Other G.R.I.T. Transcriptions

Plng. Commission Page

Sultan's 2003 Comp Plan

Seehuus Well, I guess we're at a crossroads here. And what I'm going to do is ask each commissioner -- and I'm going to even ask Rick -- what their thoughts are, either a hybrid or where they're headed. So, Rick, why don't you lead off? We're going to go right down the line. And, Janie, I'd like to know where you are. I don't want to put you all on the spot, but we've been talking about this for a long time.

Cisar [Cisar mumbles many of his comments] A question came up at the last meeting. If look at what we're calling the "no Growth" scenario and the low growth? Of course, as I indicated, the no growth is inconsistent with the Growth Management Act because of [sounds like, "the growth"] in policy. What you might consider as a starting point is, say, the low growth, the difference is, population-wise is about 100 people. I think the unit is four units, so it's not that much difference. But the one thing about the low growth, it does -- development policies are consistent with the Growth Management Act. You did receive comments from quite a few people. You did receive requests to expand the UGA. We had one from Mr. Downs. He owns the property up around the water treatment plant. And you certainly might want to recognize [unintelligible] parcel and incorporate that into the UGA. If you look at the low growth and some of the recommendations, say, for example, the medium growth, if you look at that area, it would be on the east side of Rice Road, economic development, less than your medium. You might want to consider that. I'm looking at the job base and job creation. And also expanding some of your highway commercial, to the left of town. There's a small section that appears up on the, it's on the high growth scenario. So there would be two modifications. And, yeah, you look at the, some of the comments I had on the watershed, taking the watershed [unintelligible; something about development] there. And the intent is not to develop that in a residential fashion. [sounds like he says, "you don't think you're going to have] in a watershed might be one unit, and that might be a security-type unit. Those are some of the things I'm looking at. [unintelligible] any discrepancies, particularly in the UGA, you don't want to split property lines since you have multiple jurisdictions [unintelligible] is a problem. Those are my general comments.

Seehuus Janie?

Botting [Commissioner Botting speaks extremely low and mumbles some of her comments]Well, I agree that we need to at least go with the moderate growth. And I would [unintelligible] we need, but we need to [sounds like she said, "keep the funding"] because I do think that's important and I think what Rick said about the watershed, we should include that for security reasons, with some restrictions. And I think it would be good to listen to the people and include the people that it's feasible to include in the growth so that [unintelligible] have to adopt the alternative 1 to meet some of those needs. I think that would be [unintelligible].

Seehuus Jeff?

Kirkman I'm more of a hybrid type. I feel that the services in this city are still pretty much lacking in the sense of, even from a City Hall view. And also, I do see some sort of danger with the sewage treatment plant. There seems to be some discrepancy and some back and forth of whether we're getting to a limit of that. Personally, I'd like to see the industrial areas definitely included in the UGA, and that being moderate to high growth. But the residential parts definitely on a low growth scenario. So I'd like to see a hybrid of this plan based on the information I understand.

Seehuus Tom?

Green I'm kind of leaning toward a hybrid, too. And I'd like to see the line drawn from, I guess it would take in the Tortorice property [parcel on the northeast corner of 132^nd Street S. E. and Sultan Basin Road] and go right across [the Sultan Basin Road] and take in -- I don't know whose property that is -- but whoever is across from my -- just south of the pipeline. In other words, square that line up straight across [124^th Street westward from Sultan Basin Road]. And since [Joe] Downs wanted to come in, I would bring him in, too. He seemed to have a water concern. And I'd like to see something happening out here on the east side, too, maybe -- 'cause there's some really nice land there that could be included in the industrial area.

Murphy What did you say about the east side?

Green That there's some land out there that I think should be included in the industrial area. And that's, I guess that's going to be a hybrid between low and moderate. But that's my feeling.

Seehuus Ron?

Kraut Well, I like the hybrid idea, too. Between the low and the prevailing plan. I don't see any reason to expand our UGA at all. We've annexed hundreds of acres from the UGA in the past six, seven years and we haven't developed any of it. We don't have any sewers extending to our UGA boundaries there. So it makes no sense to expand our UGA boundaries. So that's where I stand on that. I think our goals for trails and roads and those issues are pretty grandiose. And we've had a problem in the past and recently, still, of implementation. I just don’t see us being able to follow through on our plans and I'm concerned about making the leap to expand the UGA and do all these trails and roads and park ideas with no track record of never really following through on these things. And again, the sewers are an issue. I think we're getting close to capacity with our sewers. And with an expansion of our UGA, we'll be burdening the taxpayers more if they have to expand the sewer system in the near future. That's my stand.

