Does my comment matter?

Thank you. My name is Sam Mace, and I live in East Central. And I want to endorse what Ms. Angell said, and what Karen Mobley said. I fully endorse what their perspective is. A couple things. One is, having East Central lumped in with South Hill doesn't really give East Central justice. We have very different concerns, and it's just a different animal. We have one of the highest heat indexes in the city. We have one of the least amount of tree canopy. Northeast probably is giving us a run for the money on that. We also have a wave of concrete barreling towards my home with the North South Freeway, which is not going to be a net positive for our community. I-90 wasn't a net positive. This is not. And I just am here to advocate for protecting our natural areas and looking for those opportunities for those pocket habitats. That is what we have in East Central beyond Underhill Park and Liberty Park. And also, to not further weaken our environmental reviews and laws. It's already hard enough. I live across from Underhill Park. My property is right next to the egregious development that the city let happen. 2.8 Acres of natural forest, basalt cliffs, where there was a pathway to add it to Underhill Park, and we could not get the city to help us. And it's a project that has gone forward without being able to bulldoze and log, without abiding by Department of Ecology rules, by stormwater rules, all of that. And so, if you want to see what that would look like for other neighborhoods, come down to my neighborhood and take a look. Park in Underhill and look up. And I can already feel the increased heat index on my property. And we have to not have those opportunities missed, because we're not going to get it back. And I live in a low income, I want to say mixed income, diverse in income community. A lot of our kids, we have a lot of immigrant communities, they don't get taken to Riverside Park. They don't get taken to Lincoln Park. It's one-car families, maybe. Where they have to go is Underhill or other pocket habitats. And we're getting a ton of infill. We're going to be one of the hotspots for infill. And I accept that, and we're a place that it should happen. But I'm not seeing a plan for where these kids and people are going to recreate or walk or have a dirt path or see flowers or see birds. That's not reflected in this comp plan and these preferred alternatives, and we need that desperately. So, I just urge a different look at that. And I also, too, want to say is like, where are we talking about where is the water going to come for all this increased density? That's the big elephant in the room as well. So, I urge a little more attention to our natural areas, to our lower income neighborhoods, and the birds, bees, and wildlife.