Snohomish council to affirm denial of BSRE application for Point Wells

Point Wells
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

The Sno-King Environmental Protection Coalition, a volunteer group opposing the Point Wells development, has issued this statement after the Snohomish County Council's hearing of BSRE's appeal of the Hearing Examiner's denial of their project.

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It's not quite over yet, but the long effort to block BSRE's attempt to build a small city at Point Wells took another positive step forward on Wednesday afternoon. After a few hours of public testimony and 15 minutes in executive session, Council members directed their staff to prepare a motion affirming the Hearing Examiner's decision denying BSRE's application.

The Council worked through a list of 16 issues under appeal and in a series of 4 - 0 votes requested each of the 16 issues be included in the motion to affirm the decision. The unanimous votes taken without discussion made it clear that the Council was not impressed by BSRE's arguments.

Council staff will create the final wording of the motion affirming the HE's decision. The motion is expected to come to a vote on Monday, October 8 at the regular Council meeting which starts at 10:30am.

RB and Woodway neighborhoods well represented

Local Point Wells expert Tom McCormick used his extensive knowledge of the issues to create 15 comment papers covering the most critical areas under appeal. Sno-King Coalition leaders Jerry Patterson and Tom Mailhot recruited a small army of RB and Woodway residents to travel to Everett to read the papers to the Council. In total there were 20 speakers against the appeal and only BSRE speaking in favor of the appeal.

A Snohomish County manager commented after the hearing that this was the most impressive public comment showing he had ever seen in his long career in government.

What's next?

While passage of the final motion seems all but assured, BSRE could still file an appeal in Superior Court. BSRE has only a few weeks to file the appeal so we will know soon if they decide to continue the appeal process.

Sno-King Environmental Protection Coalition