SLSA Meeting Notes - November 18, 2004

From: David Bangs
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 4:09 PM
Subject: SLSA Meeting Notes for November 18th, 2004

The South Lake Sammamish Association met at Sunset Elementary School Library at 7pm.

Reps in attendance were: Deborah Parsons (Greenwood Point), Melody Scherting (Sammamish View), Craig Kinzer (S.E. 42nd St), Mary Victory (Meerwood), Dan Albertson (Meadowbrook Point), Scott Dahlquist (Lake West), Wayne Eddy (Weatherwood), Gary Thede (Samm Beach Club), David Bangs (South Cove), Mike Barnett (Timberlake)

Other neighbors in attendance were: Bob Nersveen (South Cove), Carolyn Bader (S.E. 42nd St), Doris Ong (Greenwood Pt), Bob Hogan (Samm Beach Club), Pete Kelly (Meerwood), Judy Wedekind (Greenwood Point)

David Bangs led the meeting and started out by going over notes from the previous meeting.

Standing Rules

David Bangs passed out the draft standing rules for discussion.

Sammamish View and S.E. 42nd Street reps noted that they are interested in participating for the purpose of government affairs and will not get involved with any social events planned by the larger associations located near Meerwood Park. David agreed to revise the document to explain that social functions can be brainstormed at SLSA meetings but should be funded by participating organizations.

Other than this and the amount of the annual contribution (see below), all reps though the document was very good and could easily be adopted by their groups.

The revised DRAFT Standing Rules are posted at www.issaquahweb.org/slsa/standingrules.htm

Budget

The document called for each association to contribute 50 cents per year per home.

In preparing the budget, David Bangs noticed that SLSA currently owes South Cove $272, since South Cove has paid all expenses since the original contribution from other neighborhoods were fully spent in 2002. Proposing to pay South Cove back over a period of two years, David proposed the following budget.

Preliminary: Annual Income: $375 (Assuming groups representing 750 homes would each agree to contribute 50 cents per home)

Preliminary: Annual Expense:

$160 - Rent for four meetings at Sunset Elementary

$136 - Pay back South Cove over two years (Half of $272)

$79 - Program work or reserves for future program work.

- - - - - - - -

$375 - Total expenses

Craig Kinzer commented that the organization may not be able to do its work on $79 a year, or even close. David Bangs noted that the group did spend $372 on copying and mailing during 2002 for Annexation related communication, and may be called upon to do a similar project this year or next.

Craig moved that the contribution be increased to $1 per home. All reps agreed this was a good idea and they would support $1 per home. David noted that this number can be adjusted yearly, and can be lowered if SLSA does not need the funding in the future.

The revised 2005 budget is as follows:

Annual Income $860 (Representatives present at this meeting represent 860 homes, and all plan to participate in SLSA pending likely approval of others)

$160 - Rent for four meetings at Sunset Elementary in 2005

$312 - Pay South Cove $272 for past expenses PLUS $40 for this meeting.

$388 - 2005 Program work or reveres for future program work.

- - - - - - - - - - -

$860 - Total expenses

All neighborhood reps are fairly certain their groups will approve the standing rules and budget, but will need to check.

Per these standing rules, contributions are due March 1st, 2005, but earlier contribution is greatly appreciated.

Neighborhood Cooperation

We have talked in the past about expanding the Meerwood Ice Cream Social into a larger "South Lake Sammamish Days." Residents are favorable to this idea. David Bangs reported South Cove has budgeted $500 to contribute to such an event to occur in late August. This is the brainstorm of Mary Victory, president of Meerwood. We will discuss this further at the January meeting.

Per earlier discussion, SLSA will not be involved in the actual funding of this event or the annual garage sale. Those events will continue to be funded by participating homeowners associations.

Annexation

David Bangs reported that King County has made an offer to assist Issaquah in performing annexations. King County Councilman Ron Sims met with Issaquah Mayor Ava Frisinger and presented a letter in which the County offers to provide incentives to annex Klahanie. But South Cove/Greenwood Point does not qualify for incentives since it is not one of the largest 10 unincorporated areas in the county. However, incentives to annex Klahanie would require Issaquah to take Meerwood and Timberlake Park, implying that the County may view the two annexation areas as a package deal. Most significantly, the County incentives require Issaquah to make a decision regarding annexing these areas by January 30th, 2005 and would require actual annexation to take place by June 1, 2006.

Gary Thede reported that the City Council would hold a Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting Tuesday November 23 and would be going over this proposal. Public comments are not accepted at COW meetings. David Bangs will attend this meeting on behalf of SLSA and will notify the group when it would be helpful for others to attend future meetings at which public comments will be accepted. It is a very good idea to let the Council know that neighbors here support annexation and would like it to occur quickly.

Roads Maintenance and Speeding

David Bangs reported that little has come out of discussions last year with County Councilman David Iron's office regarding road maintenance and speeding mitigation. There has been no further discussion regarding speed mitigation circles, no action on the double yellow lines painted inappropriately on 190th, and very little progress on the road maintenance backlog. Police patrols had improved briefly, but are now back to previous levels.

Bangs suggested that we focus all our attention on road improvements. Issaquah has expressed that the road maintenance backlog (value at approximately $500,000) is an impediment to annexation. Councilman Irons has stated that our roads would be brought up to a level acceptable to Issaquah prior to annexation. But the incentive package offered by King County mentions nothing about the road maintenance backlog.

Members are encouraged to bring this up with Councilman Irons, and let the Issaquah City Council know that they should hold the County accountable to improve the quality of roads in this annexation area.

Blackberry Park

Scott Dahlquist reported that Lake West neighbors succeeded in getting a King County special use permit to improve the Blackberry Park, which is a pocket park in that neighborhood owned by King County. They also received a $10,000 grant from Starbucks Corp, and have used that grant to remove the old equipment and re-grade the entire park. With many of the blackberries removed, the park now looks much bigger and is certainly less bumpy.

Lake West neighbors will work on raising money and plan to install some new playground equipment by next Summer. Scott thinks the new equipment may cost approximately $20,000.

Lake Sammamish State Park

Gary Thede reported that at their December 4th meeting, the Lake Sammamish State Park Advisory Task Force will decide which park projects they will recommend to move forward.

Then

- The States Park board will make the final decision.

- The Environmental Impact Statement will take about 2 years. This will include analysis of traffic impact.

- Funds have to be raised and allocated.

- Actual improvements to the park will likely happen around 2010.

This is a long process. The planning web site is www.parks.wa.gov/plans/lksamm/

W Lake Sammamish Parkway

Melody Scherting described how residents in her neighborhood (Sammamish View) worked with the City to lower the speed limit to 30MPH. The effort was inspired by the extremely inadequate walking strip between the roads and houses.

She reported that she also discussed future road improvements with someone in the City, who felt that the road could never be widened but could possibly be re-striped.

The road currently has bike/walking paths on both sides which are too narrow. We discussed the idea of re-striping it to create a single wider bike/walking path on the north side of the road, protected from traffic by a curb. We took an informal poll, and all representatives feel re-striping W. Lake Sammamish Parkway in this way is a good idea and that SLSA should consider adopting a stand in favor of such a road improvement.

Roundabout

Gary Thede reported that WashDOT will be replacing the roundabout road surface to improve traffic flow and a representative will want to come to our Winter meeting to make a presentation on that project. Gary will arrange for the representative to attend.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be scheduled for a Thursday early in February, perhaps February 3rd.
David and Gary will work this out and let everybody know.

More SLSA Meeting Notes