Beach Drive resident Mike Winter, who lives across the street from the repeat-slide zone that was discussed by the City Council Transportation Committee on Tuesday, kept his promise to summarize last night’s closed meeting between city officials and neighbors. He just sent the summary – including word that the neighbors, disappointed, are looking into hiring a lawyer. Full report after the jump:
Last night 21 community members from Atlas Pl and Beach Dr met with City officials at our home to discuss the “Beach Dr SW landslide” situation. Attending from the City were Diane Sugimura and Susan Chang from DPD, and Peter Hahn and Mary Rutherford from SDOT. The community’s goal was to listen to what the City had to say, determine what the fix for the hillside might be, and the timetable to accomplish it. I stated we were looking for a comprehensive plan to fix the entire hillside, which addressed both private property and the undeveloped Gordon Pl. right of way. We also stated we wanted to stop pointing fingers and work together to solve this problem.
The City gave a little background as to the pending action against the upslope property owner, but gave no real additional information from what was said in the City Council meeting the previous day. After much discussion, it became essentially clear that the pending suit against the property owner, which has now been delayed at least another 2-3 months at a minimum, only addressed the specific code violations named in the suit, and the amount of damages to be paid in fines. There is nothing in the “negotiations” which actually address the plan to fix the hill. We have been under the false impression that these negotiations would finally produce an integrated plan. To our great dismay, it was only addressing the upslope property owner.
A comment was made that for a solution, which would involve the entire hillside; a complete geo-tech survey of the entire area, covering private property and the public right of way would be needed. A question was raised if the City had ever done a comprehensive geo-tech survey of all the properties involved. The answer was no, only some partial surveys done by some private property owners.
As the discussion continued, it became clear the City could not satisfy the goals we stated at the beginning of the meeting.
To summarize the meeting;
At this point the City has no plan to do anything proactive to fix the hillside, especially with a comprehensive, integrated plan.
The City has no plans to do anything about stabilizing the Gordon Pl right of way.
When asked if there was a plan to remove the ugly, messy, 345 foot eco-block wall, the City stated the purpose of that wall was to keep further mud and debris from flowing on the street and closing Beach Dr. When asked whether the City considered this as a possible permanent solution, the answer was yes. They have no plan to move the wall back to their right of way east of the curb.
Since there is no plan to do anything, there is obviously no timetable either.
It appears that all the City is prepared to do is hunker down and wait for the lawsuit to proceed, and only react as necessary with band-aid solutions.
At the close of the meeting, I stated the community is looking into hiring an attorney who specializes in landslides and water law, notably Karen Willie.
We’ll be pursuing city reaction and other followups. Here’s our update from yesterday with a link to the documents in the aforementioned city lawsuit.
| 17 COMMENTS