MAY 3, 2005 PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING

[Note:  Due to the poor audio during Mr. Cisar’s presentation, we will probably be posting a revised transcription later, after review by others who were present during this meeting.  Also:  substantial support will be posted to expand this information – such as John Wilson’s letter on sewer capacity – that will be provided in a subsequent update of this document.]

 

Changes to Discussion Agenda by Bart Dalmasso:

 

  • 9-lot short plat
  • Wetland banking
  • Proposed comp plan change, zoning overlay on SR 2 

 

Rick Cisar Comp Plan Discussion:

 

Rick hands out GMA Planning Schedule for county review/approval.  “We’re going to have an organized group go to the public hearings and to support the recommendation of the, uh, of the council on the urban growth area. We may have council, uh, pass a, uh, a resolution to support that, so…. We do have the information as [unintelligible]  to the county several months ago on the council’s recommendation.  Again, that’s their schedule and I did pick up a summary, uh, as to what [unintelligible]  they’re [unintelligible].  That’s all I have.

 

Sewer Discussions (All comments are from Mr. Cisar, unless indicated otherwise)

 

I’ve got one more item here.  We’ve had discussions at the council level with an engineering firm, particularly John Wilson, on the capacity of, of our wastewater treatment plant.  And you’ve probably heard numbers bantered around – 300, 400 units, 500, 600, uh… This is what I discussed with the council at the retreat.  This is a letter from John Wilson.  The bottom line is based on his analysis, we have, uh…700 units available, uh, for our wastewater treatment plant. At the present time we’ve got probably 250[1] committed, under developments we have in the pipeline.  Well, if you look at – say we’ve got – you got 700 units, uh…say we’re going to build, you know, seven units a year (sic) and we build 100 units a year, that’s going to take you out to seven years.  But if you read through that letter, once you reach 85% of capacity[2], uh, we’re going to set up the planning process.  But what we’re gonna do is set that planning process earlier, uh, to get a jump on it because we’re going to be looking at the loan dollars to, you know, finance, the, uh, the plan, or hope there’s some grants if they’re available.  But again, if you have a chance, read that letter and it’ll give you some oversight.

 

With regards to the Wastewater Master Comprehensive Plan and the, the water, uh, uh, comprehensive plan, I’m currently going through the environmental review, and then we’ll be kicking those out for review by all the state agencies. So we’ll be doing a, uh, SEPA checklist, uh, probably DNS on it.  It’ll go down to CTED and we’ll start that process. So there’ll be hearings before the planning commission and the city council for the adoption. So we’re probably looking at, say, a 120-day cycle, at least, just to get through the, that planning effort.

 

And what I can do, I can kind of give you an overview, if you want, of what I talked to the council about on Saturday [during the council retreat], to give you an idea.  There’s 700 [unintelligible]  potentially 1200 units, if you look at the property.  Now I’ll embarrass Tom[3], because it does include your property as well.

 

[Cisar turns on the overhead projector, unfortunately, which pretty well decimates the audio quality, and also turns his back while he’s speaking, making several of his comments unintelligible.]  You’ve all seen this now.   [unintelligible]    What I highlighted, again, those are the areas that we’re recommending be taken in, as far as the UGA.  Up on top, you’ve got the watershed.  And that’s about 363 acres. You’ve got the property north of what we’re calling [unintelligible]  the Botting property.  We’ve got about 230 acres there that’s been rezoned downward to an ED, Economic Development zone.  You go over to the west [sounds like, “quarter section”], this is the Tortorice property.  Tortorice requested to be in the UGA.  That’s a 40….40-acre tract.  [unintelligible]  Now we  go to the water treatment plant [on 124th Street], which is already in and we got the rest of this in.  I would take the remainder of that.  We’ve got 20 here and 40 here so we’ve got  [unintelligible] .  And to put those numbers in perspective, this is 40 units per acre as a guide.  Then on the east side of town, Reese Park, 20 acres [unintelligible].  And again, the county council would be looking at, at that UGA and making a recommendation.  We, of course, will go to support it, the council’s recommendation.  This is not, not the Commission’s.  This is my recommendation to the council [unintelligible].  The county is recommending [unintelligible].  This is out….all of this is out….[visually shows on overhead projector, which parcels are not currently being recommended by the county’s Planning Commission/PDS].  And the watershed.

 

Now, the watershed may be a public, public facility.  Uh, we go through, again, [unintelligible].  What we can do with that -- and I’ve talked with the [county] staff a couple of times -- I talked to them  last night -- is we can work up an interlocal agreement that gives the authority, the permitting authority to regulate what happens on that property, uh, you know, we’d be more than happy to do that.  We’re trying to get our contract with the Army, U.S. Army to do that, that survey, the security plan for us. That’s going to involve our water, our water system, which includes the watershed, which is a public facility, once we do that plan.  Of course, we’re not going to tell anybody what, what we’re doing up there.  But if you look at the possibility of a [unintelligible]  up there, and that might be some kind of a trailer or modular unit, just for security.  And that’s the only thing we’ll put up there.

