Behind a 4-3 vote, the Sammamish City Council voted against authorizing a design contract for the Sahalee Way improvement project with consulting firm Perteet, Inc.

Councilmembers Tom Hornish, Christie Malchow, Ramiro Valderrama and Mayor Don Gerend voted against approving the $1.575 million contract, which would send the project toward its final design. Among the improvements for the planned three-lane configuration would be a 6-foot sidewalk on the west side of the road, bus pullouts for the warranted bus stops, a new traffic signal at Northeast 28th Street and 223rd Avenue Southeast, bike lanes on both lanes and a 3-foot wide planter strip to reduce wall costs and tree impacts. Sahalee Way would also be reduced from a 45 mph zone to a speed limit of 40 mph.

Senior project engineer Jed Ireland stated the cost estimate for the project was $16.5 million, with 87 percent of the funding coming from road impact fees.

Following a lengthy discussion on the Sahalee Way project update Tuesday night at City Hall, several council members expressed concerns with approving a design contract.

Councilmember Christie Malchow said she was frustrated because she felt the city mismanaged its communication with citizens about the project, noting it is concurrency-related and not focused on fixing congestion issues, which residents may expect.

“I’m struggling with how off we were in how we presented this information at the open houses,” Malchow said. “We should’ve been very clear and up front and transparent and said, ‘We can’t make you get out there to 202 faster. We can’t make you get to Redmond, we can’t make you get to downtown Seattle or wherever it is you’re going any faster because that’s not what this project is,’ and I don’t think we ever really came out and said that.”

Deputy Mayor Bob Keller, noting that Sahalee Way is one of the major commute routes in the city, posed the question, “If not now, when?”

“It would be really egregious if five years from now or six years from now, 202 is not solved but improved and we are backed up and everybody is asking why we didn’t finish the road in Sammamish that is our major road,” Keller said. “My concern is if we put it off, if we change the cycle, then we’re not gonna have the choice to do this one next. It’s going to be one of the other major projects that we have that’s going to leapfrog this one.”

Valderrama responded with another question of, “If there’s no real capacity improvements, why?”

“I think that right now we really need to step back and take a serious look at what this project is [and] what we’ve been telling our citizens this would do because I don’t see those improvements coming,” Valderrama said.

Hornish said he believed a Transportation Master Plan, which the council discussed earlier in the evening, was “key to figure out if this is really the right thing to be doing right now.”

“$1.57 million is not insignificant, and I think without the TMP, it’s not supportable,” Hornish said.

Gerend said he had “a lot of problems” with the project, which was why he wouldn’t support approving a contract.

“From the very beginning, we talked about the real problem was on SR 202 and the intersection with East Lake Sammamish Parkway,” Gerend said. “I’ve always felt that was the real problem and so I’ve been pessimistic on this project from the very beginning.”

Gerend noted that the project funding provided by impact fees, should it not be used for Sahalee Way, could be used toward other projects for Issaquah-Fall City Road or Issaquah-Pine Lake Road.