What has Black Diamond done?
City Council members (Leih) Mulvihill, (Kristine) Hanson, (Bill) Boston, (William) Saas and (Craig) Goodwin; Mayor (Rebecca)Olness; Community Development Director (Steve) Pilcher; city attorneys (Bob) Sterbank and (Michael)Kenyon; these names shall live long in infamy. These people betrayed the citizens of Black Diamond, forever ruining our lovely little town, destroying the trees, eliminating the habitat for elk, deer, bear, coyotes, bobcats, bald eagles, raccoons, opossum and all the other lovely animals that live here and have often been seen by residents.
And they have ruined our property values, probably forever knocking 25 percent more off the values of our homes. And they have made traffic, not only for Black Diamond, a town at the end of nothing but two lane roads, and with no money in either state or King County budgets to remedy this for the next 20 years.
How have they done this? By approving without any staging levels the master planned developments for Yarrow Bay to build 6,050 homes way out in the sticks, in the farthest southeast suburb of King County. How ridiculous to build a highly urbanized city that is only connected by two lane roads to Seattle, and probably dumping 10,000 cars on the road at rush hour to add another hour to the Seattle commute of anyone who lives in Black Diamond, Covington or Maple Valley. And how bizarre, how ludicrous to build a humongous development with a density of nine homes per acre out in the middle of nowhere.
Nine homes per acre, one house on a postage stamp, you expect to see this in Shanghai, in Mumbai, but in a suburb in the United States? In what used to be a lovely forested area in our beautiful evergreen state? I guess YarrowBay and the leadership of Black Diamond want us to rename ourselves the concrete state.
The YarrowBay application was extremely weak in the areas of finance, traffic, protection of water resources, other concern for the environment (wild animals and trees) and especially in justification of such a large number of homes – three times the number that King County had planned for growth in the area for the next 20 years. A multitude of experts gave serious testimony on all these issues. Yet from day one of all the months of hearings, it was clear that YarrowBay had the city staff wrapped around their little fingers. YarrowBay kept on saying that the City Council had no legal alternative but to approve the MPDs, the staff agreed (why?), and unfortunately the City Council believed them. How ludicrous. The City Council can pass new ordinances. I thought that is why we elect them, after all. Ordinances to protect the citizens’ interests, instead of the interests of outside developers. The City Council could have pointed out that Yarrow Bay had too many gaping holes in their proposals, and stopped the process.
But also of very serious concern, this is a city council which included three members who had initially recused themselves from voting, due to possible conflicts of interest. One of the council members even failed to state the reason for their recusal – and then proceeded for the rest of the process to try and railroad any discussions that were in any way harmful to YarrowBay.
After the three recused themselves, this created a situation where there was no longer a quorum, which triggered a law that allowed recused members the option of voting anyway, in spite of their conflict of interest. But if any of them had had any honor, they would have refused to participate, which might have killed the MPDs until some future time where we had better legal protection for the important issues.
As I said, the names of all of them should be remembered for the legacy they have left to ruin southeast King County for the future. How sad for all of us.
Michael E. Irrgang
Black Diamond
