Ritchie calls council members who oppose the Town Center racists, classists, white privilege.
Charges manipulation of the City’s Comprehensive Plan.
Casts some opponents to Town Center as standing with Trump against fairness and equity.
Unrelated, King County initiates an inquiry into Ritchie’s residence status over his voter’s eligibility and whether he vacated office.
The controversy over the Town Center development project took a new turn with Council Member Jason Ritchie invoking racism and white privilege language against some City Council majority members. He did not name names.
Ritchie posted his message on his campaign Facebook page, which Council Member Pam Stuart supported by giving it a “like.”
Thanks to everybody carrying a camera in their pocket via cell phones, the world now sees just how common police misconduct toward blacks remains.
Whether it is excessive use of force or gunning down someone, cell phone videos make it clear and unequivocal there is a systemic problem in law enforcement.
This problem doesn’t stop with police agencies. We now can see that all too often, prosecutors are complicit in covering up these police crimes, either by commission or omission of investigating and prosecuting.
Tonight will be the last Sammamish City Council meeting for City Clerk Melonie Anderson who is retiring on June 30. Anderson is the longest tenure city employee and has been the city’s first permanent City Clerk.
The role of the City Clerk is pivotal to records keeping of the local government. Every ordinance (local law) adopted by City Council must be authenticated by City Attorney and City Clerk to be true and correct to City Council’s action.
20 years of service
The Sammamish Comment located the first ordinance Anderson authenticated. It was the Fireworks Ordinance, number 02000-65, adopted on June 28, 2000, prohibiting Fireworks discharge in the City.
Anderson will retire exactly 20 years and two days after signing this ordinance for the City.
Almost the entire body of the ordinances in Sammamish bears Anderson’s signature.
A beacon of integrity
The City Clerk’s role is also responsible for keeping the government transparent by providing access to government documents in response to public records requests.
The Comment has used public records requests extensively over the years to uncover facts, documents, council and staff thinking and actions, wrongdoing and to hold the City accountable. The City Clerk’s team many times finds itself at odds by having to provide documents to the public that may put its employer and colleagues in unfavorable light.
In this challenging environment, Anderson, a Sammamish resident herself, has been a beacon of integrity and transparency. Sammamish residents were well served by Anderson’s unwavering commitment to the law and for doing the right thing, even when faced with adversity from previous City Managers.
It is with mixed feelings that we wish Anderson a happy retirement. Her calm presence at City Hall will be missed.
Good luck, Melonie, in your retirement. Well deserved.
120 days after appointing David Rudat as the City’s Interim City Manager, the Sammamish City Council voted 5-2 to hire Rudat Tuesday evening as the new permanent City Manager. Council members Pam Stuart and Jason Ritchie voted against.
In February, when he was first hired as an Interim City Manager, Mayor Karen Moran described Rudat as the “most qualified manager we have ever seen”:
Mayor Karen Moran calls a story about Farmers Market “factually incorrect,” and provides email evidence to support her accusation.
The site, “Sammamish Independent”, published a story that Moran called a local school to discourage it from hosting the Market in Sammamish. Moran disputed information contained in the report.
The new site was launched yesterday by Lin Yang, a communications professional with ties to former Mayor Don Gerend.
In a new twist to the Sammamish Farmer Market saga, Mayor Karen Moran issued a statement late Monday night disputing a report from a new local news site that claimed she actively derailed the Market from being hosted in Sammamish.
