EPRC Faces Disappointing Streetscape Developments

Eastound Planning Review Committee (EPRC) members were dismayed when newly-appointed County Engineer Rachel Dietzman presented the latest version of plans for Streetscape in Eastsound at the EPRC meeting on June 2. Streetscape is the traffic, parking and sidewalks plan for Eastsound that the EPRC and county have been working on since 2002.

EPRC members said they understood that the most recent iteration of the plan had been “80 percent complete” and only needed funds for staff time to complete it for the public process.County Council member and former EPRC member Patty Miller said, “I fully expected to see the latest plan taken to the final level, with the landscaping and sidewalks on it in addition to stormwater, gutter and downspouts.”

Dietzman told the EPRC that the drawings shown them on June 2 were  the county’s first attempt at completing Streetscape, and that Public Works would only develop a plan that deals with existing easements and addresses street crossings.

She explained that her initial analysis of the Streetscape Plan grant, explained in a letter to the EPRC last fall, targeted

• Parking
• Disability accessibility, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Miller said that the grant funds for $30,000 to complete the project “were about supporting projects that support economic development.”

Miller had worked with former EPRC member — and former county Public Works engineer – Audrey Moreland, to write a grant to pay for an outside consulting firm to complete the Streetscape plan. The grant monies came from the .09 fund in public works funding?

According to EPRC Chair Gulliver Rankin, the consulting firm then hired with the grant money “did work we didn’t ask for and at that point the county decided to take the Streetscape Plan back and do it in-house.

“All we needed was the elevations [completed],” said Rankin.

Dietzman, who took over as County Engineer in April this year, replacing John Van Lund, said, “I really bristle at implication that we’re not interested in what goes on is Eastsound because we are, but we’re a big county with limited budget and we have drainage problems and we are tracking those problems and they go into the mix ….This project hasn’t risen to top.”

She added that there were no funds in county roads for on-street parking, and that parking credits were a Development and Planning issue.

Rankin said the interaction between the County Development and Planning and the Public Works Departments is “a little grey to me right now…How has our Streetscape Plan been split between those two departments?”

Rankin, who spoke to the County Council earlier this spring and chided them for not dealing with the Streetscape plan, asked Dietzman, “Is public works starting with the former plan or the one brought in today?”

Dietzman said, “All I know, in looking at the grant that was prepared, I based my Fall 2010 letter based on the grant language.” When Rankin asked if she could “paint a picture of what this is going to look like,” Dietzman said, “I can’t do that right now.”

However, she agreed to provide documents regarding the Streetscape Plan and project file, including the grant to the library.

EPRC members couched their disappointment in the county plan she brought forward with respect to Dietzman’s “accessibility, responsiveness and professionalism.” Still, they said they were “stunned” by the picture that Dietzman presented.

They noted that the Streetscape Plan had been passed around County departments, consulting firms and the EPRC, and committee member Clyde Duke said, “That’s our problem, the disconnect of information.”

Following the meeting Rankin said, “Under the current grant the product we were anticipating from public works is not what’s come forward. We were looking for completion of the [2006] Hart Pacific draft Eastsound street plan which was prepared for public works.

“The scope of work that public works wants to limit itself to is dramatically less, it’s acquired easement only and a greater emphasis on disability access and sidewalks.

“We’ve been trying to find a way to take the 2006 plan and adopt it into the Eastsound Sub-area Plan [the governing document for development of Eastsound] and get it completed.”

Rankin said “It’s such a deviation from the plan that was 80 percent complete… Audrey [Moreland] had said it would only take 20 hours of GIS [Geographic Information Services] work.

“We want to get it completed and out for public review.”