Join Us on Zoom on June 25th

Lois Bell will host a Zoom meeting on June 25th at 6:30 PM. This meeting is open to the general public.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84250320642?pwd=bmxTOUFKYjBTaGlVWEk4VjhIVWRkQT09

Meeting ID: 842 5032 0642

Password: 622138

Join Zoom Meeting Thursday, June 11 @ 6:30

Meeting ID: 915 8914 4423
Password: 636390

Save Wood Creek
June 11 @ 6:30

Let's come together for updates on the Save Wood Creek effort, refining our mission statement, and next steps.

• Environmental Updates
• Petition Updates / Next Steps
• Media Updates / Next Steps
• Mission Statement Processing / Refinement
• Logo/Signage/Marketing

Note: the meeting scheduled for June 9th has been canceled and will be tentatively rescheduled for a later date.

Thank you for participating in the Conservation Ideas meeting. It's going to take a group of us to get this done.

Here are the following leads we have. Please help us by picking one to research.

1. Land Trust Alliance - look for others to contact (see list below for groups already contacted)
2. Friends of North Creek Forest, Bothell
3. Whidbey/Camano Land Trust
4. Conservation Futures Program, we missed the May 15 deadline, but we should be proactive for next year.
5. Please reseach the Local Improvement District (LID) option

Another approach that can be taken is for everyone in the community surrounding the wooded area to establish a Local Improvement District (LID) for the purpose of purchasing the property. In order for this to be successful, you and your neighbors will have to petition the City to set up a LID that establishes a taxing schedule on each member of the LID that is committed to paying associated costs (the value of the property). LID's generally have a 30-year term and the more members of the LID equate to a lower cost burden on each member. (The above is taken from an email, so we need to confirm the details of LID)

Some questions to ask are:

• Is this applicable to our effort?
• How long is the process?
• What are the obstacles?
• Is there someone experienced in this topic that we can reach out to?

If you need help with what to say, you can refer to the petition and list of reasons to oppose the Wood Creek property sale.

If you're interested, please email help@savewoodcreek.org and Gregory will add you to a conservation@woodcreek.org mailing list and cc Erica at erika@savewoodcreek.org.

Once you're added, please reply to the conservation@woodcreek.org email list with all with what you are interested in researching. Using the conservation email list should assist in the coordination.

We'll send a link for a Zoom meeting at a later date to share what we've learned.

Thank you!

Erika and Tim

To avoid redundancy, the following organizations have already been contacted:

• Forterra
• Nature Conservancy
• Wilderness Land Trust
• The Conservation Fund
• Trust for Public Land
• Adopt-a-Stream
• Washington Environmental Council
• Environment WA
• Sno-King Watershed Council
• Pilchuck Audubon Society
• Snohomish Conservation District
• Tree Committee/Bob Leonard/Everett

MyEverettNews.com is reporting that the city of Everett has removed the Wood Creek property from the surplus property list. We are not sure if this is a temporary development yet, and we still need to be diligent and maintain our efforts. More will be forthcoming soon.

Here is the body from MyEverettNews.com:

Tonight the Everett City Council is continuing a public hearing and following that, taking action on approval of selling several properties as surplus. Among those to be considered surplus was 92.5 Acres of property beneath the Valley View neighborhood known as Wood Creek. That item has been pulled from the agenda.

We've got a note into the City administration for more information on why it was pulled and if that is a temporary action or a permanent

Sale of Wood Creek was strongly opposed by neighbors in the Valley View neighborhood. There was talk of more than 100 homes planned for the area which once served as the City of Everett's water supply.

Neighbors have organized on social media and been vocal that the area is critical nature habitat and also extremely unstable. Concerns over landslides below Valley View were cited by several opposed to the sale.

Other properties on the list include utility property on Shore Drive and a smaller parcel on Kenwood Drive along with property on East Marine View Drive and the historic Culmback building on Colby in downtown Everett.

The City Council meeting starts tonight at 6:30 PM. You can learn more about the properties here.

If you want to stay abreast of the latest news about our group, please consider subscribing to this blog. We will not provide your email address to any third party, and we will only use your email to contact you to share Save Wood Creek information and news. This is an important way that we can share timely information with you.

At the top right-hand corner of this page, there is a Subscribe icon with the text Enter your email address and click on the subscribe button to subscribe to this blog.

On mobile devices, you will need to click on the hamburger icon at the top left of the screen to open the side panel. The subscribe interface is found there.

If you are having any issues, or need assistance, please email help@savewoodcreek.com

Thank-you!

Next step: please sign our petition. This should only take a few moments of your time.

Note: if you only want to be notified of any activity with a particular post, you can also subscribe to certain posts by clicking on the subscribe button underneath the post. You will only receive email notifications when the post has any new activity

Zoom Meeting on June 4 @ 6:30 PM TOPIC: Task Force Division We need to break up the task force into focused groups to maximize our efforts.

Please come. Come ready to offer your time and energy. We need people who can do at least ONE thing. Please keep this movement alive. It is great we had a postponement, but we still have HUGE concerns about the loss of that beautiful forest.

Time is a gift - but it can also be the enemy if we don't do anything productive with it and the City ends up pushing this through while we stood down. We've "stormed" some ideas for groups...now we need to "form" some defined approaches to unifying and streamlining our efforts.

Proposed focus groups:

• Media Publicity
• Political Connections/Legislative Outreach Canvasing/Information Distribution
• Communication - Website - savewoodcreek.org
• Fundraising - Grant writing
• Perimeter Neighborhood Impact Research/Outreach
• Infrastructure Concerns/Research

Zoom meeting

Topic: Save Wood Creek Meeting - Divide and Conquer Time: Jun 4, 2020 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting June 4 @ 6:30 PM Join Zoom

Meeting ID: 988 9412 0388
Password: 523974

Dial by your location

• +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
• +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
• +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
• +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
• +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
• +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)

Sign the Petition - Change.org
Sale of Wood Creek Threatens Habitat and Land Stability

Next up: please raise your objections and contact the Everett City Council

Contact the City Council with your objections to the sale of the Wood Creek property.

Here are some of our tips and suggestions when contacting them:

We urge you to send your objections via email, or call all 7 city council members, and other department leaders as necessary.

If you're speaking on the phone, be brief.

Refer to the language in our petition or use our additional reasons to oppose the sale.

Don't use all of the reasons, pick a few that best resonate with you.

When communicating:

• Include your name, address, and neighborhood
• Be calm
  • Our energy needs to be professional
  • Present to build support for our cause
• Be concise
  • Think in sound bites to be remembered
  • Keep it simple
• Be clear
  • Speak from what you know
  • Put facts before feelings
• Be collected

Adapted to the web from Babby Skowyra's Power-Point Presentation