plan again those

3:17:39 ↗ were the kind of the darker areas that I was referring to. Those include recreational

3:17:45 ↗ tracks and they're the flatter areas so they're more usable. Again, that's the area that

3:17:50 ↗ under a traditional plat would be able to be developed because it's outside of critical

3:17:55 ↗ areas and buffers. But the critical area tracks, which is the critical areas and buffers

3:18:00 ↗ on this site is approximately 27 acres and they will be set aside as a

3:18:05 ↗ native growth protection easement. but they do include trail connections and with those trail

3:18:11 ↗ connections that link into the King County open space trails, there's a possibility

3:18:17 ↗ of the applicant dedicating those open space areas to either the city or

3:18:22 ↗ the county.

3:18:28 ↗ i think this is the last component i was going to talk about was the

3:18:34 ↗ affordable housing piece and what's proposed is that 10 of the total number of units

3:18:40 ↗ or eight units will be set aside as affordable housing units so as i mentioned

3:18:45 ↗ that beginning this evening there will be 74 detached single-family market rate houses and then

3:18:51 ↗ there will be eight attached cottage units that will be that will have to be,

3:18:57 ↗ have covenants recorded on them so that they are affordable housing. And as far as

3:19:02 ↗ the density calculation goes, how that fits in, when we did the initial calculation on

3:19:08 ↗ the number of units that could go into this plat based on the underlying zoning,

3:19:14 ↗ with the split zoning of SFE and SFS, we came up with 78 units.

3:19:20 ↗ Again, I could explain that calculation more if I need to. And for

3:19:25 ↗ the purposes of including the affordable housing, we're counting those as half units.

3:19:31 ↗ Currently, the Issaquah Municipal Code does not have a cottage housing section. And

3:19:37 ↗ so we looked at some other cities and how they do it and I

3:19:43 ↗ think I referenced a few maybe in the staff report but it's pretty common

3:19:48 ↗ for these smaller cottages to be counted as half units in density. The affordable

3:19:54 ↗ housing units will be limited in size for between 1,200 and 1,300 square feet

3:20:00 ↗ and if you look on the site plan again you can see where they

3:20:06 ↗ are. I'll go back to it in a second. But one of

3:20:12 ↗ the nice things about it is they're kind of evenly distributed throughout the

3:20:18 ↗ plat instead of just kind of tucked over in one particular corner. And

3:20:24 ↗ they also are required to meet, there's an affordable housing section in the

3:20:29 ↗ Issaquah Municipal Code that they need to meet the criteria of that. And

3:20:35 ↗ so finally, as I mentioned, the exhibit that I entered attachment number 10. I'm

3:20:41 ↗ specifically bringing up because it's a change that has taken place since the packet went

3:20:46 ↗ out to you last week. We've talked to the applicant some more and we've talked

3:20:52 ↗ to Arch who is the affordable housing advocacy group that we work with and they

3:20:57 ↗ made some suggested changes that the applicant has agreed to so I'll just kind of

3:21:03 ↗ mention what those are you can ask questions if you want to but mostly again

3:21:09 ↗ that what was incorporated from what you was was sent to you a week ago

3:21:14 ↗ is the the minimum size for the affordable housing units We wanted to ensure

3:21:20 ↗ because the conceptual site plan is just that conceptual at this point we want to

3:21:25 ↗ ensure that they continue to be spread throughout the development and then for the pricing

3:21:30 ↗ we wanted to make it we wanted to refer to the issaquah municipal code section

3:21:36 ↗ that already defines that to make it more similar to the code rather than a

3:21:41 ↗ little bit different which is what it was. And then the other

3:21:46 ↗ changes just had to do with the timing of the covenant for

3:21:52 ↗ how long it lasts and when that needs to be recorded. So

3:21:58 ↗ I kind of threw a lot at you real quick. But if

3:22:03 ↗ there's any questions about any part of that, we're here to answer

3:22:09 ↗ those. But I think that concludes my recommendation. Well, I will add

3:22:14 ↗ for the recommended the recommendation that will go to the

3:22:20 ↗ City Council. So there's three conditions that we're recommending. Two of them were in the

3:22:26 ↗ staff report. The first one has to do with meeting the conditions of the MDNS

3:22:31 ↗ and of the variance. The second one really had to do with, we noticed in

3:22:36 ↗ the street cross sections and the description of what was happening on Newport Way that

3:22:41 ↗ it didn't talk specifically about the lighting. So we just wanted to make sure that

3:22:47 ↗ the lighting will meet the city standard. So that's why that was specifically added. And

3:22:52 ↗ then the third condition again is to modify the affordable housing section of the

3:22:58 ↗ development agreement to reflect the changes that were included in that exhibit.

3:23:06 ↗ And then finally, I will just say the only reason there's

3:23:12 ↗ only three recommended conditions is because we've been working with the

3:23:18 ↗ applicant for a really long time and he's been very responsive.

3:23:23 ↗ There's been a lot of back and forth on this and

3:23:29 ↗ we're happy to have gotten it to the place it's at.

3:23:34 ↗ Thank you. Commissioners? I apologize for being Republican. Are we going

3:23:40 ↗ to see any elevations or any proposals as part of this

3:23:46 ↗ in terms of what I didn't see any in the packet. So

3:23:51 ↗ do we have any input at all, any requirement to review the

3:23:57 ↗ architectural aspects of the proposal, the application? Well, as I mentioned, there's

3:24:03 ↗ the narrative design standards that are included in the development agreement.

3:24:09 ↗ the only elevations you see in the as part of the development agreement

3:24:15 ↗ have to do with showing how the height will be measured but other

3:24:20 ↗ than that we don't have sample elevations of what the houses will look

3:24:26 ↗ like no But, okay, you don't have, I mean, you don't have those to

3:24:32 ↗ share or you've got them. I mean, the city is working with the applicant to

3:24:37 ↗ determine that or? No, not yet. That's a ways off. Like I said, the next

3:24:43 ↗ step after this will be the preliminary plat. And that is more laying out the

3:24:48 ↗ details of the lot, the details of the roads and infrastructure. That's the next step.

3:24:53 ↗ It's not until after that that we start to see actual building permit plans. So

3:24:58 ↗ if I can add, so the city generally doesn't do architecture review on single family

3:25:04 ↗ detached housing. Okay. So, you know, in TALIS, it's a different story. And they have

3:25:09 ↗ their own architecture review committee. Highlands has their own architecture review committee. But because this

3:25:14 ↗ is stand-alone, Not so much. Are you talking about the elevation

3:25:19 ↗ of lots or profile? No, no. Normally, normally, normally in our

3:25:25 ↗ community conferences and public hearings, we see elevation. We see what

3:25:31 ↗ the applicant is proposing to have the structures look like. OK.

3:25:37 ↗ OK. And it just wasn't clear to me if that's just not part of this

3:25:42 ↗ process. Yeah. If it was a traditional plat, we wouldn't be talking about it at

3:25:48 ↗ all. There is no design review for single family houses in a traditional plat. The

3:25:53 ↗ only reason we're able to incorporate some design is because they're going to development agreement.

3:25:58 ↗ All right. Christopher. Sorry, Randy. No, so just

3:26:04 ↗ to conclude that, so is it, at what point does the

3:26:10 ↗ applicant get green light to go ahead with whatever has been

3:26:16 ↗ agreed upon? And when will the public be able to understand

3:26:22 ↗ what the city has approved for the Bergsma development in terms

3:26:27 ↗ of its physical appearance? As I mentioned, this will be,

3:26:34 ↗ solidified in more detail with the preliminary plat approval and then the final plat

3:26:39 ↗ and those will go to the hearing examiner in a public hearing process. Again

3:26:45 ↗ that's laying out the lots, the open space, the parks, the utilities, that's all

3:26:51 ↗ focused on with the preliminary plat and final plat. Again, the design of

3:26:56 ↗ the houses now is the chance, if we're concerned about that, to incorporate it

3:27:02 ↗ into the development agreement. Because then what happens after the final plat is approved

3:27:08 ↗ is we start to get the individual building permits for each of these lots.

3:27:13 ↗ We go back to the development agreement to make sure that those building permits

3:27:19 ↗ reflect all of the standards that were adopted in the development agreement. Typically, we

3:27:25 ↗ wouldn't be involved in... This is only because it's clustered. Otherwise, if it was

3:27:30 ↗ subdivision, we wouldn't be involved in approving house styles or anything. That's right. That's right.

3:27:36 ↗ We're doing it to the degree that we are. Right, approving the development, but not

3:27:41 ↗ necessarily a design of the houses. Speaking of the houses, you said that there's a

3:27:47 ↗ variance from a 30-foot height to a 35-foot height. Is that right? Yeah. I mean,

3:27:53 ↗ currently in the existing land use code, it's measured from the average of the grade

3:27:59 ↗ to the midpoint of the highest gable and what's proposed is a

3:28:04 ↗ little bit different than that. The applicant can speak to this as

3:28:10 ↗ well. As far as where it's being measured from, either the finish

3:28:15 ↗ grade or the center line of the street and it's either 35

3:28:21 ↗ feet or not to exceed 40 from the center line of the

3:28:27 ↗ road.

3:28:32 ↗ If you want to know more, I would ask the applicant

3:28:38 ↗ to dig into it. There's a diagram on page 212 of

3:28:44 ↗ your packet. Yeah, so I was looking at those and so

3:28:50 ↗ on exhibit 6A, it shows 35 foot max from finished grade

3:28:56 ↗ and that 35 foot max that typically would be 30 feet?

3:29:02 ↗ In the rest of the city, it's 30 feet from the

3:29:07 ↗ midpoint of the grade to the midpoint of the highest gable. In

3:29:13 ↗ the midpoint of the existing grade or finished grade? An average of both.

3:29:19 ↗ Okay. And they're changing to- 212, Christopher, you've passed it. 212.

3:29:32 ↗ Okay, so this is showing how it would be measured for the detached single family

3:29:37 ↗ and then it's a separate way that it would be calculated for the cottage or

3:29:42 ↗ at least a lower standard for the cottages. Okay, so they're saying 35 feet from

3:29:47 ↗ the average finished grade, not the average of existing and finished. Right. Normally it would

3:29:53 ↗ be 30 feet from existing and finished and we're going to change it to 35

3:29:58 ↗ from finished. Right. So it could go up higher just from finishing it and another

3:30:03 ↗ five feet on top of that. So why would we go the extra five feet?

3:30:08 ↗ Yeah, I could have the applicant speak to that. OK.

3:30:16 ↗ And we can decide how we want to do this because I know the applicant

3:30:21 ↗ may want to make a presentation at this point. We know that the public wants

3:30:27 ↗ to make comments. So we can go through that. And then if you have more

3:30:32 ↗ questions, we can do a whole big question and answer. Why don't we do that?

3:30:37 ↗ OK. Why don't we do that? So should we have the applicant speak now? Yes.

3:30:42 ↗ Yes. Yes. Yes, sir. So

3:30:47 ↗ I have not prepared a presentation this evening, but I can certainly answer your

3:30:53 ↗ questions regarding any of this and the building height first, if you like. Would

3:30:59 ↗ you introduce yourself? Oh, my name is Greg Krabbe. I'm with Windward Real Estate.

3:31:05 ↗ Thank you. So I just want to make clear I understand. So if what

3:31:11 ↗ Christopher said was our current code would be 30 feet from the average of

3:31:16 ↗ existing and finished grade, and the proposal is... In the back, the photo looks like

3:31:22 ↗ it's 35 feet just from finish grade. So it could be both higher from going

3:31:27 ↗ from the average to the finished and another five feet on top of that. Right.