Seehuus Josie?

Fallgatter The first thing that I would like to say is that I am not anti-development. I'm sure I'm being tagged with that label and I find it a bit fatiguing. I agree with Ron on the hybrid between the low growth and the no action scenario. And he hit the nail on the head that the problem is implementation. And if we do go with that sort of scenario, we're not saying that that additional property won't come into the urban growth [area] in the future, we're saying -- as Tom Beckwith was kind of advising us to do -- is be conservative. It can always come in later when we can afford to bring it in. And I think just looking at how poorly the current comprehensive plan has been implemented as far as actually, totally being ignored when it comes to what areas you're going to develop. I mean, it calls out policies for infill and providing services for what exists. Ad that's been ignored, to provide services in areas that have just come in. So I think we're doing a disservice all the way around when we don't do it in a logical manner. And if you look at the surveys, the results from the surveys that came back, everyone is in agreement that we have a beautiful environment, a beautiful place to live; we like the small-town atmosphere, we'd like to see better shopping here in town, but I don't think people are clamoring for instant urbanization. And I also have a problem with our push for what we're calling "affordable housing." I think that if anything, we have a scarcity of nice housing, higher-income residential areas -- and unfortunately, I didn't get that answered to my satisfaction from Tom Beckwith. He's from Medina. Where is the affordable housing in Medina? [tittering laughter] I have a problem with that. And that was, again a result from the surveys, is that people want to see quality of development. And I think that that's what we need to put into this. And we need to put into it some real strategies for making the city council adhere to it. Because they haven't adhered to the current one. The idea that they can't spend money on something that isn't identified in the comprehensive plan makes total sense to me, makes sense for the citizens of Sultan. And as far as protecting the rights of the people that want to develop, I'm sure there are people in town -- we had some people come to a meeting and say they wanted to develop on First Street, but they can't because they don't have sewers. And I think we ought to provide for infill before we start expanding out.

Seehuus Bart?

Dalmasso Tough act to follow. [unintelligible]. As I look at this aerial map, I see a lot of empty space, and I can appreciate what a lot of people have said. I'm in favor of some type of a hybrid also. I'm afraid of the no action growth causing other developments such as Willow Run, because if the desire for people to come to our community increases, the lot sizes will have to stay smaller if we don't expand our urban growth area to accommodate them. I deal with substantial developer in my business, who I have been trying to get to my property out there in Sultan for over two years. He's not interested in coming out here and building a $250,000 or $300,000 home. The market is not here for it. We can want all we want, but it's not going to make it happen. We need to have something that's going to appeal to get these higher-priced homes here. You're right. We have a greater supply of affordable housing than we probably need and I agree with you on that. But I think we need to make some provisions to make this a more livable place, such as having more opportunities for people to work here and not having to get on the highway to go… We need to have this be a more livable place for people up on the Sultan Basin Road to get to town and not have to go on the highway. That'll keep people off the highways. Not much, but it'll take some off the highway. We need to have some more commercial area to have the mom and pop stores -- not the Wal-marts or anything like that -- but we need to have, make provisions and plan for that. So my feeling is more of a hybrid somewhere off of the moderate growth and could go a little either way on both of them. The things that Rick talked about, the addition of commercial property out in the west end of town, I personally would like to see that urban growth boundary expand all the way to where Fern Bluff Road crosses the highway, because I see that as a potential for commercial growth, and the ability to draw people from off the hill, up off of Wood Lake Road and places like that and come down there to shop rather than go down to Monroe and shop down there. I think we need to have the watershed in the property--in the urban growth area, and also those two property owners that were [unintelligible] that wanted to be part of the UGA, and [unintelligible] should be included. And that's kind of where I'm at.

Seehuus Okay, folks, so where do we go from here?

Kraut We'll go to your comments .

