Issaquah residents came out in force at Monday night’s City Council meeting to express their opinions and concerns about the Issaquah Traffic Task Force’s new proposals.

The 11-member Traffic Task Force, created by Mayor Fred Butler in November 2015, spent months brainstorming ways to reduce traffic congestion in an ever-growing city. In April, the Traffic Task Force submitted a written summary of its nine-project plan to Butler.

At the public hearing during Monday’s meeting, 15 politically active citizens weighed in on those recommendations — in some cases, quite passionately.

Much of the speakers’ trepidation stemmed from two projects in particular — the proposed changes to East Sunset Way. According to the Task Force’s written plan for East Sunset between First and Sixth Avenues, it would like to “add a 17-foot wide multi-use path on the south side, create three 11- foot wide travel lanes, establish a five-foot wide landscaping area and five-foot wide sidewalk on the north side.” Additionally, the group wants to “construct additional turn lane capacity associated with the signal at Front Street and Sunset Way.”

Together, the two projects would total nearly $11.5 million.

What some residents took umbrage with was that putting these changes into effect would mean eliminating street parking on East Sunset.

Mark Duffy, who owns property at 535 E. Sunset and works with multiple businesses there, said that he and his colleagues were “deeply concerned about the widening of the street” because the businesses on East Sunset “rely on the parking for the customers.”

Allen Flintoft, of Flintoft’s Funeral Home across the street, echoed his neighbor’s concerns.

“It affects our lives, our ability to put food on the table,” he said. “If our customers have a difficult time finding places to park, then that certainly does not help our businesses at all and can only hurt.”

Flintoft said that the small businesses between First and Sixth Avenues would not have room to add parking on their property.

“You take away our street parking, and some businesses … are done,” he said.

Medical company owner and longtime resident Scott Bowsher gave an emotional plea to the city.

“I invested my life savings in an office on Sunset,” he said, explaining how he spent “tens of thousands of dollars” making his business accessible for patients who cannot walk very far. “If parking is taken away, we lose that, and it’s going to be detrimental to our business.”

Bowsher also drew attention to the hardships that delivery trucks would face if there were no places in which to park while offloading their goods.

It was not only business owners who voiced their opposition to the loss of of parking spaces, but also homeowners in the area. Residents said that without parking on East Sunset, people would be forced to drive through the neighborhoods looking for spaces. This would clog up the smaller streets and create a greater possibility of drivers speeding too fast down roads where small children live.

“We live in the neighborhood we work in, we grew up, we work there,” said Flintoft, showing that in the older parts of Issaquah, business owners and local residents are often synonymous. Forcing big delivery trucks and disgruntled drivers into the neighborhoods would be “affecting where our kids play … our daily lives,” he said.

“Eliminating the parking on Sunset would affect…my family’s quality of life,” said SoutheastAndrews Street resident Tom Ellis.

“It would seriously degrade our lives in an already-crowded neighborhood,” Flintoft added.

Other locals pointed to the creation of a center median on the already-crowded Newport Way Southwest as well as the overall size and design of the project as potential problems.

“We will want to engage the entire community on what they would like to have included in the capital project,” Deputy City Administrator Emily Moon said. “There has not been any decision to refer anything to the voters yet … We are still in information-gathering mode.”

There will be an open house meeting at 6:30 p.m. on June 15 at City Hall. Moon said that this will be a “back-and-forth discussion … an opportunity for people to learn more about the projects and for the City Council to interact with the community about them.”