MARYSVILLE — The old, rural Snohomish County lifestyle is running headlong into another bulldozer.
The Marysville City Council on Monday unanimously approved a road plan that’s expected to move more than 20 families in the Sunnyside and Whiskey Ridge areas out of their homes, take parts of nearly 200 other pieces of property and cost more than $80 million.
The plan involves widening 67th Avenue NE, 71st Avenue NE and Sunnyside Boulevard to three lanes and building two new connector roads.
Some of the people affected said the new lines on the map will cast a shadow over their property for years. Their fates are sealed, costing them money in resale value.
“It’s my home you’re taking,” resident Jeri Short told city officials at a hearing Monday. “I’ve worked 30 years for this property.”
Still, it’s the best way to move traffic through an area slated to grow by thousands of homes, city officials and consultants said.
“I want to make sure that what we plan up there meets the needs of the city 20 to 25 years down the road,” city administrator Mary Swenson told the City Council on Monday.
The work would be years away, built and paid for partly by developers as the new neighborhoods spring up.
Short, her husband and two other families whose homes could be affected by a new road connecting 67th and 71st avenues hired a lawyer to fight the plans. They and others made one last plea for their homes at Monday’s standing-room-only hearing, attended by about 65 people.
“We spent time, energy, emotions and money to ensure we kept our property,” resident Tim Nixon said. He estimated that three families spent about $8,000 between them for the attorney.
City staff and consultants argued their case to the City Council for about an hour-and-a-half in support of the plan.
Traffic on Sunnyside Boulevard is expected to increase from about 3,000 cars per day now to more than 20,000 by 2025. About 100 now-rural acres are zoned for commercial development, potentially rivaling Lakewood Crossing in size.
With the recent growth in Lake Stevens and Arlington, the area southeast of downtown Marysville is increasingly used as a shortcut. The corridor along 67th and 71st avenues has a connection to the north that can help move that traffic, they said.
“If you want to look for a cross-town, north-south arterial, 67th-71st is it,” said Michael Stringham, a traffic engineer with Perteet of Everett, hired by the city to study the plans.
Sunnyside Boulevard can help move east-west traffic, they said. Widening each to three lanes would better distribute traffic than widening one corridor or the other to five lanes, they said. It also would cost less and affect fewer homes.
Opponents don’t buy that. The solution doesn’t have to be either-or, they said.
Instead, Sunnyside could be widened to four lanes and roundabouts could be put in to move traffic through the “dog leg” along 67th Avenue NE, 40th Street NE and 71st Avenue NE, said Jennifer Dold, the residents’ attorney.
This would eliminate the need for the connector road there, and that would save her clients’ homes, she said.
Dold argued that there’s not enough data to support the city’s plan, that more time should be taken for study and that the city has been shortchanging residents’ opportunities for input. She and the homeowners noted that city staff and the City Council did not carry out a planning commission recommendation to have more neighborhood workshops.
“You have to have meaningful citizen involvement,” she said.
Some in the crowd howled when Mayor Dennis Kendall, in enforcing the city’ rule of allowing three minutes per speaker at hearings, cut off Dold’s comments.
“You get an hour-and-a-half and we get three minutes,” one resident said.
Dold was later given 10 minutes to present more of her case. She did it in about five.
City staff said several public hearings provided enough opportunity for public comment. It’s important to get the road plan in place now so land can develop around it, staff members said.
Council members were mostly silent.
Councilman Jeff Seibert said it would be ideal to be able to plan new roads without anyone being affected, “but that’s not realistic. We do the best we can to plan for the future, and that’s kind of where we’re at.”
The council’s vote for the plan was unanimous, with all members present.
Afterward, those who hired the attorney weren’t sure if they had any fight left in them.
“I don’t think there’s much more to do,” Nixon said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