Seehuus Actually, I'm all over the map with this thing. I'm like everybody else. I like a hybrid. I think we should definitely include the watershed. That's absolutely critical. I like Josie's comment about doing this, including this in a sequential manner. I do like the idea of having more industrial in the UGA. So I'm really kind of torn which way between several; probably between the low and the moderate. I'm not sure. Even toward the no growth. So I'm not really, really ready. I think I haven't come to any type of conclusion yet. I think a watershed is critical if we put the caveat that there's only no more than one resident up there for a caretaker, something like that. That's about where I'm at right now.

Kraut I'd like to add one more thing to what I said. We still have to remember Highway 2 is the only way in and out of here. And remember when we grow we impact Highway 2 and Highway 2 is a problem and we have to address that in this plan.

Fallgatter And I don't see that it's a dead-end if we go with not expanding the urban growth area. We have to update our comprehensive plan within a year anyway, don't we , [unintelligible] our capital facilities plan?

Dalmasso [simultaneously, with Josie's comment] That's not mandatory.

Fallgatter But we can -- I'm saying we have to include our capital facilities plan, which is a required element which we don't have. So there will be opportunity once we get our ducks in a row, to go ahead and expand it when it becomes necessary.

Cisar The capital is exempt from your normal amendment process, 'cause you do it on an annual basis anyway. [unintelligible] capital plan, you can see in the one from the school district, that occurs.

Fallgatter It automatically updates the comprehensive plan without anybody doing anything?

Cisar [talking over Josie's comment] We're automatically bringing that to you. We don't go, have a full-blown amendment process.

Kraut You're automatically bringing that to us?

Cisar We'll schedule, uh, normally when we do the update of the comp plan, or the capital plan, uh, an amendment before the [unintelligible], a public hearing.

Fallgatter And at that point, if it becomes justifiable to increase the urban growth area, then people can come in and say, gee, it's time to increase our urban growth area.

Kraut Yeah, it's not as easy as Tom indicated, going through that process, as far as changing the UGA. You gotta go back through a series of studies just like you did now, to justify all the environmental issues. So it's not as simple as [unintelligible].

Fallgatter Well, I don't think the issue is if it's simple or not. The issue should be the city being able to handle its obligations and incur it when they're not able to. So why burden them any more until they're able to handle the obligations that they already have? I kind of look at it like if you're a weightlifter and you want to get stronger -- we all want Sultan to get stronger. Well, for a weightlifter to get stronger, he doesn't throw all of the weights in the room on his bar. He gets to the point where he can repeatedly do the repetitions with the weight that he has on his bar, and then he adds more weight. And I think it's the same thing with the City of Sultan. We need to get our economic base up enough to where it's -- and, and -- I have to say it, the normal functioning of the city, and hopefully that's going to happen, Rick, with you as the administrator -- we have to get the normal functioning of the City up to a professional level before we try to take on any more.

Fallgatter I think we're starting to do it. As you walk down Main Street, Main Street is looking better than it has for years. And it's happening. But it doesn't happen by adding more people. There is land. You know, we just did our Industrial Park Master Plan. There is land ready for development. There's land there. If Somebody wants to bring a business in -- an office park, whatever -- there's land there. Why do we need to bring in more into the urban growth area?

Dalmasso Actually, only a very small portion of that land is for sale in the industrial park area.

Kraut And why is it not for sale?

Dalmasso Because people that are using it want to keep it.

Fallgatter So we're going to have to expand the industrial out beyond that area?

Dalmasso I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that you're talking about this area being free to grow [unintelligible] to be. [several sentences unintelligible; he's mumbling].

Fallgatter Well, then isn't that an indication that people don't want to develop in town?

Dalmasso Not necessarily.

Fallgatter And that the people want to hang onto their land…

Dalmasso It's not an indication that they're not wanting to develop, necessarily. They may be waiting for the [unintelligible] so they can develop. There are issues out there in the industrial park there such as Wagley Ditch that make that [unintelligible].

Kraut Well, that was the condition of the industrial park [unintelligible].

Dalmasso I'm just saying there are impacts out there --

Dalmasso [unintelligible] I'm just saying there's things that impact a lot of this land. There's steep slopes and everything else out there

Fallgatter Bart? If we increase the urban growth area, there are going to be things that happen there, as well.

Dalmasso Sure. The net result would be a net amount of acreage that's usable or not usable.

Fallgatter Right. But the problem is supplying the services to that area.

Dalmasso [simultaneously as Josie's speaking] That's what impact fees are for. What impacts fees are for.

