Last week, the City of Black Diamond voted against the voiced concerns of local residents, as well as the recommendations of the City’s own Planning Commission, concerns of the neighboring city Maple Valley, some Enumclaw school district board members, and even our own Puget Sound 20-year growth plan, when they accepted a new extremely lax Comprehensive Plan.

They essentially let OakPointe (developer of Ten Trails and future Lawson Hills) off the hook from previously agreed upon requirements that should have grown the necessary infrastructure of the city, much of which OakPointe has already failed to fulfill by their agreed-upon timelines.

The planned growth should have been revised down in scope of future builds to reflect OakPointe’s lack of accountability and track record thus far in failing to deliver on their infrastructure upgrades. However, shockingly, the City has seemed eager to agree with these big developers. The city is giving them a way out of many legally binding infrastructure improvement requirements.

The problems here are blatantly obvious for anyone who has even driven through and seen the dense scope of the current Ten Trails development, which only accounts for 25% of the total future builds OakPointe has been granted by the City. The city’s current infrastructure has meager roads, unsafe and traffic-burdened intersections, overflowing schools, small city government offices, slow Fire and EMS response times, and no funding to even staff the new poorly-located fire station. Not to mention OakPointe’s failure to secure promised conservation easements, and failure to build ball fields by this time.

This is already too much for this small town to try and support, and now these problems and their costs, which should have been paid by OakPointe, are instead being passed down to residents.

Why is our City’s leadership abandoning the well-being of its city and residents? Why are they letting big developers walk away with even fatter bank accounts, while expecting residents to pick up the tab in higher taxes?

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 4th. This is may be the last chance we have to fight for any relief from this mess.

I’m recommending Geoff Bowie for Mayor, and Mario Sorci and Dan dal Santo for Council to replace current leadership.

Tamara Katen

Black Diamond