Rumors & Questions

Yes, the project is running behind schedule. It sounds like some situations arose between the contractor and Sound Transit. In other words, we didn't cause the delays!   

Yes, all of these concerns and more were addressed during the 2024 permit process. We actually posted about this project over a year ago on this Rumors page. I'll repost it here so that you don't have to scroll down.  

The City did receive a proposal from a BESS in 2024. The GreenWater facility proposal came from a company called Bright Night, who is planning to develop this facility on private property in Sumner’s Manufacturing Industrial Center. The owner and developer went through the Pre-Application Process, which the City encourages any large project to do in order to review any impacts, zoning issues or other challenges before a project applies for permits. This project did that pre-application. From April through July 2024, the City put the project through a State Environment Protection Act (SEPA) Process for the full development and a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) process, per our code, for the transmission lines. These processes involved a lot of both required and proactive engagement to review concerns from the City, from East Pierce Fire & Rescue, from the health department, from neighbors and from the public. Topics reviewed included everything from ensuring drive lanes accommodated the turning radius of a fire engine to assessing this project’s proximity adjacent to one of the City’s wells. You can still review all the topics addressed and assessed, including water supply and fire safety. 

UPDATE: I'm hearing that the documents you want on the Notice of Decision page take a really long time to load. There are multiple big documents, so that makes sense. Let me try to give you their links directly. Here's the link to the Emergency Response Plan: https://sumnerwa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Emergency-Response-Plan-ERP-BESS-Tesla-Draft_v1.pdf that answers your question about the preventative measures. You'll also want to review the SEPA Checklist which is available here: https://sumnerwa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Noticed_-SEPA-Checklist_Revised-4.24.24_v3.pdf. That gets you details on all the other factors evaluated, including groundwater. Hopefully, this makes it easier to get to the details quickly. Also, I'm checking on a direct contact for Bright Night. As soon as I have that, I'll update the answer again. 

To ensure concerns were addressed from the public the process included public notices, signs on the site, posts in the City’s e-newsletter and on social media, and postcards mailed to neighboring properties, inviting them to a public information session held on the site. Bright Night also attended the City’s Spring 2024 Open House at City Hall to share information and answer questions. Although the formal comment periods have ended now nearly two years ago, this new technology may continue to generate questions such as yours. If you have concerns, please do not rely on rumors heard from your neighbor or viewed on social media; instead, please contact Bright Night directly to talk through your concerns and get your questions answered.

Also, since then, the City has also updated its code to more clearly specify requirements and process around battery energy storage systems in our commercial and manufacturing areas. They will not be an allowed use in any residential zones.

Like most issues, homelessness does not "see" borders, so Sumner has impacts all the time from things happening in other jurisdictions, as our choices also likely impact our neighbors. For that reason, we work across borders on solutions too. Frankly, the thing outside our borders that will most impact Sumner is the State's proposed bill HB 2489, which narrowly passed out of committee yesterday. Through this bill, the State would prohibit cities from clearing any public space including sidewalks, parks, etc. from activities including storage of personal belongings. Visit our Legislative Agenda page for more information on this bill and our concerns with it. 

No. In fact, we’re taking some measures specifically so that we don’t need a new City Hall anytime soon. It is true that the current City Hall is beyond capacity. Our staff fit, sort of, thanks to hybrid work schedules with some working alternating days from home to share the limited spaces in City Hall. We also repurposed former hallways and closets as offices. However, we have not been able to add other key necessities like restrooms, so things still get a bit tight, with minimal restroom facilities and minimal storage even for key records that must be retained. We really don’t want to build a new City Hall, so we’re buying our community some time and space with a creative plan to move the Council Chambers out of City Hall. Then, our current Chambers can be used for badly needed offices and other necessary spaces. 

Where would Council Chambers go? We are currently designing a building to provide a community space in Heritage Park. That building’s main purpose will be a ground-floor indoor gathering space that flows with the park’s exterior features. It gives individuals and groups spaces to work and meet indoors, similar to the outdoor seating we had at the park last year. It would also be a space that could be rented for special occasions. The inspiration for this is The Hangar at Kenmore. The building also includes a second story with five staff work spaces. During design, we added a third story for the Council Chambers. In addition to freeing up badly needed space in City Hall, this move also allows the new Council Chambers to be used as a secondary, smaller space for other public meetings that complements the large gathering space that is the building’s primary purpose. Construction is not funded yet, so we have no time-frame when this building will be constructed and the move made. The current construction at Heritage Park is to build Phase 2 only, which is the northern-most tip of the park (closest to Main Street) and does not include the building. We see where things get confusing, but we can also assure you that moving Council Chambers and adding a few work spaces for staff does not equate to a “new city hall.” 