3:31:32 ↗ And then up to 40 feet from the road center line. Yeah. And I guess

3:31:36 ↗ what would be the reason why we would do that? Okay. Well, let me start

3:31:41 ↗ first with where you measure the base measurement occurs at. So as you can see,

3:31:46 ↗ there's a lot of terrain in this site. When we grade in the roads, all

3:31:51 ↗ the roads are limited to 12 percent. A lot of the highs and the lows

3:31:55 ↗ in the lots get graded out as a result of the road grades. So there

3:31:59 ↗ will be circumstances where between two lots, existing grade could be quite a bit lower

3:32:05 ↗ than existing grade for the house next door or for the lot next door. So

3:32:11 ↗ what we want to do is create a homogeneous and consistent profile of the housing

3:32:17 ↗ roof lines as we go through the project. And so what we propose to do

3:32:22 ↗ is just measure the building height from the finished lot grade. Does that... And that

3:32:28 ↗ will be, in essence, at road grade? Well, closely. Now, we like the lots to

3:32:33 ↗ be a little bit higher than the road so that everything drains down into the

3:32:38 ↗ road. I mean, that's a natural solution. So what we've done is said that you

3:32:43 ↗ would have... up to five feet of variation. If the lot was up to five

3:32:48 ↗ feet higher than the road, then the maximum grade from road center line would be

3:32:53 ↗ 40 feet, but the house would still be limited to 35 feet from the pad

3:32:59 ↗ grade. Okay. And part of doing this, part of approving this is because if we

3:33:04 ↗ were doing this on a non-clustered, excuse me, non-clustered basis, this wouldn't matter in terms

3:33:10 ↗ of the grade change. Is that right? It wouldn't matter or would matter? Well, it

3:33:15 ↗ would not because the homes would be so spread out. Conceivably, yes. Yes, exactly. The

3:33:20 ↗ standards we're proposing are very similar to Tallis'. In fact, the building heights, the maximum

3:33:26 ↗ building height is 10 feet shorter. Tallis' allows 45 feet. And we like the style

3:33:31 ↗ in there. I mean, it's an alpine look. And because they're three-story with the garages

3:33:36 ↗ due to the terrain and the step lots, It's pretty necessary to have that

3:33:41 ↗ flexibility in the building height. Okay. So Christopher, so we're consistent or less

3:33:47 ↗ than Talus then? I know we base that on Talus as far as

3:33:53 ↗ how it's measured and I think it is taller in Talus. Yes. All

3:33:59 ↗ right. Thank you. Mr. Chair, this may be a city staff question rather

3:34:04 ↗ than Mr. Crowley, but with the public admission that I'm

3:34:10 ↗ dyslectic and third grade math. I did not understand when

3:34:16 ↗ it comes to clearing the property. On page 23 of

3:34:22 ↗ 219, the last sentence says, "The action proposes removal of

3:34:28 ↗ existing vegetation over 34% of the site. And when I

3:34:34 ↗ went back, when I read that and went back to page 11 of 219, it

3:34:40 ↗ wasn't, it isn't clear to me what there is, what appears to me to be

3:34:46 ↗ a discrepancy between the numbers that define critical area and develop what is planned to

3:34:52 ↗ be developed and the 34%. Now they're not Uh, one is in acres.

3:34:58 ↗ So is that that the reason that that's that 34% of the site

3:35:04 ↗ will have to be cleared? That's when you add up the, uh, the

3:35:10 ↗ acres in the various categories? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, um, This

3:35:15 ↗ says removal of tree cover will adversely affect the site's ability to filter

3:35:21 ↗ suspended particulates from the air and its overall aesthetic character. The action proposes

3:35:27 ↗ removal of existing vegetation over 34% of the site. And I assume that

3:35:33 ↗ that's that number, that 34% is the result of long study

3:35:39 ↗ and negotiation with the city over what is the minimum percent

3:35:45 ↗ of the site that must be cleared in order for you

3:35:51 ↗ to accomplish the objective you have. Absolutely, yes. Yes. It's both. I

3:35:56 ↗ mean, it's the minimum that we could clear and accomplish the density allowed, but frankly,

3:36:02 ↗ it's all the site really allows. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, the whole

3:36:08 ↗ point of the cluster is to compress the development. Yes, and that's what we've accomplished

3:36:14 ↗ here. I mean, there are upland areas here that are developable, but we're not because

3:36:20 ↗ we're going with the... We're not developing them or clearing them because of the cluster

3:36:26 ↗ development. OK. And this is definitely a staff question. Christopher, what is surrounding the Bergsma

3:36:32 ↗ site, aside-- we know where Tallis is. And there's county land to the west of

3:36:38 ↗ it. Is that correct? Yes, it's county open space to the north of it and

3:36:43 ↗ to the west of it. So all of that white space around the Bergsma site

3:36:49 ↗ is county open space? That's right. OK. And that's dedicated county open space. That's not

3:36:54 ↗ quite right. I mean, I could guide you if you would-- I'm pleased. I think--

3:36:59 ↗ Or you could use the mouse, too, on the-- OK. Where is it?

3:37:04 ↗ The cat ate it. Oh, got it. Okay. So this is owned by

3:37:10 ↗ PSE, and it's basically a stream with a power line running through it.

3:37:16 ↗ This is owned by a private party, but it is in the county,

3:37:22 ↗ oddly enough. This is all in King County and it's privately

3:37:28 ↗ owned. Well, actually it may be part of the park. This is owned by

3:37:34 ↗ King County and in King County and it's a park. Okay, so to the

3:37:40 ↗ left of the Bergsma site is privately owned. It's King County and it's privately

3:37:46 ↗ owned. Do we know how that is owned by King County? Oh,

3:37:51 ↗ it's large lot. Yeah. It's rural. Like one per five acres probably. Yeah,

3:37:57 ↗ it's like rural timber. I mean, it's not developable. There's no utilities. It's

3:38:03 ↗ not developable. No. In fact, I'm not sure if the King County Park

3:38:09 ↗ may wrap around. I'm not dead sure. And I just wanted to follow

3:38:15 ↗ up because one of the requirements I didn't mention for a development agreement

3:38:21 ↗ is that 15% of the entire site of developable area needs to

3:38:27 ↗ be set aside as open space. So it's 15% is again what you see

3:38:33 ↗ in the dark spaces there that could be built on, but because they're doing

3:38:39 ↗ a cluster, must be set aside as permanent open space. - Okay. - Christopher,

3:38:44 ↗ one of the, The second requirement is the improvements to Newport Way along

3:38:50 ↗ the development frontage. Could you point out on the map there the entire length

3:38:56 ↗ of the frontage that would all be developed then? Yeah, the entire frontage of

3:39:02 ↗ this property. It's significant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. And all that will have that

3:39:07 ↗ same treatment then with the sidewalks and bike lanes and everything? Oh, yes. Yeah.

3:39:13 ↗ I mean, forgive me for promoting my project, but it's a good thing for

3:39:19 ↗ you guys. Thank you. To follow up on that question, Christopher,

3:39:24 ↗ can you show us, is there an exploded view of Newport that

3:39:30 ↗ goes up to Gateway and so on? And the reason I'm asking

3:39:36 ↗ this is that we have, in the previous development commission meeting, specifically

3:39:42 ↗ with Newport, on both sides of 900, we've noted that the new

3:39:48 ↗ developments are required to put turn lanes in and

3:39:54 ↗ do very significant improvements of the road surface to

3:39:59 ↗ accommodate the development and paid very significant six-digit fees to pay for the

3:40:05 ↗ improvements. But our concern in the past has been that these are three lanes and

3:40:10 ↗ then back down to two lanes and then three lanes and then back down to

3:40:15 ↗ two lanes so that the overall, and I believe that we actually asked in what

3:40:20 ↗ may have been the last meeting, if the public could expect the result of all

3:40:26 ↗ these work to be an improved traffic flow over the length of Newport and

3:40:32 ↗ we were told no, that's not gonna happen. Where do the turns

3:40:38 ↗ -- do the improvements for approved developments, how do they show up there? Okay. Again,

3:40:43 ↗ here's the vicinity map that kind of shows that area. It's about the best I

3:40:48 ↗ have right now. But I would like to ask Doug Schlepp, the city engineer, to

3:40:54 ↗ maybe talk about those road improvements that are happening all along Newport Way in association

3:40:59 ↗ with the other developments. Both east and west of Newport. So my name is

3:41:05 ↗ Doug Schlepp. I'm with the City of Issaquah Development Services

3:41:10 ↗ Engineering and with this project starting at SR 900 there

3:41:16 ↗ are There's no development proposed here and therefore the existing

3:41:22 ↗ condition which is essentially three lane road section I believe

3:41:28 ↗ leading up to the intersection with center left turn lane

3:41:33 ↗ and then westerly and easterly or northerly and southerly travel

3:41:39 ↗ lanes along the Bergsma development While the frontage improvements

3:41:44 ↗ typically would require this developer to do frontage improvements

3:41:50 ↗ along their side, we've worked with them to grade

3:41:56 ↗ out the area for sidewalk along their property line,

3:42:01 ↗ but actually make the trail improvements on the opposite

3:42:07 ↗ side of the road. There's no development that's anticipated

3:42:12 ↗ along this corridor due to the fact that Tibbets Creek runs

3:42:18 ↗ along there. So we worked with them to put in the,

3:42:24 ↗ to design and construct the multi-use trail along that side of

3:42:30 ↗ Newport. And then continuing on, and I don't know why this, I

3:42:36 ↗ keep losing the arrow here. You then come up on the this side

3:42:42 ↗ of the road is the Riva development and I'm not sure if you've

3:42:47 ↗ seen plans for that. This project depending on who gets there first, they

3:42:53 ↗ would extend their frontage improvements for the trail along the

3:42:59 ↗ their frontage for Riva and then if Bergsma comes in after them

3:43:04 ↗ they would tie into that so you'd have a continuous multi-purpose trail

3:43:10 ↗ all along here through the Bergsma and Riva site and that would

3:43:16 ↗ include and I think we've got figures for the the Newport

3:43:22 ↗ Parkway. It would be starting from this side of the

3:43:28 ↗ road. I'm losing my, the This side of the road,

3:43:34 ↗ you'd have the 10-foot multi-use path, a 5-foot planter strip, 5-foot bike

3:43:39 ↗ lane, travel lane, a planted median, or a left turn pocket, another

3:43:45 ↗ travel lane, and then a bike lane. And then in this particular

3:43:51 ↗ case for Bergsma, a graded out section for a future sidewalk. And

3:43:56 ↗ we're working to figure out how to make that happen. sooner rather than

3:44:02 ↗ later. And those cross sections were included in the development agreement as exhibit 11. Okay.

3:44:08 ↗ And also we're working, we have met with the county. This parcel

3:44:14 ↗ here is not within the city and the city's border is along

3:44:20 ↗ the right of way. They're proposing, you heard comments about parking along

3:44:26 ↗ Newport Way. They're proposing a new trail head. They went out for

3:44:31 ↗ grant funding last year and received that grant funding. We've yet to

3:44:37 ↗ see them since we met with them last, but they will need

3:44:43 ↗ some sort of right away access permit. But for the most part,

3:44:49 ↗ all the design and permitting is within the county. But we'll be

3:44:55 ↗ working with the county to develop that parking and trying to work

3:45:01 ↗ with the county also on getting sidewalks along that stretch of road

3:45:06 ↗ as well. Since they are not within the city, the city does

3:45:12 ↗ not have purview over requiring that they put in sidewalks. Then you

3:45:18 ↗ get to, we heard some people speak that are from the Smammish

3:45:24 ↗ Point condos here. And then there's also Oak Crest. And then we

3:45:30 ↗ have the, I'm drawing a blank here. Anybody from this community?

