Daily Archives: October 12, 2015

League of Women Voters Sammamish Council Candidate Profile

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  • Ballots will soon be the in the hands of Sammamish voters for the City Council election Nov. 3 (and other races). The ballots are being mailed this week by King County Elections. Sammamish Comment has been posting throughout October about issues, candidate profiles and candidate endorsements. Be sure to mark your ballots and postmark them by Nov. 3.

The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization, published candidate responses and profiles for the Sammamish City Council races, Positions 2, 4 and 6, on Vote411.org. The site is difficult to navigate and to find races in which the viewer is interested.

Sammamish Comment extracted the City Council races for ease of viewing in put them into a PDF file which you may download here: LWV Sammamish Candidate Profiles. This is current as of last week.

The LWV did not note that Hank Klein, who filed for Position 4 against Ramiro Valderrama, subsequently withdrew from the race, but too late to remove his name from the ballot. Sammamish Comment made this notation in his slot. Other than this notation and adding some spacing for readability, the LWV document is unaltered by The Comment.

The LWV noted that Mark Cross, candidate for Position 2 vs Christie Malchow, did not respond to any of the questions. The Comment finds this remarkable, and not in a good way. As with Cross’ own campaign website, which is notable in its lack of information, failing to respond to the LWV is a disservice to the voters of Sammamish.

 

 

 

 

Sammamish Initiative and Referendum effective

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  • 37 of 47 precincts approve the Initiative and Referendum.
  • All precincts where Council Members and Candidates for Council live approved I&R.
  • City and certain Council Members engaged in secret campaign against the vote and to undermine information.

The power of Initiative and Referendum became effective in Sammamish yesterday.

Hary Shedd 2

Harry Shedd, chairman of Citizens for Sammamish, led the charge to get the Sammamish City Council to adopt the Initiative and Referendum.

When the City was incorporated in 1999, the power of I&R wasn’t included in the City charter. Omission was claimed by City officials a decade and a half later to have been an oversight, but Karen Moran and Di Irons, two citizens involved in the incorporation at the time, said City officials deliberately left the power out.

Regardless, Citizens for Sammamish, a grass roots group chaired by Harry Shedd, pressed the current City Council last year to adopt an ordinance granting the power. The Council refused, with a majority simply opposed to giving Sammamish voters the right to I&R. Shedd continued his crusade and in January this year, the Council agreed at its retreat to put the issue to a non-binding Advisory vote. It later set April 28 as the election date.

Although a majority of the Council informally said at the retreat they would honor the outcome of the Advisory vote, and later officially said they would remain neutral, in fact the City and several Council members engaged in a stealth campaign to defeat the I&R, sow confusion, disseminate misinformation and suppress information and ultimately voting.

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Two Council Members voted against advancing the I&R to an enabling ordinance after the Advisory vote passed by a 55.5%-44.5% margin: Deputy Mayor Kathy Huckabay and Member Tom Odell.

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