The Issaquah City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to send a $50 million transportation bond to the ballot in November.
The measure consists of four of the nine projects recommended by Mayor Fred Butler’s Traffic Task Force at the June 6 City Council meeting. The projects covered by the bond include improvements to Newport Way Northwest from State Route 900 to Southeast 54th Street; Newport Way from Maple Street Northwest to West Sunset Way; East Sunset Way; and a signal at the intersection of Providence Point and Southeast 43rd Way.
“This bond at this time and these projects are the right thing to do for this community,” Council President Stacy Goodman declared.
Councilmember Mary Lou Pauly called the decision “one of the most significant votes that this council will take in a long, long time.”
The 25-year bond would add 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed value to residents’ property taxes. This would mean that a home valued at $500,000 would see a property tax increase of $165 per year.
The tax increase would be “throwing an extra straw on the camel’s back” for homeowners at a time when affordable housing is already an issue in the Issaquah area, Councilmember Bill Ramos pointed out. However, he said that he was in full support of the ordinance.
“The time is now to go to voters to ask for local dollars to pay for local projects,” Goodman said.
The phrase “take our streets back” was heard several times throughout the meeting. Council members agreed that Issaquah’s status as a crossroads for other communities in the area makes the city’s congestion a nightmare.
Pauly referenced the “30-minute, 1.5-mile drive” that Talus residents must face just to get home in the evening.
The mission to fix what Goodman called “crisis-level” traffic has been long underway.
Butler created the Traffic Task Force in November 2015 to identify and come up with proposals to improve the most problematic traffic spots in a rapidly growing city. At the June 20 meeting, the City Council voted to move forward in putting a traffic improvement measure on the ballot based on the Task Force’s findings.
Ramos said that the ballot measure should not be called a traffic improvement bond so much as a transportation improvement bond, as it would benefit not only drivers, but also pedestrians and bicyclists.
Councilmember Eileen Barber brought her 30 years of experience as an Issaquah business owner to the discussion of how congested streets impact the downtown merchants.
“It’s difficult to survive in an area in which the traffic is at a standstill and consumers do not wish to come down here because they don’t want to be bothered with traffic and get stuck in it,” she said.
The City Council Infrastructure Committee will continue to ask citizens for input about what they would like to see added to East Sunset Way. In the past, residents and council members alike have expressed their wish to have street parking remain on East Sunset Way, saying that the small businesses rely on the parking for their customers.
Barber reiterated at Tuesday’s meeting that street parking needs to be in the final design concept, calling parking spaces the “life breath” for local businesses.
Pauly introduced two additional motions for the City Council to separately address transportation issues not included in the bond.
The first motion was to design a plan to make the Maple Street, Target and Trader Joe’s intersection less congested and safer. The improvement of this intersection was included in the Task Force’s initial set of nine plans, and Pauly said that it was the “project I heard about the most” when discussing the Task Force’s proposals with the public. The motion passed unanimously.
The second motion was to create a plan for additional parking in the Olde Town within the next two years. “This to me is about achieving more capacity — not coming back again and reporting and saying we don’t need it,” Pauly said in reference to previous studies. The motion passed 5-1.
Barber voted nay because she said she did not understand how Pauly’s proposal would be any different from past attempts to address parking downtown. “I don’t see anything new and exciting and a different approach,” she said.
