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Baker Creek North up for final council decision

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Comments

David S. Wall

The North Baker Creek development decision should be relatively simple-“Vote No!”

This project should never have received serious consideration.

Shut this project down with extreme prejudice.

Be prepared to see increases in Municipal Service Fees if the North Baker Creek project is approved and becomes operational.

…And remember-Municipal Service Fees should be redefined by the “Voters” as Taxes requiring “votes” to raise and or lower them.

David S. Wall

PAO

One of the major issues is traffic on Baker Creek Road. Two private citizens paid for a hard traffic count using a cable and got about 6,000 more car trips a day than the extrapolated one submitted by the applicant. The primary argument against the hard traffic count results is a traffic plan done in 2010 and not updated since. That plan was started in 2003 and didn't reflect the major economic downturn in 2008/9. The planning and engineering departments, as well as some of councilors, deem the 2010 plan, which states a 46,000 population versus our actual 34,000, as the most accurate traffic information source. The argument is that the total McMinnville population is less so all the 2010 projections should be fine. What is being ignored is that the majority of all the development that has occurred in McMinnville has happened in the northwest.

If this development is approved, more than 900 housing units will have been approved in the past two years, all using Baker Creek Road as their primary access. To put this in perspective,in about 2005 Mac building permits peaked at around 250 total for the entire city. Until recently, that was the highest number in decades.

The area that is currently being built, referred to as BCS, has 278 housing units. Our planning commission vetoed BCS by unanimous vote and took a lot of heat for their decision. The planning director recommended the city council override the commission's BCS veto.

As proposed, BCN will have 400 housing units. In this case, the council is questioning the application and the planning director is recommending that the council submit to the commission's vote.

Joel

Open letter to Mayor and City Council: You want to build more houses? Then build more roads first. Can't build more roads? Then no new houses.

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