Monthly Archives: July 2011

More intimidation, hypocrisy from John Galvin

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Sammamish voters received their ballots Friday/Saturday for primary day on August 16 for City Council. Voters have a choice in one race between Ramiro Valderrama, Jim Wasnick and John Galvin.

Galvin, of course, is the person who lectures Sammamish on proper procedures, only to flout the law when it comes to his own candidacy. He is also the master of hypocrisy.

As recently as May, Galvin was decrying campaign contributions by yours truly to past campaigns. In 2009, he attacked people who contributed funds to candidates they support. He attacked my wife’s campaign contribution, among others. This past May he claimed I had “financed” several city council campaigns.

Setting aside the bloviating over-statement of the word “financed” in this context, what does Galvin do when it comes to his own candidacy? Galvin filed for what’s called “mini-reporting.” This means he doesn’t have to reveal who is contributing to his campaign, or the amounts they “financed.”

Sammamish voters have no idea who is financing Galvin’s campaign or who is supporting him. Given his persistent criticisms and lectures about who supported and contributed to candidates he opposed, the hypocrisy is noteworthy.

Then there is the matter of his continual pattern of intimidation. I’ve already documented just two examples in the preceding post. I have two years of emails with many more examples.

But Galvin doesn’t stop there. In what is particularly egregious, Galvin on two occasions verbally accosted the wives of two planning commissioners with whom he disagreed.

Galvin is well over six feet and a stout individual. One of the wives is 5’9″ and height-weight-proportionate and the other, well into her 60s, is shorter. On these two occasions, Galvin accosted them as they were leaving commission meetings (and while their husbands were on the podium, unaware of the events until afterward) and began to berate them for actions of their husbands.

After the second incident, police were on hand at the following meeting to be sure Galvin did not repeat his inappropriate actions.

This is not an individual who should be on the city council or in any advisory role. It is worth noting that he once applied to for a position on the planning commission, and no council member supported his appointment. Furthermore, he applied for appointment to various town center advisory committees and no council member supported any of his previous applications.

These universal rejections of Galvin have nothing to do with his so-called advocacy of “inconvenient truths.” They are entirely because Galvin has an anger management issue (odd for someone who has a PhD in psychology who is a grievance counselor) and because of his history of verbal abuse toward staff, commissions and committees, anyone he disagrees with and the requirement for a time that police be present in case he goes into one of his inappropriate actions.

 

Insulting the staff, by councilman-wannabe

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John Galvin wants to be a city councilman, with oversight of the city staff via the city manager. Yet for years, Galvin has regularly abused the staff with verbal and written insults and intimidation.

Two recent examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

In an email (March 31, 2011, 8:09 am), Galvin wrote Eric La France on the staff in which he said, in part:

“If you and Ms. Currey [another staff member] are prepared to put your so called professional judgement (sic) to a practical, real life test, then you will make an appearance. We will have video cameras to record your visit and comments.” He goes on to write, “so-called scientists like you” and “Personally, I have lost respect for your professional judgement (sic).”

In an email (June 15, 2011, 9:26am), to council member John Curley, titled “Pull the other leg,” Galvin wrote about the community center process:

“[Consultant] Herbet’s presentation on a 12 person focus group was a complete con job.” And: “The entire process is a con job. The Kellman property was the desired outcome….No talk about funding means this is a fake plan….”

Galvin likes to brag he has a PhD in psychology. Even a first-year psychology student knows that insulting, berating and intimidating people is poor psychology. Galvin deserves a refund of his degree.

The Taj Mahal community center

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Sammamish has a rather sordid history about the community center.

The very first city council (1999-2001) recognized the need for a community center but it and succeeding councils dithered and dithered.

The councils agreed early on to partner with the Boys and Girls Club to erect a building on 244th Ave. just north of NE8th, but the BGC dithered so long on fund raising that the Lake Washington School District built a school on the site.

The city then dithered in doing a deal with the YMCA for a public-private partnership, despite having a couple of reasonable proposals.

Finally, 10 years after incorporation, the city bought the old library at NE8th and 228th and contracted with the BGC to run the place.

Now we’re looking at the prospect of a community center that will be three times the size of city hall at seven times the cost.

Holy crap! Why so expensive?

In part, there is the desire on the part of some, including the high schools, who want competitive swimming lanes, at a cost of $10m. (But, notably, the schools aren’t willing to step up and write checks, it seems.)

As long as we’re talking about features serving people, this is one use for the pools.

Whitten goes off the deep end on affordable housing

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It was a perplexing comment in The Sammamish Review profile of Nancy Whitten, seeking election to her third term on the City Council.

Here’s the bizarre portion of the article:

Whitten said she is also concerned about Town Center’s requirement that 10 percent of a development’s housing units be “affordable,” in that they can be rented by a family with an annual income of about $54,000. Having grown up in Chicago, she points to the infamous Cabrini-Green public housing project as an example of the downfalls of clustering affordable housing together.

“I question, socially, if we want to pack that much affordable housing in that small of an area,” she said.

I, too, am from Chicago (the Western suburbs) and know well the history of Cabrini Green. In the heart of Chicago, the place was a notorious housing project owned and operated by the City–not privately-owned units administered by a local organization like Seattle’s Arch. It was a densely-packed project for thousands of people of low income.

Chicago’s Cabrini Green. This is no Sammamish.

The affordable housing plan for Sammamish is a required 10% of the 2,000 units throughout the Town Center (with an option to go up to 20% of any given project), and families would have an average income of $54,000–which in their dreams, nobody residing in Cabrini-Green remotely made (except through illicit activities, perhaps).

The Chicago Housing Authority so mis-managed the “projects,” as it was known, and crime was so rampant, that the projects were eventually torn down.

Sammamish’s affordable housing plan doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to Cabrini-Green, and Whitten knows it.

In fact, the Town Center Plan doesn’t even remotely resemble the one once advanced by the Lake Washington School District, which owns 15 acres in the Town Center (not all of which is buildable). LWSD once proposed 144 units on this site, all of which would be affordable, for professions like teachers, police officers and fire fighters. Insofar as the proposal came very early in the Comprehensive Plan process, it was deemed premature and LWSD withdrew the plan.

The Town Center plan calls for a minimum of 200 and a maximum of 400 units, scattered throughout the 100 buildable acres.

What is Whitten thinking?