Rumors & Questions

Sure! Any comments submitted to the clerk by email or as a hard copy at the meeting are attached to the minutes of that meeting. So, for example, in the screenshot below, this email received for the December 2 meeting appears after the minutes for that meeting. To find those, go to https://sumnerwa.gov/council/agendas-minutes-videos/ and select the meeting date. To access past meetings, scroll up. This is a style feature from our vendor that we can't change. It's great...once you realize it. Then, after selecting the correct meeting, click on Minutes (highlighted in this screenshot). The minutes are posted for a meeting after they're approved by the Council at the next regular council meeting. So, these minutes for December 2nd went online after they were approved at the December 9th special meeting. Typically, they will appear after two weeks as the Council's regular meetings are usually the first and third Mondays of the month. This is a bit beyond your specific question, but it's worth clarifying that this is how the public sees the record of these comments. Councilmembers receive them before the meeting (if by email) or at the meeting (if submitted in print at the meeting).

Multiple aspects affect the safety of our roads. One part is indeed engineering. We received a Federal grant to study several intersections along Main Street, including at Parker Road, for potential changes. We'll be conducting that study this year. We also have a Traffic Safety Team that meets routinely with staff from Public Works, Police and other departments to review and assess ways to improve road safety throughout our city.

Unfortunately, engineering only gets us so far. We also get complaints of drivers blowing through two-way, four-way and even signaled intersections. The collision at Parker & Main early this morning involved a driver under the influence. That's why another safety component is enforcement. No amount of signs or lights can overcome drivers' poor decisions involving speed, distractions, DUI, or even aggression. Our police department uses education and enforcement to try to reduce those behaviors as much as possible, but unfortunately, it's not within our power to eliminate them.

Good question! Here's the answer from the Deputy Chief: 
Parking enforcement in residential areas is typically only done in response to calls for service. And, complaints that are a safety risk (like moving violations) are prioritized over parking complaints. At night, we typically only have two officers working, so they don’t proactively enforce parking violations.
Thank you to everyone who takes the extra moment to park facing the right direction.

The City did receive a proposal from a BESS. 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. Over the past few months, the City has 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 only. 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.

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 Open House at City Hall to share information and answer questions. Although the formal comment periods have ended, we recognize this is new technology may continue to generate questions. 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.

Moving forward, the City is updating 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.

The challenge is that we don't control that light; it's under the jurisdiction of Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). Our Traffic Safety Team, which includes staff from Public Works and Police, shares a lot of the same frustrations you have mentioned for quite awhile. We have reached out repeatedly to WSDOT to ask them to adjust the timing, suggesting that after the lights on SR162 turn red, there should be a couple second delay before the light from Rivergrove turns green. Sometimes, the red-light runners are simply running red lights. We've seen drivers get more aggressive across the region. In other cases, though, a heavy vehicle, like a dump truck, physically can't stop abruptly, and the light settings should account for heavy use by such vehicles. Members of Public Works and Police have repeatedly reached out to WSDOT to no avail. Perhaps if you reach out to them, you'll be able to succeed where we have not. As for enforcement, that also means that Highway 162 is outside Sumner Police Department's jurisdiction and is under Washington State Patrol or Pierce County. While our officers can operate outside our jurisdiction for mutual aid (major collision or incident) or task force patrols, it would not be the most appropriate thing for our staff to purposefully patrol outside our jurisdiction. It's a very awkward circumstance where we don't have jurisdiction on SR 162 but then have it again within the neighborhood.

Earlier in the year, we contracted Pierce County to repaint the road stripes. We also used a different contractor to redo some crosswalks in the city, but it sounds like this particular one was not on the schedule for this year's repaint. The City’s Public Works crew will take a look at the crosswalk you mention to see if it needs attention sooner. 

With all that said, though, a crosswalk exists wherever two roads intersect. This is a good time to remind drivers that you're to yield to pedestrians at all crosswalks, whether there's paint or not. Lots of crosswalks throughout the city have never been painted, yet they exist.

That's a good question. Those are operated by Pierce County, so they would know any plans for the future. Here's their contact page: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/5742/Contact-Us-About-Us. We'll try to send your question to them as well. If you haven't already, you may want to also sign up for Pierce County Alert and Sumner Alert. (Links below). Those are intended to buzz your phone, which might get your attention anyway better than a siren, especially in the middle of the night. Sumner Alert includes more local alerts while Pierce County Alert can be useful, especially in a lahar, as we're also trying to evacuate at the same time. 

Pierce County Alert: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/921/Pierce-County-ALERT

Sumner Alert: https://sumnerwa.gov/sumner-alert/

UPDATE: Any remaining plaques have been confirmed as surplus property and will be available for the public to pick up on September 9, 2024. Review more details about this process.

The fountain at the tip of Heritage Park was at the end of its life with ongoing maintenance issues and constant vandalism. The plaques within the fountain were also at the end of their life, brittle, cracked and nearly illegible. See the picture below. The City removed it last year as part of the work to replace/upgrade the utilities under Main Street, Kincaid and Cherry Avenues and to repave with the at-level "woonerf" plaza that connects the park to its adjacent blocks with no curb. This design better allows events to use the space without a tripping hazard and  still allows vehicle access on "normal" days while helping slow down drivers in a pedestrian-friendly area.

There were also decorative bricks behind the fountain that people bought to engrave names. Those also had to be removed for the same project. It turns out, they were not installed as full bricks but as decorations that were a fraction of the depth of a real brick. They were also secured really well. In removing both the fountain plaques and the bricks, most bricks and some plaques simply shattered. We documented the names included before the project. Although some of the plaques are in storage, they are in no condition to be put into use again. 

Heritage Park is currently in the process of a complete redesign. See the project page for updates and details. This year is the full design process to take the park from conceptual design to construction-ready. Then, we have to find funding for construction. This will take time. We are committed to returning the names to the park as part of the redesign and will find a way to honor the names that were on the plaques and bricks. If you have specific suggestions on what you think that should look like, let us know. 

The former fountain had reached its end of life with the plaque inserts cracked, brittle and very difficult to read. 

 

 

 

That phase is not funded yet. I believe the vote for the bond that includes funding for it will be on the November ballot. The Sumner-Bonney Lake School District will have more information.

You'd have to ask the people/organization that planned those.