Those were the crosswalks with the decorative daffodil stamp in them, right? These seemed like a good idea when we installed them many years ago. However, we found two big issues with them since. First, they were very hard to maintain and refresh as the color/design was stamped into the asphalt rather than a normal paint that we can easily repaint. Second and more important, since those were installed, the general idea of decorative crosswalks became a larger debate nationally. The Federal Highway Administration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) directs uniform traffic markings across jurisdictions. They have emphasized that all marked crosswalks* should be the standard white bars with no variation. Our insurance also noted that any deviation, even the daffodils, puts a higher liability on the city if someone were to be struck in that crosswalk. 

While we like decoration, the priority for crosswalks needs to be safety. Since the old crosswalks were stamped into the asphalt, we patched the roadway, and the new compliant crosswalks are much easier to maintain and refresh as needed. We've redirected our artistic pursuits to other channels, like wrapping utility boxes with artwork, that hopefully don't involve other complications. 

*Just a caveat to drivers. A crosswalk actually exists where two streets intersect, whether it's marked or not. Once the City marks a crosswalk, we have to follow MUTCD guidelines for safety, but that doesn't mean drivers are off the hook to still yield to pedestrians even in an unmarked crosswalk. 

The short answer is yes. The biggest update currently happening is construction of the missing separated trail along Fryar Avenue, a project going into construction this year for $7.2 million. (Yes, these projects are very expensive.) We're able to do this one thanks to a Federal grant for design and construction funding from a WSDOT Bike & Pedestrian Grant. There are lots of other plans for bike lanes and improvements, but there's not a lot of other funding to do them. You offered some great suggestions and the one I'd also add is smooth roadways. Crumbling roads negatively affect everyone, vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles. We know that even our routine road maintenance is underfunded, and we're falling behind. We go after any grant we can find, but it's highly competitive for the grants that are available, and there's no grant funding for residential road maintenance. All this summer, the Council has been considering a Transportation Benefit District (link) to provide a revenue source specifically for roadways. You might want to explore this more and what it would mean for Sumner's roadways, including for bicyclists. 

Yes, we agree. We have indeed been working on our long-term water rights for a long, long time. In fact, Sumner volunteered and was selected to serve as one of four cities in Washington to pilot ways to mitigate water rights after the Foster lawsuit of 2015 greatly changed a city's ability to obtain future water rights. 

That said, I should probably clarify that you got the flyer this summer because a number of other issues affected our water simultaneously. First, the south tank was not online yet because a routine paint job got delayed. We started it in January specifically to be done before summer, but it didn't go that way for various reasons. Second, higher than normal levels of manganese were coming out of another well, and we've been on the phone routinely with the filter manufacturer about why the filters aren't working as well as they should. We were never out of water, but we always want to ensure enough supply in storage not just for everyday use but also in case of a fire. 

Providing water is a complex system. We have been and continue to watch our water rights for long-term growth. Even with those efforts, there likely will be times when various factors make us need your help to chip in with some minor adjustments to preserve our supply during peak use seasons.

Water conservation is always a good idea! There are lots of tips, one of which is to water every-other day. Here are a few more: 

• Water in early morning/late evening when more water goes to the plants and less into the air through evaporation. 
• Plant based on a plant's preference for shade vs. sun. No amount of water can make a shade-loving species happy in full sun. 
• Run only full loads in the laundry and dishwasher. Ignore those commercials (from detergent companies), trying to get you to run even partial loads. 
• Sweep/blow pavement to clean it rather than use a hose. 

More tips are available at https://www.epa.gov/watersense/start-saving. 

In addition, our crews always watch the recovery level of our tanks. So far, we are seeing heavy water use in the daytime, and the tanks are recovering at night. If we see that change later in the summer, watering restrictions are one strategy we may use. Our goal is to always ensure we have enough water for personal use as well as to maintain a good fire flow in case of fire. Again, that's not necessary now, and we'll keep monitoring through the summer. 

Sure! In the 2024 session, the State legislature considered a State-wide ban on the sale of gas equipment, but I don't believe it passed. We didn't hear of any return efforts in the 2025 session. City governments like ours are under a State mandate to prioritize purchasing non-gas vehicles for our fleet, but I haven't heard of anything extending to equipment for us yet. Happy mowing! 

Unfortunately, this time, the Sk8 Park was closed for more than graffiti and vandalism. It started that way, but as we were cleaning up, we noticed several significant cracks throughout the bowl. We called in a specialist to review the park, and it is aging with major structural issues. The Sk8 Park is closed indefinitely. We know that’s not the news you wanted to hear. There are skate parks in Puyallup, Bonney Lake, Milton and Lakeland Hills. If transportation is an issue, check in with Beyond the Borders, a County service that offers free rides to youth 12-17. Their regular route does not get you close to another skatepark, but I believe they will deviate their route if you schedule it ahead of time. More info: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/4856/Beyond-The-Borders