In a recent article (“City invites best minds to the table,” Sammamish Reporter, March 6) on the town center developer charette held March 5, the city’s Community Development Director, Mr. Gurol, states: “We need to be very thorough. The Planning Commission has requested, and we support this, that we must do it once and do it right.”

This is bureaucratic talk that means we are so deep into it we can’t climb out.

No plan is ever done once and right.

Any good planner knows this is true, and Mr. Gurol is a good planner trying to live with an inadequate, incomplete plan.

From 2003 to 2008, the city crafted a town center plan at a cost to tax payers of $1,000,000.

This amount does not include staff time.

The plan objectives included zoning, design regulations, traffic management and a variety of other task.

Many of these tasks were inadequately done or not at all.

Benchmarking against neighboring cities, the planning should require 18 to 24 months, not five years.

As a clarification, I am talking about the planning, zoning and regulations necessary to begin implementation.

An additional sum of $450,000 to $800,000 is committed to continued planning.

Landowners in the town center have lost all hope that the city will complete a plan anytime soon.

Completion of zoning and design regulations has just been delayed a third time and is now scheduled for 2010.

Most town center landowners, many in their mid and late 70s, are facing a 2011 or 2012 completion date.

As for communication with town center landowners, there is none, unless landowners chase down staff.

The decision to delay completion was made by the city manager without any discussion with landowners, and to this day Mr. Ben Yazici has ignored requests to hold a landowner’s meeting to explain his decision.

Lets not cry over spilt milk.

Lets begin to take this project seriously and stop wasting tax payer money.

Excuses for not completing planning are no longer acceptable.

John Galvin

Sammamish