I can't say I think much of Burien looking at adding a transportation tax or transportation impact fees.

We own a small business and we bought an old house with the idea that we would build a new building on the site for our offices. The city of Burien mandated a repair of their rainwater problem in the middle of that intersection, which happens to dip. The estimate of the cost was $500,000, which put the whole project out of range for us.

I think the city needs to do its own water runoff repairs and not try to keep socking it to business owners who want to build new buildings. It is bad enough that they mandate sidewalks and curbs, which I also feel are their responsibility if they want the city to have them. It would be one thing to put in a new sidewalk to replace the old but, as in our case, there are no sidewalks or curbs so putting them just on our lot seems strange.

All the property owners should share in the costs of this nature. Owners pay for sewers, maybe they should have a street repair/sidewalk bill for all property owners so that developers and business owners wouldn't get socked with Burien's repair or improvement projects, which they want to fund with transportation impact fees paid by businesses or developers only.

The upshot of all of this is that we will likely sell this house and move our business out of Burien entirely. Burien is not business friendly.

Barbara Levich

Burien