John Galvin has his facts wrong yet again (Letters, The Reporter, Nov. 27) as he lets his antipathies run amok.
I not only did not ignore his information about Transit Oriented Development, I agreed with him and he knows it.
When the Planning Commission in the spring of 2008 prepared its recommendations for the City Council on the Town Center, I introduced an amendment to change what the Council had sent us. The Council’s version did not include a TOD. My amendment proposed including a TOD. The Commission adopted this amendment. The Council in 2008 rejected it.
Opposition then came from Councilman Don Gerend, and inexplicably he already opposes it again even though he has yet to listen to anything the current Commission has to say about it.
Galvin’s beef on this score is not with me or the commission, it is with the 2007-09 City Council and Don Gerend.
As for the balance of his highly personal attack, Galvin once again misstate the facts.
He lays the entire Town Center plan at my feet. He and I have different visions about growth for the city, there is no question about that.
I look at the city as a whole and suggest we need to build in the Town Center and redevelop the Safeway and QFC complexes into mixed uses that actually look good rather than be the visual blights that they are.
He wants to become a millionaire and I have no problem with his personal desire. I just don’t base my recommendations on his personal financial goals.
The Town Center process, as Galvin correctly points out, dates to 2002.
Since then, there have been the following groups that considered the Town Center: the Planning Advisory Board (PAB) (17 people); the Special Study Area Task Force (17 people); the Town Center Committee (12); the 2007-08 Planning Commission (7); the 2007-2009 City Council (7) and the 2008-09 Planning Commission (7). There has been some common membership across these committees but only a minority. The members included developers, commercial and residential real estate agents, business people, environmentalists, conservatives, centrists and liberals. The 2007-09 City Council includes one professional city planner, a commercial real estate developer whose wife is a residential real estate agent, another member who holds a real estate license, a real estate lawyer and others with no ties to real estate development or sales.
Out of all these, only one is on record supporting the kind of development Galvin proposes for the SE quadrant and that’s Don Gerend.
At a public meeting sponsored by the Planning Advisory Board for the Comprehensive Plan, about 200 people showed up and told the PAB they did not want major, pave-it-over development along 228th. Even the Parks Bond Advisory Committee co-chair, John James, testified before the 2007-08 Commission that commercial development should be west of 228th so people can park once and walk to the stores and amenities.
Galvin purports that I and I alone am responsible for the Town Center plan as it exists. I should take this assertion as a compliment.
I had no idea I had the ability to persuade so many people of such diverse background and interests. But the reality is that mine is just one vote.
Scott Hamilton
Sammamish
