(WSB photo, Alki Elementary site at 3010 59th SW)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
For the second time in 10 months, a city hearing examiner is presiding over proceedings that will determine what’s next for the rebuild and expansion of Alki Elementary School.
Again this time, that hearing examiner is Susan Drummond, whose decision last summer left the door open for what’s happening now.
The backstory: Last year, four nearby residents appealed the city decision to approve nine zoning exceptions (“departures”) that Seattle Public Schools had sought for constructing the school with a taller building and higher student capacity. Through a ruling and a settlement, that all ended with just one appeal granted – the one challenging the departure that would allow the new school to be devoid of offstreet parking (as first revealed two years ago). Drummond told the district and the city Department of Construction and Inspections to “revisit” the issue. Rather than doing so immediately after that ruling, the district tried – and failed – to get a judge to throw it out. After that, it proposed a new plan with 15 offstreet parking spots. The city said OK. A different group of nearby residents appealed that, under the name Friends for a Safe Alki Community. And now, it’s all back before Drummond, who heard the first of at least two days of testimony Tuesday in the examiner’s hearing room at the city Municipal Tower downtown. We attended in person and plan to return for the next day of testimony on Thursday. No surprises, but here’s how it went:
The hearing room is a bit less formal than a courtroom. The presiding examiner sits at the head of the windowless room; representatives of all involved parties sit at a table in front of her, with spectators sitting just feet away. Most of the day was devoted to witnesses for the appellants, aside from two for the district, called early to fit into time constraints. (The appeal case will continue when the hearing resumes tomorrow, and then it’s the other side’s turn.)
First they argued over a district motion asking that two exhibits for the appeal be disallowed – news reports about the possibility the district will close and/or consolidate up to 20 elementary schools. Representing the district, lawyer Katie Kendall from McCullough Hill contended the potential for closures is irrelevant, because “we don’t know how many schools will close or whether any will close.”
(Rendering by Mahlum Architects – north side of new school)
Representing the appellants, Audrey Clungeon from Bricklin & Newman countered that the closure possibility is relevant because the appeal was “going to be looking at educational need” and that the district’s “declining enrollment is relevant when we’re talking about putting a very large school on a very small site.”
Drummond noted that she has to consider the school’s maximum capacity “so I don’t want to go further down the road of questioning the capacity.”
The opportunity for opening statements was declined by all, so Clungeon got right to her first witness, Dano Beal, a retired longtime SPS teacher who spent his last seven years of teaching at Alki Elementary, during which he was on the Building Leadership Team as well as on the School Design Advisory Team for the rebuild (SDAT). It should be noted that discussion of conditions at the school are from years before this year, with Alki currently temporarily housed at the former Schmitz Park Elementary (where it will be for at least two more years).
Beal said he and co-workers on the SDAT “put together a hierarchy of what they wanted to see,” with dropoff-zone safety and parking high on the list: Parking has “always been an issue over the years.” Not always for him personally, he said, as he lived near the school for more than 20 years, but still had firsthand observations. Teachers have to be at the school early in the morning, before street parking opens up with area residents leaving for jobs elsewhere. Without open parking, he said, parents couldn’t park nearby to walk their kids to the school entrance, and “mayhem” sometimes ensued. That led to the principal directing traffic himself, Beal said. If the principal couldn’t be there, other staff were asked to do the same thing – without training, Beal said, so he refused. As for staff parking, he said the old school’s 30-ish spaces included spots for the principal, custodian, and food service workers, just a few of the 25 to 30 staff on campus at any given time. He talked about being surprised to learn during the SDAT work that the school was to be built without parking: “That really shocked all of us, because that was number two on our list.” Also, he said, other sizable schools in West Seattle have abundant parking – WSHS and Madison MS, for example – and parking aside, overall, he doesn’t feel the planned school’s size is appropriate for the site’s size, nor for the number of students that do and will live in the area, especially considering the enrollment decline. (Alki ES’s current enrollment was cited as 271 students, about half what the planned rebuild/expansion could handle.)
