[This letter was written by Snoqualmie resident Elaine Armstrong. You can send your letters of support for candidates to info@livingsnoqualmie.com]
Dear Editor,
I appreciate your excellent coverage of changes in Snoqualmie. I want to encourage everyone to vote for Fuzzy Fletcher for mayor. I am concerned at the lack of responsiveness of the current city government and rampant increase in large projects, and annexations.
I first woke up to these issues when I received a notice of a very large increase in my water bill over the next very few years to pay for future growth. My water bill will be higher than my power bill! Shouldn’t the new developers pay some significant part of this new cost? Then I found out from a concerned citizen that a hotel would be built across the street from me. I never received the proper notice and when citizens protested, they were shut down and told they had no say at that point. Why are we rushing growth and annexations?
Citizens of Snoqualmie, do you really think this growth will improve your daily lives? Traffic on Snoqualmie Parkway will get far worse as annexations dump their users on this only road through our city. These plans make no sense.
Vote for Fuzzy Fletcher. He will listen to us. He will hold public meetings to get our ideas about what we want for our growth. He will respond to our concerns and not shut us down. Fuzzy Fletcher cares about our daily experience, the beauty of the land and the safety of the residents. Be careful! If we don’t watch city hall, no one else will.
Sincerely,
Elaine Armstrong, Snoqualmie resident
Comments
People think he will stop all growth, Fuzzy is for growth just FYI especially the Weyerhaeuser site. Just being responsible about it.
I suggest people talk to Fuzzy. I did. One of his main points is that cities can’t grow their way out of debt, and he has documented examples of cities who have shown this. He also knows in detail how polluted the Mill Site is and how difficult and expensive it will be to develop. I don’t know if Fuzzy is getting my vote yet, I need to hear from the other candidates. I’m 100% certain I’m voting against our current mayor.
Thank you Elaine! You make excellent points – I will vote for Fuzzy.
Fuzzy was not a great Mayor the first time he was in office and doesn’t have Ridge residents interests at heart.
Protest all you want, but some of these projects were part of the MASTER PLAN when Weyerhaeuser sold the land to develop this community! Not everyone gets to have an opinion on everything!
Our community is still quaint, beautiful and Mayor Larson has done an incredible job cleaning up what was a small, dying city under Fuzzy.
Do your homework…..future projects like the retirement community are NOT supported by Mayor Larson. There is a faction of people that are trying to confuse you on the issues because they support a particular candidate….so dont’t be fooled, the hotel was part of the plan long before most of us moved here.
The hotel was not supposed to be as large as it became (originally planned to be a boutique hotel), the 50′ buffer was part of the original plan. Matt Larson says that the 50′ buffer was not required, and he used it as a bargaining chip to negotiate with developers. An engineering report found that the storm water pond used by the hotel lot is not large enough to accommodate the storm water when they removed the 50 foot buffer.
Matt Larson supported city council’s vote to approve the amendments for the hotel, knowing that the city was in violation of municipal code. The code violation was not mailing notices to 117 property owners within 500 feet of the hotel. The city council and mayor were presented this fact minutes before the city council unanimously approved the amendments and for the mayor to sign a contract for the hotel to move forward. The city council, mayor and city staff were notified 15 times about the proximity of these property owners and the 5 story hotel between February and April.
Currently the hotel is waiting for a response from the developer on how to remediate the storm water drainage situation. The engineering report is about 200 pages long.
Yes, the hotel was part of the plan. BUT… not in the location. We actually had to set ASIDE development standards that were part of THE PLAN to acoomodare this hotel. This poster is either uninformed or deliberately trying to distort the truth as she claims others are trying to do. This hotel is simply in the wrong place – right by the hospital would be more appropriate. It is too high, too close to the Parkway, and ties up a key piece of town center real estate for a development that will not be used by Joe-citizen. All the while our current Mayor has remained aloft, inaccessible (just try to contact him), less than straightforward (this is charitable…. it really seems like they go out of their way to backroom deal and then have quiet, poorly advertised meetings for community input) and has sought another office while holding this one. Meanwhile we see poor land use decisions in spades and a traffic mess. I will not vote for Mayor Larson. IMHO… we need a full stop on development until our traffic woes are resolved.
Issaquah v2