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CHMTLIK SITKIN & DAVIS.. . June 25,2021- the District's attorney responds to ERLC's May 24th and 28ih letters, specifically offering alternative mitigation measures than what the District had proposed previously.l2 Outside of the three letters exchanged over the last six months, the only other time ERLC claimed to have communicated with the District on the mitigation conditions specific to this Project was in a May 24,2A19, meeting between Jerry Martens and the District's then fire chief, Chief Jensen. There is no record of this meeting, nor any agreement executed by the District identifying appropriate mitigation conditions. Moreover, even if the terms of a mitigation agreement were reached in that meeting, the fire chief would not have had authority on his own to enter into such an agreement - that authority lies with the elected Fire District Commissioners. lndeed, repeatedly throughout the District's recent correspondence with ERLC, ERLC claims that the "only available means for contacting the District is fire the District's Fire Chief."13 This, of course, is far from accurate. The Dlstrict, like all fire districts and other municipal entities in Washington, is run by an elected board of commissioners, who hold regular meetings that are open to the public, At any time in the approximately two and a half years after passage of Ordinance No. 2018-0006, ERLC could have attended one or more of the District's open public meetings and addressed this Project. However, ERLC never did this despite Ordinance No. 2018-0006 clearly putting the obligation to contact the District on ERLC. lnstead, ERLC points the finger at the District for not surrendering to ERLC's timeline and demands. The facts simply don't support ERLC's assertions. As the Commission is aware, governments often cannot respond as quickly as a private developer desires, and that is especially the case for a small rural volunteer fire department with limited resources and minimal experience in responding to development proposals, such as the Project. Nevertheless, as the above timeline makes clear, the District took appropriate steps to respond to ERLC after the December 2020 order from the Board of Commissioners remanding the Development Agreement to ERLC. And as the discussions currently stand, the District communicated an offer regarding mitigalion terms to ERLC on June 25,2A21, for which ERLC has not yet responded. The above mitigation conditions are appropriate to address the impacts of the Project. The Project is a substantial development within a largely rural area. There are presently an estimated 480 full-time and part-time residents within the District. The Project is estimated to add 24A new residents based on the housing proposed, not considering RV occupancy. The design and narrow layout of the internal road network within the Project appears to limit apparatus access and turnaround. ERLC offered a tract of land to the District as part of the mitigation proposed in ERLC's May 24,2021 letter; however, as the District addressed in its June 25, 2021 letter, this property is not in a strategic location to provide seruice and would cost the District significant capital costs to develop, thereby defeating the purpose of the mitigation. 12 A copy of the June 25,2021letter is attached hereto as Exhtbit K. 13 Several communications from ERLC have been sent to the wrong mailing address for the District and as a result the District did not receive many of the official notifications on this Project.