FAQs

The Operations Facility is “home-base” for the City’s Parks, Public Works and Fleet staff. From this location, staff check your water supply to provide you consistent, clean water; work on roads; maintain parks and trails; keep stormwater systems running to avoid urban flooding; sweep the streets regularly; de-ice, sand and plow roads when it snows; make and install street signs; maintain vehicles for all departments including Police. 

The bulk of the work for these staff are out in the field all around the facility. They’ll rely on this Facility to store equipment, vehicles and resources. The new facility also offers a place for our staff to take breaks, hold meetings, clean up after muddy jobs, conduct training and track projects. 

We have severely outgrown our existing site, which is literally hemmed in on all sides by the river, a road and restricted shoreline land. We can’t grow in our current location. Just to give you an idea of how cramped it is, the ladies restroom doubles as file storage. This new facility will also allow us to bring more departments together. For example, our Parks Dept can’t even fit in the existing facility anymore. 

Our crews usually work Monday through Friday, 6:30 am to 3:30 pm. Sometimes, we come in during the night for emergency situations throughout the city such as a snowfall, a windstorm, a broken water main, etc. In these situations, you may hear some brief activity as we gather equipment, but nearly all after-hours work is out in the field, not within the facility itself.

In short, expect about the same amount of noise or less than from a residential neighbor. Our practices are similar to a residential neighbor doing maintenance work around the house or garage. Yet, we don’t throw parties at night or on weekends. 

The times we make the most noise throughout the day will be things like starting trucks, using a small excavator to load sand or gravel, and handling materials like barricades. Most noise is from loading/starting equipment to go out in the field. It’s worth noting that we’ve been investing in new equipment lately. Like your own vehicle, newer work vehicles run much quieter than their older predecessors. 

The highest noise levels we create, such as mowing lawns, blowing leaves, sweeping streets, happens throughout the city, not at this facility. The activity that remains at the facility—like Fleet changing the oil in vehicles or making street signs—happens indoors. 

We realize our shift starts fairly early on weekdays. We are working on procedures to keep us quiet neighbors in the morning and on call-outs. Design includes a 10-12 foot high concrete wall to help deflect any sound. Another simple idea is making sure we back our vehicles into the sheds at the end of the day so that we’re pulling forward in the morning or on a call-out, greatly reducing the chance of a back-up sound. 

No. We maintain roads, parks and public facilities. Our goal is to work on them as early in the day as possible to avoid disturbing the people using them. The fact is, as the day goes on, more and more people crowd into these spaces, making work on them very difficult and frustrating for the public as well as our crews.

No, you don't.

Our site will be secured with a proper system.

No. On the side bordering residential neighbors, there will be buffer. We’re building a 10'-16’ high wall that will screen all equipment and storage from view. Tell growing evergreen shrubs will be planted to obscure the view of the building over time. In addition, this wall will be 20 feet back from the property line, leaving an area of landscaping that the City will maintain. 

From the street, our administrative offices are designed to echo farmhouses found in the Valley over 100 years ago. Although the idea of beauty is subjective, this is a well-designed facility that is not the normal sheds and structures you see at our current facility or in most other cities. From the street, one building will be 15' back from the property line and the other 50' back.

It will be more trips than were generated by the homes that were previously there but less trips than you’re used to from the neighboring warehouses. We're working to get you some specific numbers, but our facility generally has relatively few trips in and out of it on a typical workday, especially in comparison with the thousands of trips from other vehicles that 142^nd already serves on a typical weekday. Again, we'll update this answer soon with more specific numbers.

It should make your access easier. The properties we acquired were missing sidewalks. As part of construction, we will build in the curb, gutter and sidewalk, adding much safer options for you to walk or bike to amenities like the 24^th Street interchange and connect to the Sumner Link Trail for the safest walking and biking option.

Whenever we’re asked to install a light, as we often are by many neighborhoods, we do trip analysis to see if the traffic volumes meet minimal levels to consider first a four-way stop and then a full traffic signal. We hold ourselves to the same standard. Our engineers are studying this intersection this year to determine what we will need.

We did a thorough analysis of all available land throughout Sumner. This area was the only viable option big enough to serve our needs well into the future. Access was our other consideration. Our only other option was toward the edge of the City, which would have distanced all our emergency equipment from the residents and businesses we serve. In a year when we’ve responded to protect homes and businesses from snow and ice, floods, urban wildfire, and windstorm damage, it’s clear we need access to our emergency supplies as quickly and easily as possible.

No more than what’s in your neighbor’s garage. Because we maintain public facilities, we likely use less harsh chemicals than most private residents and businesses use. This facility itself is going through strict review for environmental impacts, more so than a residential home. We also have on staff a Local Source Control specialist who guides all businesses in Sumner, including us, in following the safest standards for storing any oils or other materials on site to prevent any pollution spills in the first place. More so, it’s from this facility that we respond to other people’s spills to help contain them and minimize environmental damage, yet another reason this facility needs to be centrally located with good access to all sections of the city.