Fallgatter Impact fees do not cover those impacts.

Dalmasso They are supposed to pay for the increased cost of providing that service.

Fallgatter They're supposed to, but we all know that they don't.

Dalmasso [unintelligible] impact fees, we're able to provide services to anybody living in the city. [unintelligible] from the telephone lines in parts of Washington, I know where they've strung ten miles of telephone lines to free (sic) for service. And the phone company came about [unintelligible]. The impact fees are a fairly recently thing in the past 15, 20 years --

Fallgatter And I think it's because economic things have changed. I mean, you can cite the railroad coming across the country, but the days of getting "Chinamen" to come over and buy 1000 a day to build a railroad for us are over. We have to work --

Dalmasso [unintelligible].

Fallgatter No, but I'm saying if you want to keep the costs down, or if you want to compare to how it was done in the past, it was much cheaper in the past.

Dalmasso It was.

Fallgatter And those days are gone.

Dalmasso But also, a dollar back then bought a heck of a lot more than it does now. I paid more for my car than many of the houses I sold in my real estate career. [unintelligible] car that I drive now. Things have changed. A dollar used to buy more back then. We have an economic base now that you're telling me is not providing the services we need, but you want to maintain the same economic base to provide more services for --

Fallgatter No. I’m not saying that. I'm not saying that.

Dalmasso There's no room for the economic base to grow. We need the commercial part of it to grow to provide services for the residential growth, because they pay for more [unintelligible].

Kirkman Would you say the industrial or commercial part pays more?

Dalmasso I'm saying the commercial part pays more in revenue to the city than [unintelligible], the services that they use. They pay more for services. Their water bill, they're charged more than you in your home. Probably on a per-foot basis or per-gallon basis or however they charge them.

Seehuus So they're actually subsidizing --

Dalmasso Subsidizing the households, yes. The [unintelligible], same thing. You get DSL up here, I think you pay $30, I pay $60 on my business to subsidize it for residential fees. That's where you're going to get your economic base. Not your residents here. From the commercial. But you're not going to get more commercial here without more residents to support it.

Kirkman I disagree with you on the residential on that. Because you do actually have a population base, not just within this city, but you also have a population base east of here and a population base west of here. And a fairly large one west of here.

Dalmasso And the ones west go to Monroe to shop.

Kirkman OH, absolutely. That's why we need to develop. And the way to develop the industrial part or the commercial part is to get the city to become a professional city, and they can then be marketable to the rest of the world. Under the conditions that I came in under in Willow Run, with that kind of situation, you cannot market a city to the rest of the people.

Dalmasso But if we stop with the growth with the no action scenario, that's what we're going to end up with [unintelligible].

Kraut [unintelligible].

Kirkman No, because it's illegal. I would hope by now we've understood that what happened in Willow Run was completely illegal.

Dalmasso I'm not going to even go there. There's been no court that says it's illegal that I know of. But you know, Mr. Downs, I think his opening remarks last time was you should plan for the most growth that you can get so you prepare for anything that happens. Issaquah wasn't prepared for growth [unintelligible] and look at what's happened to Issaquah. There are no roads through the town. I was part of [unintelligible] when they didn't want a McDonald's in town.

Fallgatter Bart, I'm in total agreement. I just don't think that the City of Sultan is planning for the growth. They just snap at whatever comes before them, whatever they can get a little bit of money for, and they're not following their plan as it is.

Dalmasso That's why they're changing it --

Fallgatter No, that's not why. We're changing it because we're required by law to do it, and there's no guarantee that what we change it to is going to be followed. That's why we need to try to make it something that they can follow.

Dalmasso I'm kind of inclined in some respect to agree with Mr. Downs, that we should plan for the worst, for the most and then you're prepared for anything. Rather than start with the least, and you'll get more than what you bargained for.

Kraut Prepare for the most? You're saying the most growth?

Dalmasso I'm just saying that prepare for the most options that are available out there, so you are prepared for it.

Kirkman Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dalmasso [unintelligible] No growth or no change, or whatever you want to call it, isn't doing that. That's trying to maintain the status quo.

Seehuus I think everybody here has suggested a hybrid, Bart.

Kraut Except for one growth that suggested no growth for our UGA was Jeff Sax and John Koster and Nelson from the Snohomish County Council. They felt our UGA was adequate, and they suggested we do not expand it.