3:45:37 ↗ Spyglass, excuse me. Yeah, so Spyglass. So this is an area where

3:45:42 ↗ the road would transition back to its existing configuration that it is

3:45:48 ↗ today. And then as you get to the Gateway project here, there's

3:45:53 ↗ a proposed frontage improvements along this stretch. This is a separate parcel

3:45:59 ↗ and the Gateway Senior Housing goes is right here so that you

3:46:05 ↗ essentially have Newport Way improvements from this actually this point right here

3:46:11 ↗ all the way to this transition back to existing and then transition

3:46:16 ↗ to new all the way to a point right here and then

3:46:22 ↗ transition back to existing. The city at this point is working

3:46:28 ↗ with, this would be Public Works Engineering, is working with consultants

3:46:33 ↗ to review the entire corridor from SR 900 to 54th up

3:46:39 ↗ to this point right here. So they'd be looking at all

3:46:44 ↗ of the improvements that are not being done by the developers.

3:46:50 ↗ So that's in the development. data gathering and preliminary design phase.

3:46:56 ↗ I'm not sure how far along the design will get, but the

3:47:01 ↗ city would be working with a consultant to look at those areas

3:47:07 ↗ that aren't improved by the developments that I've mentioned. Okay. And just,

3:47:12 ↗ there's a, there's a, significant transition area too so it's

3:47:18 ↗ not an abrupt change there's a required distance by standard on

3:47:24 ↗ transitioning back so if you have a center turn lane or

3:47:30 ↗ a median there's a certain distance that's required to transition back

3:47:36 ↗ to the two-lane road section. Mr. Chairman In the interest of

3:47:42 ↗ time, I wonder, for public input, do they need to sign up for

3:47:48 ↗ another sheet for public input? Is there another sheet or the same one?

3:47:54 ↗ We're losing folks here, and that's fine. I just want to make sure

3:47:59 ↗ that if they need to sign in, they have signed in already. Thank

3:48:05 ↗ you. Other comments, or should I? I'll open it up, and we'll get

3:48:11 ↗ the public comments. Our first commenter is Ken Eisman. Eisman. Eisman, sorry.

3:48:19 ↗ Christopher, could I ask your help again? There it

3:48:25 ↗ is. Thank you. Ken Eastman. I think I mentioned

3:48:30 ↗ before I'm a Issaquah taxpayer. I have two objections.

3:48:36 ↗ Where do they send the bill? What's your address?

3:48:42 ↗ I know we're going to get a race. I

3:48:48 ↗ have two objections. The first is, once again, we're

3:48:54 ↗ developing on steep slopes. So The elevation difference between Newport

3:49:00 ↗ Way and Harvey Manning Park is 250 foot. And here's some pictures of

3:49:06 ↗ what Bergsma looks like from Newport Way. If you haven't been there, I

3:49:11 ↗ would suggest that you take a good look at the terrain here. I

3:49:17 ↗ did a research search of the Issaquah Press website for landslides. in Issaquah,

3:49:23 ↗ 98 hits. And I was quite surprised because I knew there had been landslides before,

3:49:29 ↗ but I was quite surprised at how many I found over the last 30 years.

3:49:35 ↗ And here's newspaper headlines. They happened in 2017 all the way back to 1989. And

3:49:40 ↗ the common thread here is virtually all of these happened because of development on steep

3:49:46 ↗ slopes. And then the king daddy of all of them, for all our TALIS residents,

3:49:52 ↗ the 2015 landslide on parcel 9 and I have to ask the question

3:49:58 ↗ does the city really have the expertise to regulate development on steep slopes

3:50:04 ↗ well you know there's eight situations here where I would imagine when asked

3:50:10 ↗ is this going to be safe is this development going to not cause

3:50:16 ↗ landslides the experts including the city no doubt said it's going to be

3:50:22 ↗ fine I heard the same thing at the preliminary plat hearing for parcel 9 and

3:50:28 ↗ 7 and 8. It's going to be fine. All the brightest minds have said it's

3:50:33 ↗ going to be fine and the hill slid. And so I can only determine from

3:50:39 ↗ this that there is no certainty when you develop on steep slopes. So why are

3:50:44 ↗ we taking a risk again? And who gets to foot the bill? The taxpayer.

3:50:50 ↗ And there's headlines here about how the city is agonizing out of all these

3:50:56 ↗ problems about how to remedy landslides that went awry and developers leaving and the

3:51:02 ↗ city having to bail things out. And they go on and on and on.

3:51:08 ↗ And one of the things I would ask is that you ask the question,

3:51:14 ↗ how much is the security bond that is going to be required in this development

3:51:20 ↗ because i can tell you the security bond for talus parcel 9 was a pittance

3:51:24 ↗ it's not going to pay to permanently stabilize that hill when that developer decides not

3:51:29 ↗ interested anymore which it appears like he's not interested anymore 17 months later there's the

3:51:34 ↗ slide it doesn't look any different now than it did 17 months ago when it

3:51:39 ↗ slid and that's what we have to look at in talus

3:51:47 ↗ And one of the other speakers talked about the anti-aircraft creek culvert replacement. Well,

3:51:53 ↗ that was needed because of development as well. Here's a million dollar project that

3:51:59 ↗ taxpayers have to pay for. And you want to talk about development that stalled,

3:52:04 ↗ here's Talus Parcel 7 and 8. This is three years after the preliminary plat.

3:52:10 ↗ There's not one home being built up there. It stalled. Lawsuits. Steep slopes.

3:52:17 ↗ And our pump station, eight months they broke ground on this. We've had to look

3:52:22 ↗ at this for eight months. A beautiful community park here in Talus. Look at that

3:52:26 ↗ ugly building that they parked in there. That's our playground. That's what got done to

3:52:31 ↗ us because of development on steep slopes. And across the street, here's the pipeline. Six

3:52:36 ↗ months we've been looking at this, stalled. So why are we

3:52:41 ↗ doing this? Once again, we're anticipating and talking about development on steep slopes. It's complex,

3:52:47 ↗ it's disruptive, it's risky, and where's the benefit to us as residents? I understand the

3:52:52 ↗ benefit to the property owner and the developer, but as residents, where's the benefit to

3:52:57 ↗ us? Because at the end of the day, we take the risk and we have

3:53:03 ↗ to pay the bills. 88,000 cubic yards of topsoil have to be trucked down. There's

3:53:09 ↗ 20 yards in that truck. You do the math. The noise, the mud, we had

3:53:14 ↗ to deal with this in TALIS, and it was only 20,000 cubic yards taken off

3:53:19 ↗ of Parcel 7 and 8. Those squealing trucks going down the hill one after another.

3:53:23 ↗ Do the math on 88,000 of the yards of this. Think about how many trips

3:53:28 ↗ this is. How do we come out ahead on this? I understand how the property

3:53:33 ↗ owner comes out ahead. At the end of the day, this is

3:53:39 ↗ not a good idea. There's too much risk and there's not enough

3:53:45 ↗ benefit. At the end of the day, shouldn't development really benefit everybody,

3:53:50 ↗ including the residents? Thank you. Thank you. Christy Anderson, you've been patient.

3:53:56 ↗ Well, I'll keep it very brief. My name is Christy Anderson. I

3:54:01 ↗ live at 2444 Northwest Stony Creek Drive in Tallis. And I would

3:54:07 ↗ just basically like to reiterate everything that Ken said. I'm one of the residents

3:54:13 ↗ at TALIS that drives up the hill every day and looks at what we've come

3:54:18 ↗ to call the white plastic mountain and it's been 18 months now and then I

3:54:22 ↗ come into my home, walk into my kitchen and there it is out my window

3:54:27 ↗ 24/7 with the white plastic mountain and it's a steep slope and I'm wondering if

3:54:31 ↗ this is Bergsma's future and I hope it is not and at the very least

3:54:36 ↗ if you approve this project I would at least ask you

3:54:42 ↗ to when they start clearing land, don't do it

3:54:47 ↗ in November. Thank you. Larry Thornburg. Lori. Was I

3:54:53 ↗ not next? I said Larry, but I-- Sorry. I

3:54:59 ↗ was anticipating, but there's Larry, so I'll wait till

3:55:04 ↗ my turn. Sorry. I was just excited. You didn't

3:55:10 ↗ look like Larry. Good evening, my name is Larry Tornberg. I live

3:55:16 ↗ at 13422 209th Avenue SE in Issaquah. That's in unincorporated King County, another resident of

3:55:21 ↗ the May Valley Road. You've heard from at least two of us and there's several

3:55:27 ↗ of us in the audience and my wife who has left because we have a

3:55:33 ↗ grandchild that's being delivered here tonight or early tomorrow morning. So she would have been

3:55:38 ↗ passionate about this discussion. A lot has been said about May Valley Road. A couple

3:55:44 ↗ things that wasn't said is that there's some blind curves on the road. There's very

3:55:49 ↗ few, if any, shoulders on the road. There are some bridges that exist, and one

3:55:54 ↗ is on the county's urgent list to replace, but there's no money for it. So

3:55:59 ↗ this is a county two-lane road that has been served as a spoils route,

3:56:05 ↗ courtesy of Gateway for months and months and months. So that's my topic with all

3:56:10 ↗ of us tonight. This developer is proposing to remove 88,000 cubic yards of just soils.

3:56:16 ↗ That doesn't include the trees and everything else that might leave the site. So who

3:56:22 ↗ knows if that's doubled or not. Whatever amount it is, it's a lot. If you

3:56:28 ↗ were just to assume that you have 10 yard loads, You have at

3:56:33 ↗ least 8,300 trips leaving your development and through perhaps TALIS, perhaps through

3:56:39 ↗ other routes, but most likely if it's been like Gateway, it's gone

3:56:45 ↗ south on SR 900. Why did it do that? It's because the

3:56:51 ↗ city found that these truck trips were too onerous, too numerous, and

3:56:57 ↗ too disruptive, and they elected to kick all of those trucks off of city

3:57:02 ↗ streets and the only alternative was to send it south and SR 900 when it

3:57:07 ↗ goes far enough south on S 900 they take the easiest way to their route,

3:57:12 ↗ which is the May Valley Road and we saw thousands of truckloads come through us

3:57:16 ↗ for months and months and months. If this is proposed as a development here, we're

3:57:21 ↗ going to see as many as 150 trucks a day go right past our house.

3:57:26 ↗ That is a lot. And we saw a truck six days a week. And I

3:57:32 ↗ would urge you to, if you're going to move forward on this, to set some

3:57:38 ↗ conditions. And this is what I would like to see, that the contractor, the developer,

3:57:44 ↗ be required to develop a materials management transportation plan, that that plan would monitor truck

3:57:50 ↗ traffic in and out of the site, that haul trucks should log their destination and

3:57:56 ↗ their route, and this is for both incoming and outgoing trucks. What we said is

3:58:01 ↗ that there could be as many as 8,300 trucks if there were 10 cubic yard

3:58:06 ↗ loads. That's one way and most of us talk about round trips but really it's

3:58:11 ↗ a separate trip coming back again. Many of these trucks will come back with structural

3:58:16 ↗ fill material. As many loads as you take off, I'm going to bet that there's

3:58:21 ↗ 70 or 80% of that amount that will come back in as structural fill material

3:58:25 ↗ for this development. I think the truck should be covered by tarps that was mentioned.

3:58:31 ↗ We don't see that we've lost two windshields ourselves told by the Trucking company that

3:58:36 ↗ you have to stop the trucker you have to get his ID you have to

3:58:41 ↗ get his truck number And if you don't have those things they won't pay for

3:58:46 ↗ the windshield so very disruptive and and Again, we were covered. We were not covered

3:58:51 ↗ twice and We also believe that these trucks should be prevented from hauling

3:58:57 ↗ on weekends, that five days a week is enough, and we should at least have

3:59:03 ↗ two days of peace on weekends. There are alternative routes to the May

3:59:09 ↗ Valley Road and it's imperative that May Valley not be one of these

3:59:14 ↗ truck routes. We need to move this spoils to major traffic routes and

3:59:20 ↗ these are the options. I-90 going east to SR 18. It can go

3:59:26 ↗ west to 405 and then south. It can go on SR 900 continuing

3:59:32 ↗ south past May Valley Road. It can go on 167 and 169 and

3:59:38 ↗ all of these routes match the destinations where much of this material has

3:59:43 ↗ been going and is likely to go on this route.