The second witness for the appeal was Maryanne Wood, a nearby resident who was involved in the first appeal and ran for School Board last year mostly as a platform for her concerns about the project. She said she lives on 57th SW, a block east of the school and the adjacent playfield, and described competition for parking in the neighborhood as “pretty intense. … When school is in session, it’s almost impossible to find a parking spot that’s not two or three blocks away.” She said some of the surrounding blocks are missing sidewalks, and described some of the streets as “narrow.” That means challenges for emergency vehicles, she said in response to a question from Clungeon – “they can eventually get through but it takes some creative maneuvering.” The district plans to provide one ADA space, Clungeon noted, asking Wood if that would be enough. Wood spoke of a grandchild who is a special-needs student and needs to be delivered directly to staff members, as well as adding that she herself is now disabled: “I can’t go more than a block, so if I can’t find parking, I can’t go.” In followup questioning, district lawyer Kendall elicited that Wood’s grandchild is not currently attending Alki, and that her residence is outside the project’s parking-study area.
After morning break, Clungeon brought up the next appeal witness, Linda Cuddy (who lives in the 2700 block of 59th SW with her husband, the main representative of Friends for a Safe Alki Community, Steve Cuddy). She echoed the contention that “parking has always been an issue” in the neighborhood, not just because of the school but because Alki Beach “has always been a destination.” It’s not a matter of 59th SW residents wanting to park in front of their own homes, she explained, as most have parking off the alley to the west, but visitors park and drive in all manner of illegal, unsafe ways, she said – facing the wrong way, wheels on the sidewalk, too close to hydrants, etc. “I’ve been seeing this for 30 years and it’s gotten worse and worse.” The neighborhood is densifying, too, she said. Cuddy also spoke of daunting pedestrian conditions to the south, for those crossing Admiral Way, as she said she had done when she was a pregnant mom of a toddler ~25 years ago, walking to co-op preschool at Alki UCC. (She later said they also drove there, as they did when their kids were students at Schmitz Park Elementary, going there instead. of Alki Elementary because of SP’s award-winning PE program.) Another complicating factor she noted was the increase in delivery trucks on the streets since the pandemic. Overall, she said, traffic and parking were problematic even before doubling the school population was planned. She said she had spoken to a parent who was relieved their child will be finishing their elementary years at ex-Schmitz Park because he’ll never have to deal with the Alki site traffic again. Under cross-examination, she insisted that the area congestion happens “all day, every day” and that the suggested signage won’t change people’s behavior. In followup questioning, Clungeon noted that maybe parents will follow what’s laid out in the project’s promised Transportation Management Plan, but others traveling in the area wouldn’t even be aware of it.
That was also an assertion of the first witness after lunch. Most of the afternoon was spent on Clungeon’s questioning of Gary Norris, a transportation consultant who detailed a long resumé of positions with municipalities around the region before starting his own business.
Showing a variety of photos, Norris reiterated that current users aren’t following “basic rules of access” around the Alki Elementary site, so a Transportation Management Plan isn’t likely to change that. The photos included a car parked with wheels on the curb, the narrowing of 59th SW with cars parked on the west side (across from the school and Alki Playfield), delivery vehicles squeezing through, a driver opening their car door into the traffic lane, a car “parked virtually on top of a crosswalk,” principal Mason Skeffington out in the street directing traffic, and more. The district is assuming a high “level of walking,” he said, despite multiple safety issues for pedestrians, from line-of-sight impediments because of parked cars, to sidewalks in pooor shape: “(The area is) fraught with sidewalks that are falling apart … all those cracks in the sidewalk are going to be problematic for the school population.” He cited missing sidewalks on some nearby streets, too (looking at Google Street View, SW Stevens east of the school-adjacent community center is most noticeable). Clungeon asked about other factors on nearby streets that might make walking difficult; Norris noted the hills to the south (59th SW) and southeast (Admiral Way).
Addressing the parking supply, Norris said his understanding was that Alki, with 271 students and 32 staff, had 29 spaces within the old site, not counting the asphalt area between the school and playground that had historically been used for parking in school off-hours but will not be available for that use in the new school design. Norris also contended that the project’s traffic consultants focused on conditions within 800 feet of the school when it should have been 400 and that there was “no factual analysis for what the pickup and dropoff demand” will actually be. Returning to the district’s expectation that a Traffic Management Plan will solve the problems, he called that a “ludicrous expectation,” contending that TMPs are created to “deal with situations that already exist, not something like this.” He also noted that the zoning requirement of 48 spaces, based on square footage of the project, does not count the gym, which the school will continue sharing with the Alki Community Center building; if it did, he said, 123 spaces would be required.
