By 
On April 14, 2016 a public hearing was held at City Hall, before an independent hearing examiner, to review the City’s application for the park permits. The Meydenbauer Bay Neighbors Association (MBNA) was considered a party to the proceedings, giving us the right to provide briefs and witnesses and to cross-examine city staff witnesses.
Our seven witnesses raised a number of issues deemed important to Meydenbauer Bay residents, such as noise levels emanating from the park, hours of park operation, park and street lighting, parking for the park, and construction issues such as employee parking, truck routing, hours of work, and noise. Both the city and MBNA submitted pre-hearing and post-hearing briefs to elaborate on the testimony and the issues.
On May 20th, the hearing examiner issued his findings and conclusions, He approved the permit applications largely as the City had requested, but with conditions reflecting some of our concerns. He instructed the City to revisit the hours of operation and parking decisions after a year of operations and to modify them if necessary in the light of experience. He instructed both the Park Department and the Traffic Department to consider the lowest levels of park and street lighting possible. He added permit language to limit structure height in the park and to employ staging of construction equipment to avoid impacts on adjacent properties.
We consider the Hearing Examiner to have been fair, and we do not anticipate appealing his decision to the City Council. This hearing decision clears the way for final permitting and planning to occur for phase 1, with construction scheduled to begin in mid-July of 2017.
Throughout this process MBNA has been assisted by our lawyer, causing us to incur additional legal expenses. If you wish to support our mission of Protecting the Future of the Bay, please send your donations to:
Meydenbauer Bay Neighbors Association
PMB 278
227 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA 98004
We also accept donations through Paypal. Click here to donate.