 

Where I’ve put -- if you look at the red dots, we can go around, we’ve got what we’ve identified as, as properties where we’ve had some interest in development, uh…there may be contracts, some kind of contract with, with the development of property.

 

So we go north with the, uh…with the, uh,  site just east of the water treatment plant, we’ve got about 60 acres there.  Uh, that would take in probably – you got four – so you got 80 acres.  Do the math.  We’d want to go four, four units per acre [unintelligible; something about wetlands and corridors] maximize that..  And they realize they’ve not going to see conventional development.  You’re going to see a cluster or some kind of PUD [unintelligible].

 

 We’re going to look at the Tortorice property, this piece – uh, there’ s several contracts on that one.   [unintelligible]  Again, you can plug in the four units [per acre].  It’s got a real nice site – it’s got a lake on it.  It would be an ideal site to pick out five acres for a park, in combination with the lake.  Probably be our first neighborhood park on the plateau.

 

 We got a lot across the street from the Tortorice property.  Uh, it’s -- potentially, we’d be looking at about 114 or 115 units based on probably the pre-app we’re going to have in a couple weeks.  [unintelligible]  That’s going to be, as I say, a PUD. 

 

Margaret’s [Skogland] piece is under contract [unintelligible]  with the [sounds like, “Fare Group”].  We haven’t seen any plans yet.  Barclays North came in a couple of weeks ago, the  [sounds like, “lanyard”]  piece, a 20-acre tract to the UGA, but not annexed. [unintelligible]  So, again, 20.  I think they is a  proposed 200 units on that tract.  [someone – Dalmasso  I think --  says it’s 40 acres]  Is it 40?  I thought it was 20.  Yeah, it is 20, okay.  Two hundred units in a, in a PUD configuration and a variation of lots down to 3,000 [unintelligible; several sentences missed].  They’re going to come back with an annexation petition, to annex the properties.

 

We’ve looked at Anderson Farms, the wetlands.  Probably going to see about 30 units come in on those two pieces; there’s one on the north side and one on the south side [of Bryant Road/SBR], some form of a PUD.

 

Look at the Hammer property, which is the airport property, [unintelligible] Highway 2.  It’s got some [sounds like, “redesign].  We’ve got probably 34 acres out there and about 15 acres up on the bench that we could develop as residential with the extension of of the airport.  That’s in bankruptcy court.  We understand that the court has directed, uh, to develop the property.  [unintelligible; one or two sentences]  

 

We’ve had some interest south of the highway, uh, [the] Ramirez property.  That’s in east [unintelligible]. The [unintelligible]  is so high it’s out of the floodplain.  We do look at shorelines.  We’ve been looking at shoreline…the shoreline setback and [unintelligible]  high water’s about 150 feet. So you may get, uh, you may get potential flooding [unintelligible] .

 

Male    There’s no sewer.

 

Cisar:  But, again, the requirement is  to run sewer, punch the sewer, uh…down under the railroad tracks into the property, for that type of density.

 

Fallgatter:       Is that in our Capital Facilities plan?

 

Cisar   The Sewer?  Yeah.

 

Fallgatter        Going under the railroad?

 

Cisar:  Well, that’s how we’re – that’s how we get sewer to the properties, is under the railroad.

 

Fallgatter:  Is that in our Capital Facilities Plan?

 

Cisar:  That extension?  No.

 

Green:            It may go uphill, wouldn’t  they?

 

Cisar:  No, they got – They’ll bring it down, uh…Yeah, there’s [unintelligible]  grades are…but the problem is getting under the railroad tracks with it, and getting permission from, from the railroad.  We’ll look at probably an additional bore to get  access for that.  We’ve got water coming in from the west side.

 

We have some interest up by the Sultan Basin, the west end of the [unintelligible]  properties.  [several unintelligible sentences] about the last couple of years   So potentially we could see about, oh, [unintelligible] .  So when you plug in all the numbers, potentially, uh, uh, just to ballpark it, we’re thinking about 1,200 units.  Again, what you’re gonna see, you’re not going to see a conventional subdivision.  This is clusters and PUD…to maintain maximum density [unintelligible; one or two sentences cannot be understood] on all those projects.  We understand, uh…that piece and that piece [pointing to somewhere on  the map], uh, as soon as the county council says they’re in the UGA, if they do that, uh, we’ll see probably an annexation, coming in with the possibility of a [unintelligible].

 

Now council did formalize a policy, just adopted it, we, we adopted it internally here with the water and sewer availability letter.  Based on that policy, the priority is in-city first.  If we’ve got capacity, we can look outside in the UGA.  But we [unintelligible] to do that. The way the policy works is they have to go through a pre-app.  And [on] the basis of that pre-app – and, again, that’s me and staff – we’ll  make a determination [unintelligible]  the potential number of units that can be on that, on the property.  With that letter in hand, they have, uh, 45 days to submit a pre-- a pre-application to my office to [unintelligible]  process.  If they don’t, the letter is no longer valid.  And they’ve got some [unintelligible].