3:59:50 ↗ These are primarily our concerns. Again, if my wife was here, she might

3:59:56 ↗ have some other passionate comments to offer, but I would at least like

4:00:01 ↗ to have you consider these conditions should you decide to move forward on

4:00:07 ↗ this development agreement. Thanks for this opportunity to comment, and I appreciate your

4:00:13 ↗ service. Thank you. Karen? Porterfield. Now it's

4:00:19 ↗ your turn. And you look like a Karen. Yeah, that looks like Karen.

4:00:24 ↗ Karen Porterfield, Tallis resident and a citizen and taxpayer of Issaquah also. And

4:00:30 ↗ I will just start with, I was a multifamily affordable housing developer and

4:00:35 ↗ community facility developer for the Salvation Army for more than 10 years in

4:00:41 ↗ Washington, Idaho, and Montana. I've heard no a lot. Doing that kind of

4:00:47 ↗ work. So I understand what I'm saying tonight when I have this conversation with you

4:00:53 ↗ I want to start out by saying that is a clock committed to the central

4:00:58 ↗ is a clock plan It's a really good plan. A lot of us worked really

4:01:04 ↗ hard to craft it This does not meet nor support the central is a clock

4:01:10 ↗ plan this particular proposed development requires significant variances Let us note that anytime a

4:01:16 ↗ variance is requested, you can say no. Many times we get the feeling in

4:01:22 ↗ this community that developers get to always hear yes and citizens get to hear

4:01:27 ↗ no. So please understand you have this opportunity tonight when we're looking at looking

4:01:33 ↗ at a clustered site request. This is a variance. You can say no.

4:01:39 ↗ There were significant variances that the hearing examiner gave that requires a vote

4:01:45 ↗ by the city council. That's pretty unprecedented to have to go back to

4:01:50 ↗ the city council. So when the city council says how come we are not

4:01:56 ↗ meeting our goals for the Central Issaquah plan, that is because we are happily handing

4:02:02 ↗ out variances on steep slopes so people can build in marginal land. If we said

4:02:08 ↗ no to these types of developments, we would see more development going on on the

4:02:13 ↗ floor here in the valley as part of the Central Issaquah plan. I

4:02:19 ↗ also want to point out, we have talked also about roads. Well,

4:02:25 ↗ this is a steep slope with marginal land that will require a lot of fill.

4:02:31 ↗ If we actually have a significant earthquake, I'm putting my money that Tallis Drive is

4:02:36 ↗ going to be in a whole lot better shape than this road is. And if

4:02:41 ↗ you're going to count on this road for a secondary access out, I think you're

4:02:46 ↗ going to be disappointed. So please do not see that as a significant potential for

4:02:52 ↗ saying yes. I also want to point out that we've had the

4:02:57 ↗ conversations around affordable housing. Within TALUS we have Rosecrest, which is a wonderful part of

4:03:03 ↗ our community, 51 units of between one and four bedrooms, all extreme low income housing.

4:03:09 ↗ So I think that within Issaquah, and certainly me working for the Salvation Army, support

4:03:15 ↗ this. So when we have the conversation that we should be able to do

4:03:21 ↗ clustered housing because we're building eight units when yet we can point to the

4:03:26 ↗ Atlas, which is 344 units and no affordable units set aside. We have to

4:03:32 ↗ question the vision of the city and how they want to carry out affordable

4:03:38 ↗ access for housing. It seems piecemeal and not focused. The last thing I want

4:03:43 ↗ to leave you with is One of the things we teach as the basics of

4:03:49 ↗ building cities is the further away you get from 90 degree angles, the more expensive

4:03:55 ↗ it is to deliver services, whether it's sewers or water. The other thing we teach

4:04:00 ↗ is The steeper the slope that you put your resources the sooner they fail

4:04:06 ↗ no surprise They're under higher pressure so when we look at sewers when we look

4:04:12 ↗ at water when we look at those basic service deliveries that cities are required to

4:04:17 ↗ do it costs the taxpayers more money you build housing in a place like this

4:04:23 ↗ proposed development than it would on the floor here in the valley and And so

4:04:29 ↗ in some ways, some of these conversations can be what I call penny wise and

4:04:34 ↗ pound foolish. Wow, we've got a developer who will develop 100 or 200 feet of

4:04:40 ↗ our roadway on Newport so we don't have to pay for it. Yet we are

4:04:45 ↗ not looking at the long-term impact on the assets of the city and what it

4:04:49 ↗ costs to maintain them and replace them. And for cities, that's our roads, that's our

4:04:54 ↗ sewers, that's our water. This is a primary requirement for us. And yet we have

4:04:59 ↗ not had the conversation about what those costs are going to be, what the long-term

4:05:05 ↗ impact is going to be. And frankly, I hope most of us who live here,

4:05:10 ↗ we're planning to be here long-term, to be a part of this vital and vibrant

4:05:15 ↗ community. But what we are seeing here tonight is you are asking us to accept

4:05:20 ↗ additional costs so that a developer can take the money and leave. One

4:05:26 ↗ last point, the majority around Berksma owned by King County,

4:05:31 ↗ the parks, they are trying to buy more of that

4:05:37 ↗ land. They do have grants. They're working on that process

4:05:42 ↗ right now. Thank you very much and thank you guys

4:05:48 ↗ for being here so late tonight. Much appreciated. Geraldine Carey.

4:05:53 ↗ Do I need to give my address? Yes, ma'am. Give

4:05:59 ↗ my address. Geraldine Carey, 955 17th Avenue, Northwest.

4:06:06 ↗ I wasn't planning to speak this half but in the presentation on the

4:06:12 ↗ Bergsma property I came up with some questions. I want to address the

4:06:18 ↗ deviation about 30 feet to 10 feet when it backs up to the

4:06:24 ↗ park. It's been my experience that most people who back up and have

4:06:30 ↗ small spaces next to public property eventually take part of what's

4:06:35 ↗ public property as their own. And I want to know how you're going to prevent

4:06:41 ↗ the homeowners from encroaching on public property. So that's one. And I want to know,

4:06:47 ↗ in streets, you talked about minor deviations, and I want to know, is that narrower

4:06:53 ↗ streets? What are you doing for the deviations in the streets? Yes. And water

4:06:59 ↗ drainage, I understand that there's a lot of steep slopes. The water, is it going

4:07:05 ↗ to be just channeled into the waterways that are naturally on the ground or is

4:07:10 ↗ it going to be channeled into culverts that go into streams rather than downhill affecting

4:07:16 ↗ other property owners who are below the property? And I want to know about cuts

4:07:22 ↗ and fills. When you cut and fill and you fill, to make a

4:07:28 ↗ level surface, I think you're asking for slippage in property and who's

4:07:34 ↗ gonna be responsible for taking care of issues that arise from properties

4:07:39 ↗ that are not stable. I'm concerned about what's happened at TALUS and

4:07:45 ↗ I as a citizen do not like the idea that my taxpayer

4:07:51 ↗ money is going to cover that when the developer is walking away.

4:07:57 ↗ I think there should be something in the development condition that goes out beyond

4:08:03 ↗ maybe two or three years that exists now. I think that if a developer

4:08:09 ↗ knows he's going to be held accountable for 10 years or 15 years, then

4:08:15 ↗ he might not want to develop on steep slopes. And I don't know how

4:08:20 ↗ you change the conditions in development, but I think it's something the city needs

4:08:26 ↗ to think about. And I think Greg or somebody was talking about improvement. Well, you

4:08:32 ↗ know, the road improvement along Newport Way that they're planning is kind of to put

4:08:37 ↗ sidewalks and things in. But if traffic, if we have two or three accidents at

4:08:43 ↗ this entrance to Newport Way and they decide it needs a signal

4:08:48 ↗ a year or two years down the road, who's gonna pay for it?

4:08:54 ↗ Again, the city. I think you should say that if we have a

4:09:00 ↗ certain amount of accidents or safety issues are present that the developers should

4:09:06 ↗ have to pay for a street light or something that takes away the

4:09:12 ↗ danger. And I want to know, traffic wise, these trucks hauling the

4:09:18 ↗ 88,000 cubic yards, which direction are they going to go? Are they going

4:09:23 ↗ to go into the intersection at 900? Or are they going to head

4:09:29 ↗ west on Newport Way all the way to Lakemont and then head back

4:09:34 ↗ on 90? If they come out onto 900 turn right, there's going to

4:09:40 ↗ be a significant backup. for that whole distance between their entrance

4:09:46 ↗ way and the intersection so i'm hoping i don't want to put

4:09:51 ↗ them in somebody else's neighborhood but it's essential that you stagger the

4:09:57 ↗ trucks or you do something so that people can move through the

4:10:02 ↗ intersection thank you for your time okay thank you steve perrier area

4:10:08 ↗ i am steve perera and i have messy handwriting sorry i live

4:10:14 ↗ at 170 northeast dogwood street uh here in this quarter about nine

4:10:19 ↗ and a half years So three points I think that I

4:10:25 ↗ wanted to make, or three topics anyway. The first in ISQA's

4:10:31 ↗ standards for how we measure how we're doing, it talks about

4:10:36 ↗ retaining your tree canopy at 51% for the entire city.

4:10:42 ↗ although that they've refined that a little bit more they're currently only at 48

4:10:47 ↗ of standard this proposal scrapes 34 acres worth of covered hillside and removes that

4:10:53 ↗ tree canopy permanently so we're going against the city standards and i don't understand

4:10:59 ↗ why that isn't being taken into consideration that seems i guess that's something that

4:11:05 ↗ should very much be part of your consideration Tied to

4:11:11 ↗ that is underneath that it talks about reducing the carbon footprint that Issaquah produces. I

4:11:16 ↗ link most ways people think about cars and transportation and mobility, but that's very much

4:11:22 ↗ trees that soak up some of the carbon that gets put out, gets absorbed by

4:11:27 ↗ the trees. Those trees being gone are not going to be there to absorb that

4:11:33 ↗ carbon footprint. So that needs to be part of the consideration. And that's according to

4:11:38 ↗ Issaquah's own documents of who we want to be So that's my

4:11:44 ↗ first point. The second point is I guess I as a citizen or resident of

4:11:49 ↗ Iswa, I don't see what I'm getting out of this proposal. People have talked about

4:11:55 ↗ the 88,000 foot of cart of fill that's going to be added. I don't know

4:12:00 ↗ what I'm going to get at having this permanent scar that's going to be made

4:12:06 ↗ to make this access available uh as well as the tree canopy being removed we're

4:12:11 ↗ going to have a steep slope that's going to be built on it's supposed to

4:12:16 ↗ be a quiet scenic area that's going to be permanently gone so i guess i

4:12:21 ↗ don't know what i'm getting out of this some perceived set and tied to that

4:12:27 ↗ i guess i get the idea of the secondary access it seems to make more

4:12:32 ↗ sense to me that we're covering up or we're trying to fix the deficiency that

4:12:37 ↗ wasn't part of the talus consideration If this existing Bush Road

4:12:43 ↗ access can be improved to provide that access, that seems to be

4:12:48 ↗ a more relevant proposal. I also haven't heard the idea of can

4:12:54 ↗ we allow access through TALUS for a smaller number of units that

4:12:59 ↗ would allow some development that doesn't need to have as much destruction

4:13:05 ↗ of property that is proposed. A third thought is this talks

4:13:11 ↗ about affordable housing to some degree. I haven't heard, and when we talk about affordable

4:13:15 ↗ housing, we talk about 70, 10, 10, 10, as far as the percentage and the

4:13:19 ↗ economic level of what affordable housing means. I haven't seen the proposal that talks about

4:13:24 ↗ what those statistics are of how affordable those are going to be. So I think

4:13:28 ↗ there's kind of a red herring here. I think that needs to be part of

4:13:32 ↗ the consideration. And part of the proposal I still don't know the eight

4:13:38 ↗ affordable units that some unknown affordable account isn't being proposed the other thing

4:13:44 ↗ I guess from a process perspective part of what I'm not understanding is

4:13:49 ↗ this seems that this should have been the first piece for consideration and

4:13:55 ↗ discussion and the second piece should have been the roadway bypass It seems

4:14:01 ↗ like if we talked about this piece Needs to be decided before

4:14:06 ↗ we do the second that's more logical place instead of already having made a

4:14:12 ↗ recommendation that we need to recommend a secondary bypass that seems to add impetus

4:14:18 ↗ for allowing the development we've already heard where we were police and fire were

4:14:24 ↗ asked for additional feedback on what those statistics were on how often their services

4:14:30 ↗ get used and yet we're approving something without having

4:14:36 ↗ all the facts. So that needs to be part

4:14:42 ↗ of the driver. And again, can we look at

4:14:48 ↗ improving Bush Road to allow that secondary access rather

4:14:54 ↗ than having a whole new scraped hillside? Thank you.

