UPDATE - December 3, 2003

TODAY AT 3:30 PM: STATE AUDITOR WILL HOLD "ENTRANCE" INTERVIEW WITH COUNCIL/MAYOR AT CITY HALL: The Auditor's notice is on the website, which states the following: "If you plan to have a quorum of Council members attend the entrance and/or exit conferences, then you are responsible to ensure the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act are met." We plan on being there.

RESOLUTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE FOR COUNCIL CONSIDERATION TONIGHT ON THE FINAL PLATS FOR ROSEWOOD ESTATES (Garth York's project) AND SKY VALLEY ESTATES (S&L Homes/Assembly of God project):

This is a great step forward for the City, in ensuring compliance with state law requiring written, council-published Facts & Findings on final plats. The F&F is supposed to state that the plat complies with all laws, codes and regulations. Still lacking in each of these resolutions, however, is that statement. The statement that appears at the end of the resolution states: "Based upon the terms of this Resolution, the interests of the City are fully protected," which is not the same thing.

If this requirement had been consistently met since Rowe came to power, there would have been no illegal Willow Run plats. Moreover, there would have been no opportunity for Rowe to have signed those illegally-revised plats, which did not have written approval by the "legislative body" on their face as required by state law. Yet despite Sultan's painful and expensive history in this regard, Ord. 831-03 is before tonight's council (without prior review or the mandatory public hearing), requesting that only the mayor need affix his John Hancock to the face of the plat.

To ensure that the city is complying with the procedure the council set up some months ago to include a check-list on each final plat coming before council for approval, we requested that the city provide us with a copy of the completed final checklist for the Rosewood Estates final plat. It took them 12 days to copy two pages from the Sultan code (charging us $0.15 per copy). My original public information request and the City's response is on our website. (Note: We did not request a checklist for Sky Valley Estates as we did not know until Monday that this final plat was going to be reviewed by the council at this meeting.)

ALL INFO on both plats can be accessed through a link on Councilman Jeff Everett's outstanding council website: http://www.sultancitycouncil.net/agenda/current/menu.html

 

PLANNING COMMISSION APPOINTMENT: Don Walker's application (which was faxed from C. H . Rowe's fax machine 11/12/03), which contains his qualifications to be a planning commissioner, is now on our website. Unfortunately, because of the "Rowe Rush" to get his hand-picked commission seat-warmer in place (whomever that may be) before Mayor-elect Ben Tolson takes the helm, the public will not have the benefit of reading the applications filed by other interested parties.

THOM GRAAFSTRA'S LETTER RE BINDING SITE PLAN: The city coughed up the letter from City Attorney Graafstra to Rick Cisar, which was dated 11/21 (not 11/24, as I had reported in yesterday's update, sorry). After six pages of legalese detailing the widespread inconsistencies in the City's code relative to this matter, in a "coin toss" opinion, he comes down ever so slightly on the side of side-stepping the one single city entity that knows more about planning and Sultan's future than anyone, including, in our opinion, Mr. Cisar. One question screams at us (as it always does), in the case of a "tie" why doesn't the city ever opt for MORE public input, opinion and expertise, rather than LESS?

CONGRATULATIONS TO SULTAN LOCAL LAURA FOX, WHO WON THE SPOKESMODEL POSITION FOR THE NATIONAL AMERICAN MISS PAGENT. (See press release info on our website.)

Have an "interesting" day….

Loretta Storm, Co-founder, G.R.I.T.

360-793-6683