• $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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