4:15:00 ↗ Are there any other public that wish to comment?

4:15:06 ↗ Please. I've already signed in, I guess. Yeah, I

4:15:12 ↗ didn't see two sheets, so. My name is Mary

4:15:18 ↗ Lynch and I reside at 2690 Northwest Oakcrest Drive.

4:15:24 ↗ I just want to continue because one of the things that I don't know if

4:15:28 ↗ you really fully understood what they talked about, what they're asking the developer to do

4:15:33 ↗ is to complete the north side of the road and the multimodal trail because the

4:15:37 ↗ city has no funding to do that. and having lived on Newport Way for 30

4:15:43 ↗ years, we were promised sidewalks and never got them. My concern is once again, we're

4:15:49 ↗ going forward with a development where the city has not identified how they're going to

4:15:54 ↗ fund the rework of Newport Way, but they're doing all this development. Also, one of

4:16:00 ↗ the reasons I wanted to complete this slideshow was right here, Further

4:16:06 ↗ down here is the entrance that's being proposed for Bergsma. Consistently, this is in the

4:16:11 ↗ evening. In the morning, we've got cars that are turning or coming straight across here

4:16:17 ↗ such that we can't get out of our development in the morning to head westbound

4:16:23 ↗ because of the amount of traffic. And I heard thrown out something like 11,000 trips

4:16:27 ↗ per day right now is handled on this road, which is to capacity. The only

4:16:32 ↗ way we're getting capacity on this road is because we're adding a center turn lane.

4:16:36 ↗ And so we're adding real estate. We're really not adding capacity. We're just adding a

4:16:41 ↗ center turn lane. But those are the games that you play with. The other thing,

4:16:45 ↗ and this is a little bit, picture is bad, but it's the only thing I

4:16:49 ↗ could catch, all these cars that come around the corner already, we're talking about narrowing

4:16:54 ↗ the lanes down, they already cannot stay in their lanes. Consistently these cars come this

4:16:59 ↗ way and they come into the bike lane as much as three feet. Basically I've

4:17:03 ↗ almost been hit several times a little bit further up when they're still coming around

4:17:08 ↗ this corner and aiming into the garage massage place, driveway where there are no berms.

4:17:14 ↗ The other thing that's happening is again, they're consistently blocking this. Nothing's been set up

4:17:19 ↗ to say, all right, where Berksmith comes down, how are these people gonna get out

4:17:24 ↗ of their development? And it also is on another one of the turns further down,

4:17:30 ↗ but this is consistent. The other thing is consistent. I wanna show you this, is

4:17:35 ↗ people are bypassing or trying to get around the red light, so they're coming down

4:17:41 ↗ into the right turn lane, coming down here and in any one of these entrances,

4:17:46 ↗ any one they can find, they're consistently from about 3 o'clock in the afternoon till

4:17:50 ↗ after the last car's back up here, are coming down, making a U-turn, going right

4:17:55 ↗ back so they can then go slip into the right turn lane and get through

4:17:59 ↗ the stoplight that way. The police are never there. They've been told about it, but

4:18:04 ↗ it's always happening. And again, these people are swerving in. So if you're walking along

4:18:09 ↗ the trail on this side, you have to be careful because you're almost hit by

4:18:14 ↗ these cars doing that. The other thing I want to say is the fact that

4:18:19 ↗ the sidewalks are on here. There is no proposal to put sidewalks on the south

4:18:24 ↗ side. So how are these people that are new up here going to get into

4:18:29 ↗ town or any place? You talk about walking, there is no way to safely get

4:18:34 ↗ across this street. Nothing has been proposed as far as a stoplight or to get

4:18:39 ↗ them there. So there's no walking ways that they can get to the park and

4:18:43 ↗ ride. You've got affordable housing proposed, but one of the things in the goals of

4:18:48 ↗ affordable housing is a close access to the transit center. If they can't safely get

4:18:52 ↗ to the transit center, you're not meeting the goals of the affordable housing. The other

4:18:57 ↗ big thing that no one wants to talk about is all of this property for

4:19:02 ↗ years, since I've lived here, 30 years, is a major homeless camp. What are we

4:19:07 ↗ going to do with the homeless up there? Where are they going to go? They're

4:19:12 ↗ existing citizens of Issaquah. They use our community center. They use our food bank. What's

4:19:16 ↗ going to happen with those people? Where are they going to go? Who's going to

4:19:20 ↗ get them out of there? So one of the conditions and things we need to

4:19:24 ↗ acknowledge if this goes forward is we need to find a place for those people

4:19:29 ↗ and we have not even started addressing that in the city. So we need to

4:19:34 ↗ go back and look to our goals, look to our policies and make sure when

4:19:38 ↗ we're planning these things we're looking for mobility, safety, and also treating us, the existing

4:19:43 ↗ citizens, with some sort of courtesy that we have knowledge and for 30 years the

4:19:48 ↗ city hasn't identified funding so where are they coming with the funding for Newport Way

4:19:53 ↗ to make all these changes that's going to make this project be even a viable

4:19:58 ↗ project. I don't see how it's going to happen. So you can pass it and

4:20:03 ↗ say you approve it. But you're also saying then you believe

4:20:09 ↗ that the city has all this funding to

4:20:14 ↗ do it, and I don't believe they do.

4:20:20 ↗ I'm not sure I've done this before. How

4:20:26 ↗ do I get to, sorry about that. First

4:20:31 ↗ of all, Chris is working that. Connie had

4:20:37 ↗ to leave to go to the airport, but

4:20:43 ↗ she said to pass on, We're supposed to be

4:20:48 ↗ doing this stuff on the valley floor, the density, and we're going

4:20:54 ↗ in that direction. What we're talking about here is the wrong direction,

4:21:00 ↗ and we need to be working to get our codes in line

4:21:06 ↗ and improve our Central Isabel plan to get the development where the

4:21:11 ↗ services are. Thank you. Please introduce

4:21:17 ↗ yourself again. Yes, I will. I'm David Kapler. I'm speaking right now

4:21:23 ↗ as Vice President for Advocacy at the Guelps Trails Club, if that

4:21:29 ↗ will maybe become a little more apparent here if I get this

4:21:35 ↗ open. One thing about the,

4:21:41 ↗ one of the better things about this proposal is at least it is talking about

4:21:46 ↗ clustering and not trying to use every square inch of the property some way or,

4:21:52 ↗ and is putting the density for the most on the less less sensitive lands.

4:21:58 ↗ It does get complicated because of the road issue and that almost

4:22:04 ↗ all the whole corridor of the main road from Newport up is

4:22:09 ↗ through critical areas in terms of the steep slopes, creeks, wetlands, and

4:22:15 ↗ not so much wetlands there. We are seeing a benefit of 12

4:22:21 ↗ and a half acres over here. Where did it go?

4:22:29 ↗ There's 12 and a half acres here that will be donated potentially to the, could

4:22:34 ↗ be kept by the homeowner association. They'd be crazy to keep it. But I would

4:22:39 ↗ think 12 and a half acres that's gonna go to the county or the city.

4:22:44 ↗ The county is in the green directly north of it. That's, and then comes down

4:22:49 ↗ to the trailhead. The county has just purchased the property that went on the west

4:22:54 ↗ side there. That's the end of a five acre parcel. The county is also bought

4:22:59 ↗ next to Harvey Manning Park, that two and a half acres strip there, and has

4:23:05 ↗ additional property to the west of Harvey Manning Park and the King County Park, actually,

4:23:10 ↗ and a lot of other additional property. The solid green line through that 12 and

4:23:16 ↗ a half acres is an existing trail. It's a beautiful trail. That's the neatest part

4:23:21 ↗ of the property with the big trees, the creeks, the vertical wetlands, practically.

4:23:26 ↗ It does need the little dotted area to connect there,

4:23:32 ↗ should be a requirement. It would be great to have

4:23:37 ↗ a trail down at the south end from Newport up

4:23:43 ↗ to there. That would be tricky to do. It's possible. The

4:23:49 ↗ green, the red there is, that's in line with Maple. And

4:23:55 ↗ if we can tie in the transit center with that bridge,

4:24:00 ↗ which Rowley has to eventually build a bridge over, Tibbets Creek,

4:24:06 ↗ that's the best place to do it because the creek is narrow, otherwise the

4:24:12 ↗ bridge would be several times longer. If that's there, that would be really cool

4:24:18 ↗ to connect the park and ride with 3,400 some acres of Cougar Mountain Park.

4:24:24 ↗ The upper part of the development there, trying to connect, there's an existing road

4:24:30 ↗ actually, trail road to get it over to the park. that's very conceptual.

4:24:36 ↗ The idea is connecting Newport to the park that way, getting up and

4:24:42 ↗ also connecting the upper part of the development to the park.

4:24:49 ↗ The Harvey Manning Park is not on park property. It's on this water

4:24:54 ↗ utility property. But the water utility property, the water is letting them be

4:25:00 ↗ there. So that is not a permanent park site. But hopefully the city

4:25:06 ↗ will never need another reservoir there and they'll continue to get to use

4:25:12 ↗ that property rent free from our water bill payers. Okay, the other issue

4:25:18 ↗ here, I want to, no, I'm lost here.

4:25:24 ↗ Parcel, road A, the main road, it does not need sidewalks

4:25:29 ↗ on both sides. And that's the idea of this green having

4:25:35 ↗ a trail. And the road and the trail should be between,

4:25:40 ↗ there should be a guardrail protecting that trail. They show that

4:25:46 ↗ the guardrail is shown outside of the trail. And it should

4:25:52 ↗ be-- the guardrail should be protecting that trail from the road. Get

4:25:57 ↗ the ice, snow potential on there. You want some more protection. Thank

4:26:03 ↗ you. And trucking is horrible. But what you're doing to May Valley

4:26:09 ↗ Road is-- that's the worst. I hope you can figure out trucking.

4:26:14 ↗ Sorry for going over time. KEN HOWARD: Any other comments from the

4:26:20 ↗ public?

