William E Buchan Inc. filed a lawsuit Aug. 13 in King County Superior Court seeking to overturn a Sammamish Hearing Examiner’s decision denying a plat application for Chestnut Estates West.
Buchan previously filed an appeal of the decision.
The Sammamish City Council may discuss the controversial Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), but not until after the November election, Sammamish Comment has learned.
City Manager Ben Yacizi wrote Council Member Nancy Whitten on Aug. 5 that a budget review meeting in November, which will “authorize the funding of various TIP projects” “might be a good meeting to further discuss this topic.”
Whitten had written Yacizi supporting Council Member Ramiro Valderrama’s concern that the August City Newsletter and its articles about the TIP were political in nature.
Sammamish Comment detailed the politicalization of the Newsletter in an August 12 post. The Newsletter had a front page article defending the funding of the TIP, along with a Mayor’s Message doing the same thing.
“I join in Councilmember Valderrama’s request that we have further council discussion about these road projects…and how we might pay for them and the potential bonding before such an article goes into our newsletter,” Whitten wrote, noting that “inconsistency with prior statements made about bonding are very convenient timewise during an election year.”
Aug. 12, 2015: Stan Bump, a very close friend, formerly of Sammamish and a former member of the Sammamish Planning Commission, died yesterday after a long struggle with ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Stan Bump
Stan and his wife Ellie became a fixture at Sammamish City Council meetings after his term expired on the Planning Commission. The Council reserved seats for them in the front row–the only citizens so honored–for their long dedication to attending council meetings.
Stan was a career Naval officer, retiring as Rear Admiral, with his last command that of Kings Bay (GA), an Ohio-Class Trident Nuclear submarine base. When I had to unusual opportunity of spending two days and two nights on the Trident sub, USS Maryland, in the Atlantic out of Kings Bay, I saw Adm. Stan Bump St. on the base.
The August Sammamish City Newsletter contained a front page article about the state of the City’s finances and the Six Year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).
This was followed on the next page by the Mayor’s Message, in this case from Tom Vance, who is in his second year as mayor.
The articles are clearly responses to public questions about the TIP funding and proposed City expenditures in the hundreds of millions of dollars over the next six years for a variety of projects, notably from Council Member Ramiro Valderrama. He’s repeatedly questioned the financial viability of the road projects and how these will be funded.
This column also questioned the TIP and its ending fund balance as adopted, showing a near-depletion by 2020.
The article is a clear response to Valderrama and to The Sammamish Comment. The Mayor’s Message is a clear puff piece, transparently touting policies and promotions as Vance heads into a reelection campaign that will get underway after Labor Day.
The City Newsletter has transformed from a means to inform citizens to a propaganda piece to refute questions raised by members of the City Council and the Public and, in the case of the Mayor, to defend his own practices from criticism.
William Buchan development company filed its appeal Wednesday of the denial of its plat application to build 30 new homes west of the main Chestnut Estates subdivision across salmon-sensitive Ebright Creek.
A Sammamish Hearing Examiner denied the plat over open space issues. He also found that road standards were inappropriately varied and criticized the Sammamish staff over a number of issues.
Sammamish Comment 