Over 100 people filled 12 roundtables in the Sammamish Council chambers and spilled into the hallways of City Hall for the city’s roundtable discussion on growth last Thursday evening.
The city hosted the meeting to address community concerns regarding development and construction taking place. City Council and Planning Commission members were stationed at each table to hear feedback and concerns from community members, as well as to brainstorm possible solutions.
The meeting began with a presentation on the state’s Growth Management Act, the city’s Comprehensive Plan and how the city plans for accommodating residential and employment growth.
Community Development Director Jeff Thomas explained the process of the state’s Office of Financial Management establishing population projections and assigning growth targets to state counties. The counties work with their respective cities to divide its assigned growth target.
Thomas identified a residential housing growth target of 233,007 for King County through 2031, per data provided by the 2014 Buildable Lands Report. Of that number, Sammamish received a growth target of 4,000 new residential units over that 25-year period. Thomas said the city’s current Comprehensive Plan, updated in 2015, identifies a housing growth target of 4,640 housing units through 2035.
“When we went through the exercise of determining land capacity, we did find a few years back that we did have sufficient capacity to handle the growth target of 4,640,” Thomas said. “In fact, the number ended up being 5,120.”
Sammamish uses a blended approach to analyzing its land capacity, Thomas said. The city uses a net density approach for the entire city except the Town Center, which uses a gross density approach.
In Thomas’ example of a 10-acre property zoned for four units per acre, the gross density of the property would call for 40 lots of development. The net density would factor in and then subtract areas like protected land, land used for other purposes and development requirements like tree retention. If seven acres were protected of the same sized property with the same zoning of four units per acre, that would leave three available acres and the net density would allow for 12 housing units.
A graphic breaking down Sammamish Capital Improvement Plans for 2017 through 2022 showed over $94 million of planned spending for transportation, nearly $20 million for parks, just over $15 million for stormwater and $13 million for land acquisition. Thomas said some of the money for capital projects came from impact fees paid by developers, which include transportation impact fees, park impact fees and school impact fees.
Sammamish City Manager Lyman Howard noted that impact fees for both parks and transportation for a single family home are approximately $21,000. Responding to an audience question, Howard said money not contributed from developers came from other capital sources, including grants, real estate excise taxes and general tax revenues. He added that impact fees cannot pay for 100 percent of the impact of growth, per state law.
“The idea that the city is actually making money on growth is not quite accurate,” Howard said. “We do collect a lot of money, but the reason we do collect that money is to help offset the impact of growth to the infrastructure that we have.”
Howard took a moment to address the city of Issaquah’s recent surprise growth moratorium, which drew widespread applause throughout the room. Howard said Issaquah’s situation was “a bit different” than that of Sammamish, in which Issaquah encouraged growth and needed to take on greater densities of development suitable for mass transit.
“They’re in a situation however, this is my opinion, that they were starting to get growth and they couldn’t quite deal with it,” he said. “They had been encouraging it and basically had to take a timeout.”
Roundtable dialogue
The discussion topics posed to community members regarded what they liked and disliked about living in Sammamish, what impact they experienced from growth and development, how the city should balance the importance of trees while preserving the rights of property owners and what the city should do to manage development.
At one table, residents responded that they liked the rural aspect of living in Sammamish, which seemed to be going away, while also mentioning favorably the tranquility of the area, the schools and the low crime rate.
When asked if growth was something they disliked, one resident responded, “Not specifically growth, but the type of growth.” Others mentioned disliking the “the assembly-line look” and the “homogenization” of new developments.
In regards to trees, some residents suggested the city raise fines for cutting trees down. Residents also expressed they wanted to see the city address noise pollution and surface water runoff, and that they’d like to see more affordable housing for “workforce” households.
A member from each roundtable group shared talking points from their table before the end of the meeting, with the buzzword being “infrastructure.” Some of the suggestions from the groups included seeing infrastructure built up front, discontinuing permit issues until the city can prepare adequately for growth, incurring debt to fix infrastructure, phasing in remaining developments over a two-decade period, purchasing and protecting green space, stronger communication efforts from the city, stronger enforcement of rules already in place, spreading out density to combat concentrated traffic and pushing back to King County for more support with county roads.
Katherine White, a Sammamish resident who has lived in the city her entire life, said she came to the meeting because she was unhappy with how development within the city was taking place.
“I don’t like all the development. I don’t like how it’s getting so dense. I don’t like that the trees are being wiped out without any regard,” she told the Reporter. “I think [the meeting] went really well. It seemed like the entire message that we’re sending to the City Council is that we aren’t happy with what’s going on and that something needs to be done about it.”
“I think people were heard,” said Joanne Pietromonaco, a Sammamish resident of 53 years. “People are unhappy and that needs to be heard and understood.”