 

That’s the discussion that we had with council [unintelligible].  Again, we’ve got 700 units of capacity as planned.  We’ve got 250 allocated on [unintelligible] projects that we have.  Potentially we’re looking at development, uh, an estimate is 1,200 [units].

 

Dalmasso(?)  And that includes the 250 [unintelligible]?

 

Cisar   Uh, yeah, yeah.  That’s in there.

 

Fallgatter        Rick, can I ask to get a copy of this map when you give us that – the resolution with the, on the water and sewer availability?

 

Cisar   Oh, that?  Yeah.  And, again, those are potential projects.  They could go away tomorrow.

 

Ray George   What’s your estimated…life cycle on a new treatment plant, once you got financing secured?  An estimate?

 

Cisar   I, eh, I, it’s gonna to depend on, on the actual design, what we’re looking at as far as capacity, what we’re going to design for -- you know, the ultimate population at, uh, let’s say 2025, which is your, your sort of 20-year….[trails off].  The…you know, the issue is how, how we’re gonna to finance it.  And we’ve just gone through, uh, an increase in water and sewer.  And so we have a financial plan in place to do that[4].  We’re looking at different alternatives on-site within – not to expand the, the, the plant with the --  you know, the minimal impact on property that we do have [unintelligible]  onsite.  Potentially I think we can, you know, based on what the engineer’s telling us.  That would take care of our, even the solids.  And we’re, we’re looking at Duvall now.  We’re hauling, [unintelligible]  we’re hauling, uh,[sounds like he says, “I think down in Kirkland now”], in that general area.  The more we can reduce the solids in the hauling cost there is going to save us some money.  This goes back to [unintelligible]  the numbers of that, on that sheet, it gives the capacity.  We are taking care of our I&I now. You might recall the discussions we had with, with Barclays on the subject of manholes, wrapping manholes to make sure that we don’t have any stormwater going into the manholes.  A good example is First Street. We wrapped all those manholes [unintelligible]..  Now we solved that problem.  The lines are in place.  We’ve got one [unintelligible]  on the street, so…uh…that boosts our capacity.  We’re not treating stormwater through, you know, our wastewater treatment plant.

 

Green Does that reflect the 700 units?

 

Cisar   Uh, it, it’s gonna help.  Uh…and all we gotta do is, you know, once – you’ll get copies of the comprehensive, you know, sewer plan and water system and the water plant.  And that’ll give you some more information on it.  It’ll be, you know, uh, there’ll be some [unintelligible] in there for you.

 

[This transcription will be updated and enlarged upon…. Copies of the audio can be provided on a CD, upon request.]


[1] Per Connie Dunn’s 4/18 and 4/23 emails, the following connections have already been committed for wastewater hook-ups.  As of 5/19/05 online Assessor information, Ramirez owns only four parcels, totaling only 8,24 acres; thus, discussions on “punching” a sewer line under the BNSF railroad tracks to service “20 acres” is somewhat premature, considering that sewer line improvement was not included in Sultan’s Capital Facilities Plan in the yet-to-be-approved comp plan currently undergoing review by Snohomish County.

 

Timber Ridge, Sultan Basin Road                     85

(Note: Reduced from 87, as of 5/15/05)

Denali Ridge, Sultan Basin Road                     17

Sky Harbor, Sultan Basin Road                       62

Jeff White                                                        3

Housing Hope, 4th Street                                 11

AME Properties                                               8

Ramirez                                                         20

Stratford Place, Fir St.                                    20

Broughton Manor, 4th Street                               2

Sportsman’s Club                                             1

            TOTAL:                                           229

 

 

[2] Per Public Works Director Connie Dunn’s 4/18 email regarding the Dept. of Ecology’s (DOE) requirements for planning improvements:  “The state requires the City of Sultan, at 65% triggers the mandate to start the improvements to the existing WWTP.  At 85%, the State DOE declares the moratorium.  Current comp plan amendment for the design of the WWTP states this plant will serve a 4,800 population.  I took the census count of 2.7 people per household, which equals 1,778 residential equivalent connections.  Currently we have 1,094 residential equivalents being used.”

[3] Referring to Tom Green, sitting Planning Commission Chairman, who has entered into a contract with Barclays North to develop his 20 acres, which was subsequently cancelled.  However, it is general knowledge that Commissioner Green either has, or will shortly, enter into another such contract.

[4] The recent capital facilities charge increase for a sewer hook-up did not even reflect the historical per-unit connection costs of the current WWTP, so this statement is incorrect.  In other words, any new upgrades or improvements that are required will require additional increases to the sewer hook-up fees for two reasons:  (1) to recap the historical costs of the current plan which were not included in the 2004 fee hike; and (2) the cost for studies, plans, and actual improvements to the current plant’s capacity in order to financially accommodate new growth.