Dalmasso [unintelligible]?

Kraut It was in the newspaper.

Dalmasso [unintelligible] newspaper?

Kraut It was quoted.

Fallgatter I agree. At this point, it doesn't make sense to make that UGA bigger. Maybe in three years we'll have so much economic development and things will be rolling so fast, so many sewers will be put in, that we'll need to expand it.

green And if we have it already in place, it'll be a real plus. And look how long it's taken us to wallow through this process. And some poor guy's going to come in and want to expand into the urban growth and he'd like it to happen in a year. It's probably going to take him two years to five years to do it.

Kraut No, any citizen can propose a comp plan amendment --

Green I know he can. And they could get bogged down in all this red tape.

Fallgatter Tom, the reason we've wallowed through this so much is because the current plan hasn't been followed, and so there are things that have been done out of sequence contrary to the plan. There is no capital facilities plan which we're supposed to have.

Green I thought Rick said that wasn't part of the plan.

Kirkman He did say it is an element. According to the Revised Code of Washington, it's absolutely an element of the plan. It's absolutely --

Green We can't have one till we have a plan.

Kirkman No, but you should have had one that was up-to-date every year since it was adopted, the original one back in '95 or whenever it was. You have not updated that capital facilities plan.

Green But it's water under the bridge now.

Fallgatter But it isn't, Tom --

Kirkman But it isn't. It is impacting this City really adversely. That's why you don't have growth here. You don't have economic growth because you have not followed a logical progression of development here. What you have done is: "I want to develop mine, so therefore it gets done." No one goes back and says, "Hey, wait a second. We have a comprehensive plan here. Will that fit in? Let's annex some land in…." And then suddenly the people have to shell out money to have water service and all sorts of things. Without planning ahead. Without having a capital facilities plan backing up those actions. That is what is important.

Green Well, it'd be nice if we could turn the clock back and change all that.

Kirkman I'm trying to change what we're doing --

Fallgatter Look at the amount of time that Cliff Morris wasted in front of the Planning Commission and the City Council, trying to get his development in. If they had a capital facilities plan that said, "You know, Cliff? In five years we plan on putting sewers down to the end of First Street, and in six years we plan on going beyond that," then he would have had an answer. They couldn't even give him an answer [unintelligible] there's a comprehensive plan. Because they know what's in the comprehensive plan and they haven't followed it. They've just had a guy come, anytime somebody comes to them and says, "Hey, I'll give you this or that," they've done the development.

Green Well, how are we going to have our capital facilities plan when we don't have anything to…

Kirkman We are going to have something. What I'm advocating is that we pick a hybrid that's conservative and doesn't do anything to add to the burden of the City until we're able to take care of what we're obligated to take care of already. If you bring people into the urban growth area, they're going to be saying, "Hey, I'm in the urban growth area. Annex me. I've got somebody that wants to put a store out on my property. This is industrial property." We're not ready to do it yet.

Green And if there's not the capability of servicing that, they're not going to annex them. [See Endnote #1]

Fallgatter Then why bring them into the urban growth area yet?

Kraut Well, but again, some of your property out there by Rice Road was annexed in when they had no -- the reason was you didn't have water. So we annexed the property in and there's still no water out there. And now the city's considering floating a million dollar loan to provide water.

Green There's water out there. There's water in the Basin Road.

Kraut I'm talking about the annexation area, the area that was annexed in. It was a large property --

Green [interrupting] [unintelligible] develop that, put a water line in.

Kraut But why is the city considering giving a water line to people --

Green Because the people down the road say they don't have potable water.

Kraut But why did they annex them in to burden the citizens of the City of Sultan? Where was the logic behind that?

Green [unintelligible] annexed in.

Dalmasso The citizens were going to do an LID which would be paid for by the property owners.

Kraut The proposal's not for an LID right now.

Green No, but it's [unintelligible] loan.

Kraut No, but recently the City Council denied a loan application for $1 million to provide water service to those properties. And now we're considering it again.

Green It's probably not going to happen if they denied it.

