By Gwen Davis

The Junction Neighborhood Organization (JuNO) held its monthly meeting Tuesday evening at the Senior Center. It was facilitated by Amanda Sawyer, the new executive director of JuNO.

Around 20 people attended the meeting.

During the first part of the meeting, participants discussed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) regarding the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda's Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program.

Rich Koehler of the JuNO Land Use Committee spoke to participants about the DEIS. He firstly said that he and the committee have been trying the reconcile housing coding requirements from the state with those of West Seattle. For instance, the state says that all urban villages need to accommodate growth, however, the Junction’s code creates protections for single-family areas. Because of slight legal discrepancies such as this, Koehler is working on 10 amendments to the city code.

“Those get evaluated in July,” he said.

All amendments need public support for a sufficient chance of being considered and adapted. Emails are being sent to West Seattleites, asking for signatures.

He spoke about the need for feedback.

“The Department of Planning and Development drafted this DEIS, and a public comment is now open to July 23,” he said. "Comments will be looked at and accommodated.”

Furthermore, comments that can potentially be of used in a legal realm are helpful to the city, he said.

The final DEIS will be ready in December. There are two rezoning options, one is lightly less intensive and one slightly more aggressive. One of the plans specifically looks through a racial equity lens, and focuses on displacement and minority populations.

The racial equity plan ended up creating more housing density in West Seattle, Koehler said, since there are more resources for living in this area of the city.

Hoever, Koehler made clear that he is no fan of how the city is implementing HALA.

“The alternatives do not reflect the feedback that we provided,” he said. “I also find the DEIS to be superficial — they didn’t really study it in depth.”

The DEIS studied changes that will happen all over the city when rezoning plans happen. But they didn’t analyze the changes in detail, block by block.

“There were also flaws in it,” he said. For instance, the plan said it would take nine minutes to travel across the West Seattle bridge, but that time is only true for the afternoon peek hours, not the morning.

Overall, the DEIS doesn’t provide adequate analysis, and does a cursory job at explaining current conditions and challenges of West Seattle, he stated.

“I’m not that happy with the scope of the study."

Even if the DEIS had just zeroed in on West Seattle and the five urban villages West Seattle has, the document would be much more thorough, he noted.

Koehler asked the group if anyone wanted to get involved in reading the document and providing feedback. “If we find people who are experts, they can provide the writers with more informed guidance to make sure all the information is correct.”

However, Koehler said that despite his critique of the city’s plans, he supports livability efforts.

“When we talk about neighborhood livibabilty, some reactions we get are: ‘you’re a bunch of nibs that want to keep everything the way it is and are ignoring the need to accommodate growth,” he said. “But our opinion is there is a way to accommodate growth without sacrificing livability. Increasing housing needs to be addressed at the same time we need to make sure we have the infrastructure to support it.”

Koehler said the neighborhood plans needs to be updated. The last time it was touched was in 1999.

"All we’re asking for from the city is complete planning,” he said. “[These housing development plans] are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

The DEIS can be viewed at: https://www.seattle.gov/hala/about/mandatory-housing-affordability-(mha…