The Herald ran an article on March 19th about a public hearing for the height variance. The article was subsequently corrected -- that the hearing had been cancelled.
Dick Conoboy forwarded the following responses from City staff regarding the application & hearing. (These are excerpts.)
From Kathy Bell, Planner II The hearing has been postponed until further notice and therefore will NOT be considered tomorrow evening, March 20.
From Jeff Thomas, Director -- Planning and Community Development 1. The City HAS received a written request to cancel the March 20 public hearing for the variance application with the Hearing Examiner pending further notice.
2. The City HAS NOT received a written request pursuant to BMC 21.10.060 to consolidate multiple permit applications into one process. Should the City receive a written request for such, the permit applications would be considered by the Hearing Examiner who would also conduct a public hearing. A date for this public hearing would not be set and noticed until all applications are submitted and determined by the City to be complete for consideration. The complete language for BMC 21.10.060 is also included below for reference. Utilization of this provision in the BMC is case specific – it works well in some cases and not so well in others. After completing careful analysis for this case, I met with the applicants last week and recommended that they utilize this provision.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Some members of the Puget Neighborhood Association have suggested the possibility of holding meetings related to the University Ridge housing development proposal. These meetings would be for the purpose of gathering together to share information and work on strategies for writing comment letters.
** The PNA has not yet scheduled any additional meetings at this time. If you are interested in a meeting, please contact PNA President Gaythia Weis at gaythia(at)gmail.com, or 389 7915.
Letters can, of course, be written without a meeting. Information useful for writing such letters can also be obtained from the City of Bellingham Planning Department. The contact person there is Kathy Bell – kbell@cob.org or 360 778 8347. The city is maintaining online files of current information regarding the University Ridge Housing proposal here: http://www.cob.org/services/planning/neighborhoods/puget-uni-ridge.aspx
