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.

Some Council Members were effusive about the Staff’s work to avoid the assumption of bonds.

“There is no bonding to this, this is all future cash flow,” Deputy Mayor Huckabay remarked, during a long discussion of the funding.  There are $20m in grants assumed in the TIP, of which $5m has been approved. It was acknowledged that not all grants may be approved.

Additional impact fees expected are not included in the TIP due to timing issues, Huckabay said, but neither the amount nor the allocation to the TIP projects were discussed.

It’s this funding discussion that’s important and why subsequent attempts to dismiss financial concerns and doubts over the TIP’s funding mechanisms as just a “plan” are disingenuous.

Council Member Ramiro Valderrama has been asking for a detailed discussion throughout the year, only to be stonewalled. As Sammamish Comment reported last week, the City Manager wrote to Council Member Nancy Whitten that the discussion might happen in November. This would be after the November 3 election.