4:26:32 ↗ Hi, my name is Rigel Ryerson. And I just wanted to, I think, mostly address

4:26:38 ↗ three things. One, the hearing examiner's findings of allowing the variances only if a secondary

4:26:44 ↗ means of access is not built. If you watch that video that day, I was

4:26:49 ↗ here, I was present when he was talking about asking questions and I think, I

4:26:54 ↗ don't know if anyone else was present, I think one of the things that he

4:26:58 ↗ came up during that discussion was he said, has anybody ever considered just having the

4:27:03 ↗ access through TALIS and not needing these roads? Because if you didn't connect to Newport

4:27:08 ↗ Way, would you then need all these three variances? And so at that point, I

4:27:13 ↗ felt that was when I felt he was like, oh, well, you only need one

4:27:17 ↗ or the other. You need this access or that access. Anyways, if you could watch

4:27:21 ↗ that video, and also, you guys are going to hear from the hearing examiner, but

4:27:25 ↗ maybe I think that that's why he thought, that's my interpretation of why he said

4:27:29 ↗ you don't need both. Anyways. And my second point is I guess, you know,

4:27:35 ↗ the CPI for Issaquah was it was researched, it was formed, it was

4:27:41 ↗ written, and then Issaquah is just going to grant all these variances and

4:27:46 ↗ I don't understand why. Like contractors should operate within those guidelines. That's what

4:27:52 ↗ the city set forth as their goal. Then you should build to

4:27:58 ↗ that and not ask for I don't know how many you know the building variances

4:28:04 ↗ and then the variances on each of these the setbacks and the heights of the

4:28:10 ↗ buildings. Why so many exceptions? And then my third topic was just more on the

4:28:15 ↗ steep slopes. So I live down here off Newport Way and on Good Place which

4:28:21 ↗ is the first road to the right up Cougar Mountain after

4:28:27 ↗ this Newport Way. I know that there have been houses condemned up

4:28:33 ↗ there and that are still condemned because the hillside is slipping. I

4:28:38 ↗ can't point them out. But I know that there are two separate

4:28:44 ↗ occasions that there are residences up there that have been condemned. And

4:28:50 ↗ one of them is just sitting vacant. It's like a squatter house

4:28:56 ↗ now because they can't fix the road. So I think that's it.

4:29:01 ↗ CHRIS JERRAM: Anybody else feel compelled to make a public comment? Or

4:29:07 ↗ awake? CHRIS JERRAM: Anybody awake? No. So let's close the public comment

4:29:12 ↗ period and open it up for commissioner discussion. Questions? Comments?

4:29:18 ↗ Mr. Chairman, I guess I want to express my appreciation for the neighbors

4:29:24 ↗ coming over to express what you desire. At times, we just don't know

4:29:29 ↗ what we may have in our own mind. This is what you want,

4:29:35 ↗ but you got to come down and tell us what your thoughts are.

4:29:41 ↗ I appreciate the neighborhood input. The other thing I thought was that our recommendation here

4:29:46 ↗ tonight is going to go to the council. I would urge you to go to

4:29:51 ↗ the council and let them know if it's a repeat of what you said tonight,

4:29:56 ↗ that's great. Go and tell them about it, regardless of what our recommendation is. I

4:30:01 ↗ think the council needs to hear what you have to say. This is getting late

4:30:06 ↗ and I understand that. We stay up, you stay up. This is our neighbors,

4:30:12 ↗ this is our city, so let's do something positive

4:30:17 ↗ out of that. My concern is, We have a lot

4:30:23 ↗ of development going on and I'm hearing this from the neighbors tonight too is

4:30:29 ↗ that Newport Way, there's a lot of development going on, Gateway, Riva, and then

4:30:35 ↗ there's some other development that's going on. We've always stressed the traffic issue. As

4:30:41 ↗ you know, that's the primary priority problem that the city is trying to solve.

4:30:47 ↗ Whether they're successful or not, we're working on it. There's roundabout, there's stoplights

4:30:52 ↗ issue that we can put in there. But seems to me, we haven't seen that.

4:30:58 ↗ And now we're, seems like we're throwing another development in there and all the traffic's

4:31:04 ↗ gonna go down into Newport Way during morning rush hours and then in the afternoon

4:31:10 ↗ everybody's gonna come up and run through all the streets and stuff like that. So

4:31:15 ↗ that seems to be contrary to what we're trying to do here.

4:31:22 ↗ and it just doesn't seem right, especially when we have an accident with the kid

4:31:27 ↗ getting killed a couple years ago. And what is the city doing about it? You

4:31:33 ↗ know, we put a slow down sign there, and yet some of you folks, somebody

4:31:39 ↗ mentioned that there's no police officer there. just a sign that says you're

4:31:44 ↗ going over the speed limit, slow down. Most of us slow down, but

4:31:50 ↗ yet we're not doing anything physically to improve the traffic flow in there.

4:31:56 ↗ Now we have this development. So I guess I'm a little bit concerned

4:32:02 ↗ about that. And again, the second thing is that it's a slight area,

4:32:08 ↗ deep slope. I'm an architect and things like this happen and you don't

4:32:14 ↗ want to get into that and you're playing with mother nature and

4:32:20 ↗ you don't want to do that so i have very deep concern about

4:32:26 ↗ putting roadway there putting homes in there so that's um that's my comment

4:32:31 ↗ so um i'd like to focus the conversation just a wee bit um

4:32:37 ↗ so just so that you guys are remembering what the question is.

4:32:43 ↗ The question is clustered subdivision or standard subdivision, not clustered subdivision

4:32:48 ↗ or no development. So they can develop their property. It's private property. They have development

4:32:54 ↗ rights and they have zoning to develop on it. So really the question, the first

4:32:59 ↗ question you guys should be thinking about is development agreement. Is there any benefit to

4:33:04 ↗ clustering this or should we let them just stay with the standard zoning rules and

4:33:09 ↗ do whatever it is they want to do that way? Do we have to get

4:33:14 ↗ into that agreement? So there's an agreement that So if you guys think that

4:33:20 ↗ clustering, there's some advantages and Christopher identified why the staff feel there's some advantages to

4:33:26 ↗ clustering the project, then there has to be a development agreement. And the development agreement

4:33:32 ↗ gives the city the opportunity to put some added requirements in there, but also to

4:33:38 ↗ potentially deviate from some standards if it makes sense. So it's kind of a give

4:33:44 ↗ and take opportunity. if that's what's desired. But if the

4:33:50 ↗ site is not suitable for development... That's not your call.

4:33:55 ↗ Well, it's our call to recommend no development. No, a

4:34:01 ↗ development agreement or cluster development agreement or standard subdivision. That's

4:34:07 ↗ the question. So it's the council who would say, yeah,

4:34:13 ↗ we want to go ahead with the agreement or not.

4:34:20 ↗ Yes. What I'm hearing? You're recommending to the council cluster development

4:34:25 ↗ or standard subdivision. It's not a question of development. Yeah, and

4:34:31 ↗ I can understand that. Okay. So when the time, when we're

4:34:37 ↗ done with the discussion, then we can vote on it then.

4:34:43 ↗ Thank you for the clarification. I guess a couple of things.

4:34:48 ↗ One, I guess what I wanted to point out, Ms. Anderson

4:34:54 ↗ mentioned don't clear land during November. And I did want to

4:35:00 ↗ point out that in the, and I just lost it, but in the

4:35:06 ↗ requirements, the condition site preparation will be scheduled for drier summer and early

4:35:11 ↗ fall months from April to October. That is covered. The question came up,

4:35:17 ↗ I think it's a good suggestion and it's covered in the requirements. Mr.

4:35:23 ↗ Pereira mentioned scraping 34 acres, I thought I heard. but I think

4:35:29 ↗ it's 34%, not 34 acres. So I just want to be clear,

4:35:35 ↗ we're not scraping more than 50% of the site. And Ms. Lynch

4:35:41 ↗ mentioned, I think Mary said no sidewalks on the west side of

4:35:46 ↗ the development, but from what I read, there's a five foot sidewalk

4:35:52 ↗ that would be built on the west side. So the requirement says,

4:35:59 ↗ Condition two, one 10-foot sidewalk on the east side of Northwest Newport

4:36:04 ↗ Way and one five-foot sidewalk on the west side of Northwest Newport

4:36:10 ↗ Way. And then I guess a question, Mr. Kepler, could you explain

4:36:15 ↗ more? Is it okay if we bring him up to explain more

4:36:21 ↗ about the guardrail and the trail? I want to be clear because

4:36:26 ↗ if we want to consider putting some condition Regarding that tour. - The

4:36:32 ↗ idea is, where there's a guardrail, so that for all protection for vehicles, put that

4:36:38 ↗ in between the pavement and the pedestrian facility and not on the other side of

4:36:43 ↗ the pedestrian facility. - Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I wanted to kind of

4:36:48 ↗ see where that was and where the other, where there are two sidewalks and where

4:36:53 ↗ a sidewalk would be taken out and so forth.

4:36:59 ↗ Because we don't have very much detail down at that street level

4:37:05 ↗ from a top down view. Right. Now, this is the uphill deal.

4:37:11 ↗ So if a car kind of loses it there, you're up against

4:37:17 ↗ retaining wall. And if you look at the things I've seen, they're

4:37:23 ↗ talking most of that that road, a road from Newport up to

4:37:29 ↗ where the houses start, has some form of retaining wall on the uphill side

4:37:34 ↗ and also on the downhill side in many cases. But if a downhill car

4:37:40 ↗ loses it, you're on that sidewalk with a retaining wall and you're trapped. And

4:37:46 ↗ I just don't see a need to have two sidewalks. We're got a,

4:37:52 ↗ there's no houses on for 1,000 some feet or whatever

4:37:58 ↗ on this thing. So it's not like you need to

4:38:04 ↗ cross in the middle of it. If you kept one

4:38:09 ↗ sidewalk and... Okay, I swear I saw... Okay, that's right.

4:38:15 ↗ Okay, so what you want, but I would say you would want the sidewalk over

4:38:21 ↗ on this other side. Excuse me. Yes, they've got it down. The idea was they

4:38:26 ↗ could go to one sidewalk if they had a trail that kind of duplicated that

4:38:32 ↗ same route. But what my thought is, is you... have a guardrail say there

4:38:38 ↗ and a sidewalk right there. So you have some protection from a car

4:38:43 ↗ that's going down on this north facing, fairly steep. You'd rather have the

4:38:49 ↗ sidewalk on the downhill side. Yeah, and have a guardrail between the sidewalk

4:38:54 ↗ and the cars. And then the sidewalk, there'd be nothing to prevent you

4:39:00 ↗ from the sidewalk falling down the hill? Well, there'd be a retainer. Yeah,

4:39:05 ↗ the downhill side? So that you don't fall down the hill, you plunge down the

4:39:11 ↗ hill. Well, yeah, okay, so maybe you'd have the, there'd be a guardrail to keep

4:39:15 ↗ the cars from there and perhaps a fence at places where it's a big drop

4:39:20 ↗ down. So if there's a significant drop, and I forget exactly what the vertical feed

4:39:25 ↗ is, I think it's four, I think it requires a handrail. So there'd be the

4:39:30 ↗ guardrail for the cars, there'd be the pedestrian facility, and if there's a potential fall

4:39:35 ↗ opportunity, there'd have to be a handrail. A handrail, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's not... I

4:39:41 ↗ guess the sidewalk up against the retaining wall would be much like the retaining wall

4:39:46 ↗ behind Fred Meyer. We've got a downhill slope and a sidewalk and a retaining wall

4:39:51 ↗ there. Yeah. It doesn't have a guardrail, but... I'm just trying to

4:39:57 ↗ give the pedestrians some protection in not being trapped. Right. Okay.

4:40:03 ↗ It's amazing how many retaining walls they have to do. Thank

4:40:09 ↗ you, David. Thank you for calling me back. Any comments? Any

4:40:15 ↗ questions? Yes, Mr. Chair. I'd like to point out something, and

4:40:20 ↗ that is that I moved to Issaquah in 1989. And

4:40:26 ↗ my first civic involvement was to participate in vehement opposition

4:40:32 ↗ to TALIS and the Highlands. Because my house looked out

4:40:38 ↗ at the forested hillsides and I was irate that we

4:40:44 ↗ were going to mow down trees to put in these

4:40:50 ↗ cluster houses and so, The point is that I've

4:40:55 ↗ learned that development growth is absolutely unavoidable. The only question

4:41:01 ↗ is how do we handle it? And folks, if you

4:41:07 ↗ want to know why it's unavoidable, get yourself the February

4:41:13 ↗ 2014 edition of Sunset Magazine, the title of which is

4:41:18 ↗ Best Places to Live. And Sunset Magazine, Best Birb in

4:41:24 ↗ the West, Issaquah. That was three years ago. So the

4:41:30 ↗ point of this is we are faced here at the D.C. tonight with

4:41:36 ↗ a decision about how do we accommodate growth with someone who owns the

4:41:42 ↗ land, has complied with the code, and it's a very clear choice. It's

4:41:48 ↗ a compromise, and that's the way this system is supposed to work. We've

4:41:54 ↗ had a tremendous amount of your input today, and we can't tell

4:41:59 ↗ you how much we appreciate this. And frankly, a lot of the input that we've

4:42:05 ↗ seen tonight is the best prepared that I think we've seen in a long time.

