It was standing room only as the Burien City Council beginning their own discussion of the Shoreline Master Program (SMP), talking about what kinds of experts the Council wants to hear from, and what form, if any, the public comment would take.

A preliminary meeting to educate the council is scheduled for June 14. Exactly how that meeting will be structured and what will be discussed is being worked on by staff and will be presented to the Council at next Monday’s meeting, May 10. The SMP is due to the Department of Ecology (DOE) by December 31 of this year. The City hopes to have the SMP approved by the Council and forwarded to the DOE by the end of August.

Burien Mayor Joan McGilton said again she is not in favor of a public forum, but if there is a public forum she wants to be involved with the discussion, not officiating it.

“Do you think there is somebody out there who has a brand new comment?” McGilton asked Councilmember Gordon Shaw when he spoke in favor of a public forum.

Shaw replied no, but he said he thought those comments were made in the blind.

Deputy Mayor Rose Clark also had some reservations about public forums. Not speaking out against them, she said hopes the community will act with civility and friendliness.

“(At public forum’s) the public treats us not as a partner, but as someone to fight against,” Clark said. She said all of the council members live in the community and ran for city council because they care about their community, not for any nefarious reasons against the other citizens. “Thinking about past forums I hope we don’t go down that road,” said Clark.

Councilmember Brian Bennett said he wanted a real estate expert as well as a scientific expert to talk to the council about the possible impacts to property value of homeowners along the shore.

Approximately 130-135 homes could become non-conforming if the buffer and setback are increased from 20 feet to 65 feet back from the ordinary high water mark, as proposed in the draft of SMP.

Bennett, along with Councilmember’s Shaw and Lucy Krakowiak unconditionally supported a public forum.

Krakowiak said she would like to have two round table discussions with the community, and in addition asked that experts provided by community members be a part of the process, citing Bellevue’s success doing something similar when working on their SMP.

Resident Clark Munsey told the Council he had concerns the Planning Commission failed at what they were supposed to accomplish. “This (the draft of the smp) was blatant activism on the part of the Planning Commission,” Munsey said. He said not having a public forum was equal to exclusion, and that is what divides a city.

“Much was left vague, conflicting and is in jeopardy of taking rights away from some of the oldest residents in the City,” Don Warren, a member of the Shoreline Advisory Committee, said.