Acknowledgement for Appraisal Waiver

Washington Division
Suite 501 Evergreen Plaza
711 South Capitol Way
Olympia, Washington 98501-1284
(360) 753-9480
(360) 753-9889 (FAX)
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/wadiv/

January 9, 2019

HBR-WNW AP2969S976

Roger Millar
Secretary of Transportation
Department of Transportation
Olympia, Washington

Attention: R. Marshall Elizer, Jr., P.E

SEP-16 Request
WSDOT Letter of Interest Appraisal Waiver Valuation

Dear Mr. Millar:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your Letter of Interest (Lon dated December 5, 2018 for the authority to utilize an increase to $50,000 in the Appraisal Waiver threshold under the Special Experimental Project (SEP-16) Federal Register Notice dated September 20, 2018.

All LOIs under the SEP-16 are subject to review by a team of members involving the FHWA Washington Division and the FHWA Headquarters for an initial evaluation of the proposal. We anticipate we will complete our initial evaluation within 30 days of the date of this letter. After the initial evaluation is completed, a formal response will be provided, which will either request the submittal of a Concept Paper or provide an explanation for not advancing the proposal.

The reason why your LOI was not sent to our Headquarters before now is that, with the support of both the WSDOT Local Programs and Real Estate Services offices, we made one further attempt to obtain approval from our Headquarters for allowing WSDOT to increase the appraisal waiver threshold to $50,000 using a more streamlined path. While we were very hopeful that effort would be successful, we just found out that it was not approved by our Headquarters Office of Real Estate Services.

Consequently, we will now proceed with submitting your request pursuant to SEP-16.

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact Dave Leighow at (360) 753-8655 or by email at david.leighow@dot.gov.

Sincerely,

DANIEL M. MATHIS, P.E.
Division Administrator

By: David A. Leighow
Right-of-Way Program Manager

Cc via email: Kyle McKean, Terry Meara, Michelle Newlean, Hollie Rogge--WSDOT