Kraut But I'm saying, the problem is poor planning, and not following the comprehensive plan. You don't annex properties until you have facilities adjacent to those properties that are proposed for annexation. That's the way you're supposed to plan. You got a chunk of land here and there's no power, there's no sewer, there's no water, why on earth would you annex it? Once you've developed out to your property, the boundaries of your city limits, and now you're abutting the urban growth boundary, now this land becomes feasible for development, it becomes logical for development, and it makes good sense for a developer that wanted to develop that land.

Green And the sewer goes right out to the edge of the urban growth area on 132^nd. Sewer goes right to the corner there [sewer ends at the southeast corner of 132^nd and Sultan Basin Road], and that's where the urban growth area ends. The sewer's there. I'll take you up and show you that. [see Endnote #2]

Kraut That's fine. What I'm talking about now is the water line and the annexation that occurred back when they annexed it. There was no benefit to the city for doing that at that time.

Green You know, it's like the schools. You want to build all of this stuff up ahead of time and spend all this money when there isn't a demand for it or a way to pay for it. The way to pay for it is when the demand is there for it. And the schools get the population and then they pass their levies and build the buildings. And I don't see this being any different.

Fallgatter So you're saying we don't have enough kids in portables right now. Is that what you're saying?

Seehuus There's a state formula for that, that'll drive dollars for construction. [unintelligible] fees.

Kraut Kind of like the airline philosophy? You have to prove that you've got a severe problem before you'll even quality for --

Green We're going to go out and build a big school and have 25 empty classrooms, anticipating that the population's going to fill those classrooms up in five years.

Fallgatter I don't think anybody here is advocating that.

Green Well, that's the same thing that you're talking about all of these facilities being put in; let's have enough sewer to supply 50,000 new house or whatever.

Fallgatter Put them in where the demand already exists, which is what you're saying. We're saying put it in. The demand already exists in areas of the town that are already within the incorporated limits where it doesn't exist.

Dalmasso A couple things that I think -- first of all, on Cliff Morris for his [unintelligible]. I don't think it's a waste of time anytime a citizen comes and speaks before the council or the planning commission. If they present any kind of proposal or ideas they may have --

Fallgatter I mean "wasted time," Bart, in the sense that he was not able to get an answer.

Dalmasso But he's still working on it. A lot of times we don't get an answer [unintelligible] where the city does not respond to [unintelligible]. And I’m not just talking about Sultan. I'm talking about Monroe, North Bend, Seattle, and many other cities in the United States. It's not uncommon to have to go in front of a commission or board and ask the question repeatedly [unintelligible] get an answer. [unintelligible]. The thing about not making plans for things and not having the money, the capital facilities plan when it becomes part of it, will be the implementation, if I am correct, as to how we get these things that will be needed there for future development. We're not going to annex 20 acres half a mile outside the city limits and ask to provide service to it. Years ago you used to be able to do that. You can't do that now because of the laws in the state. You have to be able --

Fallgatter I don't think it's been years since the City of Sultan has done it.

Dalmasso That may or may not be the case. But the law now says that you cannot annex a property unless you can actually service it.

Kraut What does that mean? Service it? It doesn't mean sewers.

Dalmasso It could mean sewer. Even on FHA loans, if your septic system fails and you're within 300 feet of the sewer line, you cannot replace that septic system. You have to go on the sewer line.

Kraut Yeah, but, well, on the York annexation, that was property he annexed and it's been approved for development with no sewers. So services are not being provided.

Dalmasso Ron? If the lots are 10,000 or 12,000 [square] feet, you can put in a septic system [unintelligible] health district. So it he does have service. Just because he's in the city limits, doesn't mean he has to build on 4,000 square foot lots.

Kraut That's the point of clarification I wanted to make.

Dalmasso So he's still got sewer, sewer service. A private septic system. And that's through the Snohomish Health District.

Cisar Yeah, basically York's subdivision [unintelligible] to a sewer. And it's probably just designed with a sleeve, provides for a sleeve for a sewer line.

Kraut But it's septic. The development is septic.

Cisar You realize when you're talking about other services, you're walking water, sewer, [unintelligible]. In most cases [unintelligible; something about other services that the city can supply and bill, also something about grants; mumbling]. All the utilities have been development-driven.

Fallgatter Normally. And I agree they should be. But I don't think that that has been the case in Sultan --

Cisar But what we need is, first we need your recommendation on a plan so we can develop this capital plan so we can ask a developer and say, yeah, we need a [unintelligible] there or whatever. That's the way the system works.