4:42:10 ↗ So, are we going to be able to please everybody? No, we're simply not gonna

4:42:15 ↗ be able to do that. Individually and collectively, we try to make the best decision

4:42:21 ↗ that we can about how to accommodate the people that want to do business in

4:42:26 ↗ Issaquah and that want to live here. And, you know, frankly, I believe the primary

4:42:31 ↗ duty of government, me personally, is the same as medicine. Do no harm. But it's

4:42:36 ↗ really a question when you live in a place that is as popular as this

4:42:41 ↗ of how little harm are you going to do. And that's what we're trying to

4:42:46 ↗ get through here. I have reservations about this application as I've had reservations

4:42:51 ↗ about many earlier applications, but you do the best that you can. I

4:42:57 ↗ think that everybody involved here, and I particularly think that you should realize

4:43:03 ↗ that your input tonight will have an effect, a positive effect in a

4:43:08 ↗ lot of regards from your presentations here. That's it. - A couple of

4:43:14 ↗ thoughts I had too was that one is that Ms. Ryerson brought up

4:43:20 ↗ the question about why so many variances and it's a, my understanding, well part of

4:43:25 ↗ the code it says development agreement may deviate from underlying district standards identified in the

4:43:30 ↗ land use code in order to achieve components listed above. Part of this whole thing

4:43:35 ↗ with the idea of clustering development instead of having development spread out over the entire

4:43:41 ↗ site is if you get the benefits of clustering, you can then have variances from

4:43:46 ↗ what the code might say. And so typically we don't get into variances for things

4:43:52 ↗ and it is rare, but it's one of the tradeoffs that's built into it. And

4:43:57 ↗ the idea of, to me, of saying that we should only, we should not allow

4:44:02 ↗ development on any slopes because everything should be in the valley floor doesn't fit with

4:44:07 ↗ what's allowed in code and zoning. By the centralization plan we didn't intend to say,

4:44:12 ↗ Any new development will only be in the valley floor and

4:44:18 ↗ nothing else on the hills. I don't think that was an

4:44:24 ↗ intention of it. It's a tough site, but again, the decision

4:44:29 ↗ for us is this development agreement, recommending this development agreement, or

4:44:35 ↗ if we were recommended against it, they would not do cluster

4:44:41 ↗ development. Then it would be a standard plat. I guess one

4:44:47 ↗ other question that came up. Mr. Eastman was the bonding

4:44:52 ↗ of slopes, roads, things like that that get built.

4:44:58 ↗ If a road fails in three years on a

4:45:04 ↗ steep slope, is that the city's responsibility or? So

4:45:09 ↗ the city has increased our geotechnic review of properties

4:45:15 ↗ following the TALIS slide. And there's a condition that

4:45:20 ↗ was in SEPA

4:45:26 ↗ So there's the geo, so 29 on page

4:45:31 ↗ 35 of your packet. So it talks about

4:45:37 ↗ doing test pits every 200 feet. To make sure that

4:45:43 ↗ because what we found when they were building the Sunset Interchange is they did a

4:45:49 ↗ bunch of borings, but they missed the big boulders. So then they had to go

4:45:54 ↗ back in dynamite that was unexpected. So what we do know is, and I would

4:46:00 ↗ agree with the testimony, construction is not a guaranteed thing. And, you know, you can...

4:46:05 ↗ do as much as you can and the city has increased its level of

4:46:10 ↗ safety by adding the number of geotechs that actually look at these things before

4:46:16 ↗ we allow for clearing and construction. And that's a higher bar than was in

4:46:22 ↗ existence when the TALIS projects went through. You know, is it foolproof?

4:46:28 ↗ No. But we are relying on the experts in that field

4:46:33 ↗ at this time. So what I can say is, you know,

4:46:39 ↗ the surety bond, to answer your question, Right now, we

4:46:44 ↗ have provisions in the city code for how much that is,

4:46:50 ↗ but this is a development agreement. And if the commission is

4:46:56 ↗ concerned about that, it can make a recommendation to the council

4:47:01 ↗ to consider added financial securities related to restoration. The comment that we should

4:47:07 ↗ put something in place for 10 years so that if the road fails

4:47:13 ↗ 10 years from now, my guess is financially the contractor's not going to

4:47:19 ↗ be able to do that. You can't tie up cash that long. So,

4:47:25 ↗ but to cover a potential if they got into the property, found

4:47:30 ↗ some soils that they didn't know about and basically wanted to walk

4:47:36 ↗ away. That's really what the security is intended to cover is going

4:47:41 ↗ back in and basically revegetating a parcel that's a walk away parcel.

4:47:47 ↗ So I don't disagree with the statement that Ken made that maybe the security amount

4:47:53 ↗ that the city is collecting may not be enough for these complicated pieces of property.

4:47:59 ↗ So if the commission is concerned about that, I would definitely highlight that for the

4:48:05 ↗ council as one of your recommendations. And then we could address it with the council

4:48:11 ↗ in terms of whether what value might make sense. - Keith, I

4:48:17 ↗ recognize that May Valley is, not only do we not deal with

4:48:22 ↗ traffic as a commission, but this is in King County, but is

4:48:28 ↗ it, possible for the city and King County to collaborate on addressing

4:48:34 ↗ the concern, the specific concern about May Valley Road being used now

4:48:40 ↗ that the city has taken the step that it's taken to remove

4:48:45 ↗ those trucks from city arterials to come up with some kind of

4:48:51 ↗ guidance for, if not rules, for contractors, not just in Issaquah, but in,

4:48:57 ↗ you know, in this general area, but specifically for, in time for this to be

4:49:02 ↗ in effect. And I know that there's a jurisdictional nightmare, but it still seems to

4:49:08 ↗ me to be an opportunity to see if there is an alternative, specifically 90 to

4:49:14 ↗ 18, and then out without putting that traffic on May Valley. I mean, it's,

4:49:20 ↗ it's a result of the city decision. It is. So the

4:49:26 ↗ city was, I mean, I think sunset was one of the

4:49:32 ↗ biggest issues that the city was facing in terms of cut through

4:49:37 ↗ trucking activity. And so, you know, when we kind of got into that

4:49:43 ↗ issue, you know, basically what we did is we cannot control SR 900,

4:49:49 ↗ we cannot control I-90, those are state facilities, right? And so the contractors

4:49:55 ↗ basically have those two routes to bring material in and take material out

4:50:01 ↗ of the city if it's not going to be sourced locally.

4:50:06 ↗ You know, once it goes down 900, if they choose May Valley, because that's the

4:50:12 ↗ easiest thing for them to do, the city, it starts to get really hard for

4:50:17 ↗ the city to even monitor that, and let alone have any kind of enforcement activity.

4:50:23 ↗ The county has not come to us and asked for any kind of conversation about

4:50:28 ↗ that issue. Um, it doesn't mean that it's not a problem for the folks living

4:50:34 ↗ on May Valley. Um, but I don't have a better answer than that tonight. Um,

4:50:39 ↗ I think that the 88,000 yards is a concern for the city council as well.

4:50:44 ↗ And I guess as you guys start to tick off kind of issues that you

4:50:50 ↗ that are red flags for you, um, I think that that would be definitely part

4:50:55 ↗ of the benefit for the city council is understanding of these conversations and the components

4:51:00 ↗ of this project. What are the things that, you know, besides just whatever recommendation you

4:51:05 ↗ make at the end of the day, if it is to support a development agreement

4:51:10 ↗ in the clustered project, what are those issues and topics that you want them to

4:51:15 ↗ spend more time on? Shine a spotlight on it. So that's going to give staff

4:51:20 ↗ the opportunity to dialogue with the mayor's office and see if we can come up

4:51:26 ↗ with some maybe mitigations or proposals for something like that. But I don't have one

4:51:32 ↗ off the top of my head. Excuse me, Mr. Chair. What is the city doing

4:51:37 ↗ about the traffic on Newport Way now? Do you know? Is it? In a

4:51:43 ↗ study mode right now or? In what way, Commissioner? So the traffic that's there.

4:51:49 ↗ On Newport Way. So it's traffic-y. Yeah, with all the development that's going in

4:51:55 ↗ right now. So all of the, so it's obviously there's more, well, so right

4:52:00 ↗ now, and I live in Bellevue and drive Newport myself many times. So right

4:52:06 ↗ now it's a mess because of the construction. It's not just the construction at Gateway,

4:52:12 ↗ it's the anti-aircraft construction. It's going to be followed by the Riva construction and maybe

4:52:17 ↗ by the Bergsma construction. So the construction traffic is the biggest impact right now. But

4:52:22 ↗ as I was mentioning to Geraldine, you know, you get an accident on I-90 and

4:52:27 ↗ everybody peels off. right and they're either using Newport or they're using Westlake Sammamish depending

4:52:32 ↗ on which way they're going whether they're going to Sammamish or whether they're going to

4:52:38 ↗ Renton or May Valley or you know Maple Valley or whatever so so under normal

4:52:43 ↗ times and there might be normal times somewhere in the future you know the the

4:52:49 ↗ main traffic impact of all these projects isn't here yet right because there's nobody living

4:52:54 ↗ in Gateway right It's not worse yet, but it's bad. Right. And most of it,

4:53:00 ↗ as you heard tonight, you know, when TALIS -- so I used to

4:53:06 ↗ live in Kent, and I used to actually drive SR900. And before TALIS,

4:53:12 ↗ SR900 was horrible. And then Talus came along and they built a bunch of

4:53:18 ↗ capacity in SR 900. And over the 15 years that has been Talus, it's

4:53:23 ↗ now filled up again, right? So there's so the mayor hosted a transportation

4:53:29 ↗ summit last year to talk about these regional traffic issues because they're a problem

4:53:35 ↗ and they're only going to get worse as Izuquac continues to grow, as Maple

4:53:41 ↗ Valley continues to grow, as people are driving through our community. There are no

4:53:47 ↗ answers yet, but a lot of people are trying to figure out how to

4:53:53 ↗ work on those bigger transportation commuting issues. Okay, okay. So for the

4:53:59 ↗ citizens that's here and for this citizen of Issaquah, they're wondering, we had

4:54:05 ↗ an accident, kid got killed, it was traffic and now we got more

4:54:10 ↗ development going in. What is the city doing about it? It sounded

4:54:16 ↗ like there's not a whole lot of -- So there was a traffic study done

4:54:22 ↗ on Newport, and part of the reason that the -- so the speed limit got

4:54:28 ↗ reduced. Part of the reason why there's a roundabout going in as the traffic control

4:54:33 ↗ device on Gateway instead of a traffic light is coming out

4:54:39 ↗ of that safety study. And so I guess I wouldn't say nothing's

4:54:45 ↗ being done. I think there actually was things that have been done.

4:54:51 ↗ But part of -- and I would agree with Ms. Lynch's comments,

4:54:56 ↗ part part of what you need to get on Newport is a complete road with

4:55:02 ↗ sidewalks on both sides. And you know, then it is going to start to function

4:55:08 ↗ more like a city street and less like a throughway from here to Bellevue. Because

4:55:13 ↗ right now there's no driveway, there's very few intersections, there's a few driveways on it,

4:55:17 ↗ but a lot of the reason why people go as quick as they do is

4:55:22 ↗ because they're not worried about somebody pulling out in front of them. As some of

4:55:26 ↗ these things start to infill, I think you're going to see some of the driving

4:55:31 ↗ habits change a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit.

