UPDATED: Pierce County Council moving final hearing on Sumner UGA to Oct. 25.

UPDATE: New information has come in that the Pierce County Council will not be hearing public testimony on the Sumner Urban Growth Area "Orton Junction Amendment" and the issue will be continued until next week, Oct. 25.

UPDATE: New information has come in that the Pierce County Council will not be hearing public testimony on the Sumner Urban Growth Area “Orton Junction Amendment” and the issue will be continued until next week, Oct. 25.

The Pierce County Council has issued notice that the final hearing on 2011 amendments to the Pierce County Comprehensive Plan will take place today at 3 p.m. By extension, the hearing will also decide the fate of the amendment that would allow the 182-acre Orton Junction development in Sumner.

The meeting will take place at 930 Tacoma Ave. S. Room 1045 in Tacoma. The hearing in question is Proposal No. 2011-60s, listed under Section VIII, List Item 2 on the agenda.

Sumner’s city council met last night at 6 p.m. to make a final agreement with Cascade Land Conservancy and Orton Farms LLC regarding Seven Principles guiding development on the project should it pass at council. That agreement can be found here at the City of Sumner website.

Opponents of the project continue to make efforts against it. This morning, Sumner resident Katharine Rode submitted a short documentary, titled “Save Our Farms,” to media outlets this morning. Orton Junction is mentioned briefly, by Rode’s 10-year-old daughter Madelyn, toward the end of the video. Madelyn also submitted a letter of protest against Orton Junction, the text of which is below:

To Whom It May Concern,

I truly believe that Orton Junction should not take place because of the following reasons:

• It will make Sumner a bigger town. i know sometimes people say bigger is better, but i strongly disagree in this circumstance, because I know and love Sumner as a quaint little town, not a town that has a 100 acre shopping mall!

• It will take away from downtown business. The city is all about how downtown is so great, but, what are the odds of a person going to downtown over a 100 acre shopping mall? I believe that 3 out of 10 people would.

• It will badly injure transportation. Since the city cut busing, how are people supposed to get there? If the city worked on making Sumner a “walkable town” then why did they put Orton Junction so far away? Explain that.

Sincerely,

Madelyn Rode, Age 10

P.S. I wrote this on my own.