What about carpooling? Norris said the plan suggests more of that but he doesn’t think it’s likely to happen without some incentive. He said parents just prefer to drive their kids to school, “which is putting a big demand on these sites.” He also took issue with the plan for one ADA space: “We should be talking about FIVE.”
Some questioning focused on recommendations made in a city document, Best Practices for School Traffic Design, and whether the Alki Elementary plan seemed to be following them, such as “pedestrian routes should not be crossed by [motor vehicle] traffic.” Norris continued to stress that the pre-existing situation at Alki Elementary’s past-and-future site is already bad, and that the site has greater “safety and circulation needs” than are being planned for. “Times have changed, (more) parents are driving their kids to school,” he repeated. Could the problems be fixed later? asked Clungeon. Norris said that could happen “if we have a paradigm shift and people stop driving their cars … otherwise, it needs to be structurally addressed in the development of the site.”
Cross-examination questions from Kendall focused on apparent disparities in some of the numbers Norris cited – parking conditions within 400 feet vs. 800 feet, the duration of peak pickup/dropoff times – and whether the illegal parking shown in his testimony (wheels on curbs, etc.) was exclusive to school zones or seen elsewhere around the city. They also clashed over the number of parking spaces he suggested the school really needed, attributed to numbers from the Institute of Transportation Engineers – she said .14 space per student is peak demand; he said .88 is what’s needed overall. Then they sparred a bit more over what relevance pickup and dropoff had to parking supply, since, she declared, “we’re here today on a parking departure.” And the percentage of space usage on the street was a point of contention too; at one point Norris said 75 percent street-parking usage was considered “full use,” but Kendall said the city of Seattle’s number was actually 85 percent. Kendall also asked about data proving his contention that school-bus usage has declined – a study was shown – and that car usage has risen; he replied that in general, “increased traffic around schools” had shown that. Asked about the safest place to locate the school’s entrance, Norris retorted that, “The question is not whether that’s the safest place for the school, it’s whether that’s a safe place, and this is not a safe place.”
Also mentioned, the Montlake Elementary project elsewhere in the city, granted a “departure” so it could be built without offstreet parking, one of seven Seattle Public Schools elementaries without parking, according to the architects. Norris contended that school’s site/setting is nothing like Alki.
The day concluded with two brief witnesses for the district; none of the remaining witnesses to be called by the appellants were expected to be quick enough to fit in before the day’s end. First was Chad Kersman, father of an Alki Elementary kindergartener and Alki resident, one block west of the school, on 60th SW, testifying via Zoom. He said he had no reservations about the new school’s larger size, and that parking wasn’t a problem on his street, where he said he could see about 10 open spots at that moment (4:20 pm) within “50 yards” or so. He said he works from a home office four days a week, 7 am-6 pm. He said he has no concerns about the school being built with 15 parking spaces. Asked when parking is tightest in his neighborhood, he said summertime, when school is out “and everybody wants to go to the beach.” He acknowledged that he can’t actually see the school from his home, but noted that many Alki families use his street at dropoff and pickup times, and didn’t expect a problem with an increased number doing so. “There’s always a 20-minute rush and that’s just how school works – it’s not due to the parking situation but rather parents like myself trying to do a million different things.”
Final witness for the day, also called by the district, was project manager Brian Fabella. Kendall asked him about a letter-writing campaign in support of the rebuild (the one we reported on two weeks ago). He said that so far he had received more than 100 letters of support. On cross-examination, Clungeon noted that many were “very similar, like there’s a template.” Fabella agreed with that assessment, “but some were a bit tailored.” She asked about other public comments he had seen – were they mostly about parking and dropoff? – yes, he replied, adding that his review of comments was unofficial, as the city manages the process of granting or denying departures.
(The city planner assigned to the project, Carly Guillory, was at the table all day, but was never asked to speak.)
WHAT’S NEXT: The proceedings continue at 9 am Thursday in the examiner’s hearing room, open to the public. You can also listen by phone (here’s how). The appellants have at least two more witnesses to call. There is no potential third day set aside yet, so if it looks like things will run long, everyone will confer. Once testimony concludes, the examiner typically takes a few weeks to issue a written ruling. That ruling is the city’s final word in the case, but can be challenged in court. Whenever there is finally an unchallenged decision on the parking issue and the plans reflect whatever that decision is, building permits can be issued; until then, as shown in our photo, some site work is all that’s happened since demolition of the old school.
| 72 COMMENTS