Fallgatter That's why I'm saying we need to be as conservative as we can until we get that capital facilities plan in place. And once we --

Cisar But again, realize that changing a UGA boundary is difficult. It's not going to happen overnight. Even if we have property in the UGA and you get involved with, just to annex property, it [would] cost him probably a year to go through that process, if we're lucky. And that's under the old process.

Fallgatter And I don't think that's bad. I don't think that we're ready to do anything overnight in this town.

Cisar Well, I disagree. We're looking at some [unintelligible] development base [unintelligible] commercial. You look at the property on Rice Road. It's a logical, it's a logical piece of property that involve[s] a certain amount of development. You got services there. Same thing out west. We can punch a line out west. That's how simple it is. We're got the economic development base to [unintelligible] it.

Fallgatter What do you mean, "we"? You don't mean the City? [unintelligible].

Cisar The city. You know, someone could pick up that sewer line and just extend it. And it's done.

Kraut You mean develop it.

Cisar Take even Rice Road. The sewer line [unintelligible] at McDonald's. There's a manhole [unintelligible; mumbles some other things.]

Kraut But that was a city-drive sewer line there, correct. The industrial park sewer line?

Kraut But who floated the loan, government grant?

Cisar Oh, the LID is all [unintelligible].

Kraut But what was the $1 million grant for? Janie? You know what that grant was for?

Botting Well, I believe it was to get things started, wasn't it Tom?

Green I think for planning and what-not. I know the land owners paid five times what --

Botting The landowners are definitely paying for the sewer.

Murphy Well, we got a few grants for that project. I don't remember now at this point exactly what the grants paid for. It's been several years. But it was for the extension of the sewer line, and I don't know whether it went for design or construction or what. At this point I don't remember.

Cisar Well, the grant may have been seed money to get the LID started. [see endnote #3]

Murphy Yeah. I know we got the grant before we went after the LID.

Botting But it sure would have nice to have some industrial growth board so that they could help the developers pick up, pay for that, because it was a terrible impact on the landowners. And I think if we did have some industry out there and they could help pay for it, that would have been great.

Kraut I don't understand the hold-up on that. I mean, it's there, the land's ready to go. Why aren't there --

Cisar Oh, it's a problem. You got Wagley Creek going though there. You got wetlands.

Kraut But all that was --

Cisar [unintelligible] development proposal and it would still be difficult to… [trails off]

Kraut But I thought all of that was pre-[sounds like, "secret"] and reviewed and all of --

Cisar Still, you've got to recognize that you have wetlands and a stream corridor. And by the time we get the east-west corridor road through, it's going to be quite an undertaking.

Botting And part of that is that people looking are looking at industrial space that come out here say that there needs to be more population out here.

Kraut I'd love a reverse commute. I can't imagine somebody not wanting to drive from Everett to Sultan every day. That would be a great commute.

Botting But we definitely need businesses out here in this area so that we don't have to commute. But yet businesses won't come in unless you have more population. So it's a vicious circle and I don't know what is… [trails off]

Kirkman In actually, all of my economics classes, I've never heard that . You have enormous numbers of people traveling 40 miles, 50 miles to jobs. I don't think you have a problem of population base. You have, at the end of the day, a marketing problem of the City.

Botting I'm talking about attracting businesses to this area. And they're saying -- I've talked to several businesses that have looked at property, and they tell me there's not enough population here to warrant them bringing their business in.

Kirkman And what sort of business?

Dalmasso Grocery stores, for one.

Botting Grocery stores.

Kirkman I know some of the people in my community that work for grocery stores. I don't 'think --

Botting Have them buy land here for a grocery store.

Botting You go to a major chain and ask them [unintelligible] support a grocery store, and see what they say. 'Cause I've talked to several of them.

Fallgatter Then that's probably the wrong type of economic development that we need to be looking for. Perhaps we need to look for businesses than manufacture something.

Kraut Industrial --

Dalmasso We have many manufacturers here up in the industrial park. [unintelligible] Warner Paddles, East Teak Importing, just to name three that come to mind quickly all in the same area. And the foundry and Flower Racing, which is something that I think is [unintelligible], but he also has a machine shop. There's a lot of small businesses out there out in the industrial park, but they're all small businesses.

