I call on you, the Bellevue City Council, to reject the Rinker/Scherer proposals along the Gannett Road as excessive given the physical, environmental and financial realities we face.
As to your traffic considerations on May 31st, I offer the following:
· The Wood River Valley will always be a narrow mountain valley, currently served by a single, mostly two-lane highway, rated at or near the bottom with regards to efficiency and safety. ITD has warned us that monies for the expansion of Highway 75 to four lanes are not in the pipeline.
· Gridlock is a real possibility as, for example, the commute between Gannett Road and Fox Acres now at 12 minutes at peak rush hour could become 20 minutes or more especially during bad weather periods. Additional stoplights in Bellevue and Countryside Boulevard can only make things worse.
· Gannett Road itself rated for a maximum of 9,000 vehicle trips per day, laughable for some, will only marginally benefit from a center turn-lane with regards to through traffic. Multiple access and egress points will disrupt what remains at the rural lifestyle of neighbors bordering the Rinker/Scherer projects.
· The neighborhoods Manookian, Griffin Ranch and Bellevue Farms cannot avoid being engulfed by the high-density residential, commercial and light-industry traffic. Further south, Baseline, Pero, Glendale Road East and Highway 20 and its dangerous intersection with Highway 75 will be heavily impacted.
· Public monies to mitigate the impacts outlined above are not now currently available. Only heavy borrowing and attendant property-tax increases will address this issue.
I am amazed at the historic willingness of local governments to give license to massive developments without infrastructure being in place and only years later at triple the public expense and disruption attempt to deal with what can only be described as reckless urban sprawl.
Rinker/Scherer could surely come back to Bellevue with projects of worth to themselves and you at a tenth of the impact.
At the very least, I ask you to publicly express your views of the issues herein outlined.
Jay Coleman
Bellevue
