City Council for Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

All in all, a reasonably quick City Council meeting tonight. We’ll jump right in:

Resolution No. 37723 authorized the execution of a State of Washington Department of Ecology Agreed Order for Remedial Action requiring the City to clean up contamination attributed to the former Sauro Cleanarama property. This allows for the City to develop a clean up action plan and remediate the on-site contamination at the site. (Previously on Exit133)

Resolution No. 37724 was directly related to 37723. It authorized the execution of an Environmental Remediation and Indemnity Agreement with the Haub family and the Haub Brothers Enterprises Trust, relating to the cleanup of the former Sauro Cleanarama property. The city would be responsible for Sauro site caused contamination. It does not make the city liable for Haub’s obligations. What this does is establish a roadmap for coordination between the different organizations.

Resolution No. 37726 was the main topic of conversation this evening with every moment of public comment devoted to it. The topic is the D to M Street connector for Sound Transit’s rail line through south downtown. The resolution acknowledged the City’s receipt of the recommendations of the Project Advisory Committee and they will forward those recommendations to Sound Transit.

Council also made a motion to forward City staff’s recommendations based on both the PAC and their own analysis:

1. The Pacific Avenue bridge will be built with a low profile
2. South C Street will remain open
3. Post and beam construction may not be uniformly appropriate, but should be used where it makes sense with City of Tacoma and Sound Transit Staff working together.
4. The bridge over Pacific Avenue and A Street should be open underneath on both sides as conceptualized on page 18. Without the presentation, it’s a bit difficult to share here …

The key difference between the Council recommendations and the PAC surrounded construction methods. Would there be berms? Would it be all post and beam construction? The PAC letter stated that the entire grade should be post and beam. The city changed their language to suggest post and beam or berms depending on when it’s appropriate.

So … both the PAC letter and the Council recommendations are now being forwarded to Sound Transit.

That’s basically it for the evening unless you also want to know about labor negotiations and pay raises.

Full Disclosure: Exit133’s Whitney Rhodes sat on the Project Advisory Committee as a representative for the Downtown Merchants Group and spoke during public comment about the resolution.