Fallgatter It would be nice to have a Safeway, but if we don't have the population to support it, then we must not need it yet.

Botting But we're going to need it --

Fallgatter We're going to. I agree.

Botting -- so why not plan for it and have some growth so that it attracts these people to this area?

Fallgatter We will have some growth, under the No Action UGA boundary.

Dalmasso Using Safeway as an example, when we were only at a population of 3500, Safeway built the largest store that they had in the state at that time-- over a 47,000 square foot store -- and that's the store they have now, when Monroe's population was 3500. We exceed that population at this time and Safeway still doesn't want to come here.

Fallgatter Then it can't be that we don't have enough population --

Dalmasso And it's not [unintelligible].

Seehuus Playing devil's advocate -- I'm probably going to annoy a bunch of people -- McDonald's is known all over the world as doing their demographics -- doing their homework before they relocate. If indeed it's undesirable to be here, why did you [unintelligible] be here? It's generally, they're the very first business to go into a growing area.

Fallgatter Highway 2.

Male Highway 2.

Seehuus Yes, I know that. But, still, they've done their demographics. There's gotta be a customer base.

Botting Can I answer that?

Male Sure.

Botting Part of it was because they felt that there was going to be a lot more growth in this area. And they felt that they would be the first business there and the other ones would follow. They felt that within a year or two there would be a major growth [unintelligible] in that area. And it hasn't happened.

Dalmasso Along the lines of McDonald, too, they'd been looking for a site in Sultan for about a lot of years.

Kirkman Also, could it be that just because of the economic downturn we've experienced in the last three to four years that people are not relocating their businesses, unless they're going through incredible tax-cutting [unintelligible], where labor doesn't cost them too much. The labor costs in the state of Washington is a little bit on the higher side, I believe, as opposed to some other-- Wyoming or Montana or whatever. So it could be a little bit of that.

Botting [unintelligible].

Kirkman I think it has impacted that. But I still go back for my whole reason [for] being here is that we need to give people confidence that we're doing the right thing and we're going down the right routes in trying to develop our place. I am not opposed to population growth . It will happen. There's a ton of land here that needs to be developed and will be developed and wants to be developed. And even under the No Growth -- and I am not a fan of the No Growth -- I would like to see the Low Growth as far as the population growth goes -- you still have a fairly constant influx of population. And I believe there are some developments up now that will bring in population. So you need to be careful with this no growth definition. That's why I wanted not to say "zero", I wanted to say the old '94 comp plan.

Dalmasso How many lots are approved? Do you know, Rick?

Cisar The only one we have now with the Sky Harbor. That's 62 lots. And then we just filed with the auditor with the Broughton.

Dalmasso So that's 70 lots.

Kirkman Plus the five for the --

Cisar Date, yeah. We've got some infill short plats. Not that many. Sky Harbor's the biggest one. [see Endnote #4]

Seehuus While we're on that topic. I don't mean to interrupt you, but, awhile back we were getting a report a status report --

Cisar [interrupted] is a lot of BLAs lately, which are just kind of routine stuff. [unintelligible] a detailed report. Provide you with a notice so you know what's going to happen [unintelligible].

Seehuus That's great, 'cause I -- it's a crazy situation, I guess.

Cisar One thing they are saying, though, as I talk to different property owners, and different developers, what they're looking at is [unintelligible] calling avoidance of the wetlands. As you guys are aware, there's a lot of wetlands up on the hill. And it's close to getting in with Corps permits and HPAs and everything else, their tact is probably going to be avoidance of the wetlands wherever they can, especially if they have a road crossing or something like that. We may have, say, a modification or some addition [unintelligible] a subdivision to go back with. [unintelligible] I think what you're going to see is there's a lot more wetlands up there than we had anticipated [unintelligible]. [See Endnote #5]

[NOTE: The last 7-8 minutes of this discussion consisted mostly of Mr. Cisar's mumblings and wasn't worth transcribing. While it was a worthy discussion with Ron Kraut concerning wetlands, another 50-or-so multi-unit Craig Morrison development on Fir Street (where the presence of wetlands made the previous developer throw in the towel), and the limitations of our sewer system, much of what Rick said could not be transcribed sufficiently. What's the point anyway? Rick has consistently and transparently represented the interests of developers and Mayor Rowe's point of view. One must wonder, is it possible he mumbles on purpose?]