4:55:38 ↗ Thank you. Okay, sorry, but I still got questions. I would be surprised

4:55:44 ↗ if you didn't. So the development agreement itself, there are a couple things.

4:55:50 ↗ Sorry to bring these up before. Open space tracks in item three mentions

4:55:56 ↗ all open space tracks shall be owned and maintained by the homeowners association.

4:56:01 ↗ Does that mean those would be private open spaces for only use by

4:56:07 ↗ the homeowners or? So there's -- so the open

4:56:13 ↗ space -- so, well. So there's going to be a variety of open

4:56:18 ↗ space tracks, right? Some of it is just preserved forested property. Some of it will

4:56:24 ↗ be actual recreation space, right? So the forested places, there's conditions in here about like

4:56:30 ↗ where there's trails that there needs to be a public access easement for those trail

4:56:36 ↗ locations so that the public can use those trails as a whole. Usually like on

4:56:42 ↗ a neighborhood park space, we usually don't get like an easement to the full

4:56:48 ↗ public, right? And it's part, it's paid for by the HOA, it's on private

4:56:54 ↗ property. It's most likely that, you know, you or Richard aren't gonna drive to

4:56:59 ↗ this neighborhood and use that little green space. - Right, right, okay. Yeah, I

4:57:05 ↗ just wanted to clarify, I guess. And then in item six on the park

4:57:11 ↗ dedication,

4:57:19 ↗ I guess the wording on it says the owners agree to dedicate to convey

4:57:25 ↗ track day should the city or King County decide to accept such dedication and

4:57:31 ↗ should that say should the city or King County decide to require such dedication?

4:57:36 ↗ Just the verbiage of it. In other words, it's sort of like well if

4:57:42 ↗ the county decides to accept it but should it actually say require it?

4:57:56 ↗ I could see that either way. Yeah. Sorry, just minor wordsmithing. I know it's

4:58:02 ↗ late at night. And then in item D on page 10 of 35 of

4:58:08 ↗ the agreement, just to point out on affordable housing and Mavis changes, but the

4:58:14 ↗ first item in D is principal with PAL, not PLE. And then the last

4:58:20 ↗ point, I think my last question, in item 14, general provisions, It says the

4:58:26 ↗ term of the agreement shall remain in effect for a period of five years. And

4:58:30 ↗ then that's C. And then D says the terms of this agreement are intended to

4:58:35 ↗ be and be a binding agreement and a covenant running with the land. So I

4:58:40 ↗ got confused there. Is it just a five year agreement or does it run with

4:58:44 ↗ the land? So I think that I'm not looking at the words.

4:58:50 ↗ So the development agreement I think is intended to last for five years. The covenant

4:58:56 ↗ on the affordable housing will be the long-term thing. So this is the terms of

4:59:02 ↗ this agreement are intended to be in shall constitute a binding agreement and a covenant

4:59:07 ↗ running with the land. Senator D? Is that 14? That's D. That's 14 D.

4:59:13 ↗ What? No, I'm sorry. Oh, in 14D on page 197 of 219. So

4:59:19 ↗ item C says the term of the agreement is five years. Right. And

4:59:25 ↗ then it says agreement is binding and runs with the land. Does that

4:59:30 ↗ mean they only have five years to act on it? That was the

4:59:36 ↗ intent is that they would need to process their preliminary plat within five

4:59:42 ↗ years. Otherwise the agreement would expire. then it sort of sounds

4:59:48 ↗ like even if they didn't do something, it would still

4:59:53 ↗ be running with the land and restricting them. So, yeah,

4:59:59 ↗ I think, I mean, I think D, so the term

5:00:04 ↗ of the agreement, so under C, I think it's, so

5:00:10 ↗ term, the length of this agreement shall remain in effect

5:00:16 ↗ Or the duration. I mean, it's so I think I think what C is is

5:00:21 ↗ really about duration and not terms. I think terms is wrong in C. I think

5:00:27 ↗ that's really talking about the duration of this agreement shall last for five years. But

5:00:32 ↗ then The terms of this agreement are like the benefits that are granted

5:00:38 ↗ to the public through easements and covenants and whatever is granted to the developer.

5:00:44 ↗ That's intended to run with the land. If it's implemented, right? Should C actually

5:00:50 ↗ say that if the development agreement is not acted on within five years that

5:00:56 ↗ it expires? I think you could, if you want it to be that clear, I

5:01:01 ↗ think we could say that that's the intent of that section. And I don't feel

5:01:06 ↗ like we need to make that kind of change, but because I'm assuming that's something

5:01:10 ↗ you can do just internally to make clear. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll get that

5:01:15 ↗ one. Yeah, I think it was confusing. Okay. Okay. All right. I want to ask

5:01:20 ↗ you more questions. Ask away. Any other discussion, questions? Anybody care to make a motion?

5:01:31 ↗ Mr. Chair, based upon the application draft agreement and

5:01:36 ↗ associate exhibits did... Sorry. Mr. Chair, I move that

5:01:42 ↗ the Development Commission recommend approval of the Windward-Bergsman Development

5:01:47 ↗ Agreement, file number DA16-00001, as presented in the staff

5:01:53 ↗ report dated April 19th, 2017, subject to the following

5:01:59 ↗ conditions. Condition 1: All of the conditions

5:02:04 ↗ of the variance file number vary VAR 16-0001 and

5:02:10 ↗ the conditions from the mitigated determination of non-significance file

5:02:15 ↗ number SEP 17-00002 must be met. Condition 2: The

5:02:21 ↗ V Newport Way section under capital facility shall be

5:02:26 ↗ revised to the following as shown on page 12.

5:02:32 ↗ Condition 3: Section 10 on

5:02:37 ↗ affordable housing shall be amended as shown

5:02:42 ↗ in DA 16-0001, attachment 10. Condition 4,

5:02:48 ↗ the city council shall consider stronger bonding

5:02:53 ↗ requirements for any road work or work

5:02:59 ↗ in steep slopes. And condition 5, the

5:03:04 ↗ city council shall consider more extensive truck

5:03:10 ↗ route restrictions. V. V.

5:03:18 ↗ Um, need a second. There be in addition, part of that truck

5:03:24 ↗ route or the construction traffic, uh, restrictions. Could there be a part

5:03:30 ↗ of that that says that it's- You're not, you're not on Randy.

5:03:36 ↗ Uh, could there be a part of that condition that, or, or

5:03:42 ↗ a subsequent separate recommendation that the city, uh, initiate, uh, discussion with

5:03:48 ↗ King County? regarding construction traffic that is now affecting

5:03:53 ↗ King County residents. It's not, they're out of our

5:03:59 ↗ hair, but I just really think that there ought

5:04:04 ↗ to be a proactive effort and if the county

5:04:10 ↗ isn't stepping up and doing that, then I think

5:04:16 ↗ I don't think it should be a condition, frankly. I don't think it should be

5:04:21 ↗ a condition. I think it should be worded as a, and we also recommend that

5:04:26 ↗ in light of the public input. Well, first of all, actually, I think we need

5:04:31 ↗ probably a second to the motion. I second. Okay. And if I could just funnel

5:04:36 ↗ your broad request down a little bit. So how about rather than impacts to the

5:04:42 ↗ county specifically to May Valley residents? Because that's, I mean, I think that's, it would

5:04:48 ↗ be easy to have that conversation with King County as opposed to countywide trucking impacts.

5:04:54 ↗ I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. I meant May Valley. Just trying to

5:05:00 ↗ lessen my load. Yeah. All right. And that's not-- and I think that I

5:05:06 ↗ personally would rather see that as a recommendation, not as part of a

5:05:12 ↗ condition. But our condition is just part of a recommendation. So that could

5:05:17 ↗ potentially be, here's what we recommend on this application, and the commission recommends

5:05:23 ↗ that the city reach out to King County to discuss the impacts of

5:05:29 ↗ trucking from Issaquah on our neighboring May Valley residents. - So I

5:05:35 ↗ guess just to push back a little bit, to me, 88,000 week

5:05:40 ↗ arches is a lot of, I mean, this is a big, you

5:05:46 ↗ mentioned it, Jerry, this is a whole lot of truckloads going through

5:05:52 ↗ town. And I'd feel strong enough to have actually wanted in our

5:05:58 ↗ recommendation to them. But I would feel like if the

5:06:03 ↗ City Council considers more extensive truck route restrictions, and I would say instead of saying

5:06:08 ↗ they have to go talk to King County, tell them what they have to do,

5:06:13 ↗ I'd rather say, especially with regard to May Valley Road. That's fine. And what kind

5:06:18 ↗ of outcome do you want to see? You just go talk to them and say,

5:06:23 ↗ okay. No, I just think I want to express our opinion that it's a lot

5:06:27 ↗ of truckloads. We think maybe they should. Because it's a bigger question. I think

5:06:33 ↗ it's beyond our pay grade. It's absolutely beyond our pay grade. I mean, the

5:06:39 ↗ ideal that is implicit here is that there would be alternative routes identified by

5:06:45 ↗ this cooperative effort that would alleviate the pressure that has been put on May

5:06:50 ↗ Valley Road and residents as a result, primarily as a result of a City

5:06:56 ↗ of Issaquah decision. Yeah. I don't know what kind of

5:07:02 ↗ results we'd-- I don't either. Yeah. I mean, that's not our-- we're just recommending that

5:07:08 ↗ we understand that this is a significant issue that is a result of development in

5:07:13 ↗ Issaquah. And we think there ought to be a discussion about alternatives. Yeah. That's about

5:07:19 ↗ all I think we can do. So I'll amend my condition. to say

5:07:25 ↗ the City Council shall consider more extensive truck route restrictions,

5:07:30 ↗ especially with regard to May Valley Road. Is that acceptable

5:07:36 ↗ to the second? Because it'd have to talk to King

5:07:42 ↗ County to do that. Yeah. Does that need a second?

5:07:47 ↗ No, the second agrees. That's the discussion after the second.

5:07:53 ↗ Thank you. Further discussion? I was going to mention, I'm

5:07:59 ↗ concerned about slides, but Your comments a few minutes ago

5:08:04 ↗ about the city already increasing the number of geotech surveys that

5:08:10 ↗ have to take place, that's henceforth for all future developments, right?

5:08:16 ↗ That's not specific to Bergsma. No. So that was a direction from the mayor's office

5:08:22 ↗ after the parcel nine that we needed not just suspenders, but belt and suspenders. So

5:08:27 ↗ we have two geotechs in our stable right now, Shannon Wilson and Golder Associates, to

5:08:33 ↗ do double peer reviews on the geotech reports that come in on development proposals. Yeah,

5:08:39 ↗ that's good. Okay. Then I don't think we need to do that.

5:08:48 ↗ So all those in favor of the motion signify

5:08:54 ↗ by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed. All right. So

5:08:59 ↗ your next meeting, April 5th, I believe. May 5th.

5:09:05 ↗ May 5th. Holy smokes. Architectural consultants for central Issaquah

5:09:11 ↗ will be back for round two. So hopefully that

5:09:16 ↗ will be a fun meeting. So The few remaining, I once

5:09:22 ↗ again want to express our real appreciation. Like Commissioner Harrison said, the input from the

5:09:27 ↗ public was excellent, probably as good as we've seen. And really, I hope you can

5:09:32 ↗ walk away from this saying, well, at least they listened. At least it changed or

5:09:37 ↗ had the-- it did change what our decisions might have been. So we really appreciate

5:09:43 ↗ it a lot. Really appreciate you hanging in there. And with that, I'm going to

5:09:48 ↗ close the meeting. Anybody for breakfast? I just add one thing. I would really

5:09:54 ↗ encourage you to attend the council meeting. As a neighborhood, I think you should. I

5:09:59 ↗ don't know if you've attended any of them. You should go attend it.

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