Monthly Archives: August 2015

Kokanee savior targets next step: Zaccuse Creek restoration

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Sammamish’s leading savior of the threatened kokanee salmon, the only salmon native to Lake Sammamish, is taking the next step to save the species: the restoration of Zaccuse Creek.

Wally Pereyra, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore Ebright Creek to help save Kokanee salmon, is moving on to Zaccuse Creek as the next phase of his decades-long effort. the Kokanee are native to Lake Sammamish. Photo via Google image. Click on image to enlarge.

Wally Pereyra, who already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to restore Ebright Creek and to appeal City of Sammamish approvals of upstream development he believes would harm Ebright Creek, is preparing to restore Zaccuse Creek in cooperation with the local Snoqualmie Tribe and, he hopes, the City.

Planning began several years ago. A June 2012 study with King County surveyed the creek, a culvert that goes underneath East Lake Sammamish Parkway and upstream and downstream from Pereya’s property. The study has several photos illustrating the 25 page report.

Pereyra owns several large parcels of land south of Thompson Hill Road, continuously along the Parkway to his residence.

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Why the “plan” is more than a plan for TIP

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The Sammamish Review covered the Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan last Friday that included Sammamish’s repeated view that the TIP is nothing more than a “plan” and not a budget.

Technically this may be true, but the City Council raised the bar when it approved the TIP July 7.

Council Members, and the City Administration, used the moment to emphasize the plan was constructed and adopted without the assumption that bonded indebtedness would be required to fund the plan.

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Sammamish needs to open up with transparency on TIP; there’s a “now you see it, now you don’t” show happening

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Illustration via Google images.

Sammamish officials have a serious transparency and credibility problem.

The side-by-side comparison of the 2014 and 2016 Six Year Transportation Improvement Plans (TIPs) shows what appears to be creative “book keeping” to present a financial picture that is rosy when it’s really not. Sammamish Comment also reviewed prior TIPs to compare projects and projected costs.

Sammamish Comment spent this week dissecting the TIPs for the Readers. The issues are these:

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City shifts $23m from City Roads to Klahanie project–but had vowed not to affect legacy Sammamish

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When Sammamish officials in the summer of 2014 lopped around $19m off its 2015 Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan from four long-standing road projects, they had already pledged to improve and widen Issaquah-Fall City Road along the entire length of the east side of the Klahanie Potential Annexation Area if voters there agreed to annex to Sammamish.

Klahanie PAA voters rejected a plan the previous January to annex to Issaquah. Sammamish, which campaigned against the Issaquah vote, promised to take on the road project if a subsequent vote to annex to Sammamish was held and approved. King County at one time placed a price tag of $32m on the project. Sammamish officials studied the plan and concluded King County had double-counted some of the work in a two-phase plan and estimated the cost was closer to $23m.

For several consecutive TIPs, costs for four key projects within Sammamish remained constant. Facing the Klahanie project, the 2015 TIP cut$19m from these projects. Another $3.6m was further reduced from the 2015 TIP for the 2016 TIP, approved last month.

The analysis that revealed City officials shifted $22.5m from road projects to fund the $23m Issaquah-Fall City road widening to fulfill a commitment for the Klahanie area annexation appears to go back on a pledge to Sammamish residents that they wouldn’t be impacted by the annexation.

It also appears to be an effort to mask early statements by City officials that Sammamish would have to issue $23m in bond debt to pay for the Issaquah-Fall City/Klahanie road widening project.

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Sammamish’s Six Year Transportation Plan’s disappearing costs

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  • $22.5m in project costs disappear from 2014 TIP to 2016 TIP for same projects.
  • $20m in grants assumed in current TIP and ending fund balance in 2021 is forecast to be depleted.
  • Under-costing projects create $22.4m ending fund deficit, based on the 2014 TIP.
  • Costs were constant for several consecutive years, until 2015.
  • Big drop came from 2014 to 2015, smaller drop from 2015 to 2016.

The new 2016-2021 Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) approved on July 7 by the Sammamish City Council appears to understate the projects costs by nearly $22.5m, a side-by-side comparison with the 2014-2019 TIP shows.

The City updates and adopts a TIP every year. The big drop came from the 2014 TIP to the 2015 TIP, with a further but much smaller reduction from 2015 to 2016.

For several years before the 2015 TIP, the four projects common to several back-to-back TIPs remained constant. The 2015 TIP dropped an additional $3.6m compared with the 2014 TIP, which is $22.5m higher than the 2016 TIP approved by the City Council last month.

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