The agenda for the Sammamish City Council Retreat Jan. 14-16 is now available here.
The Retreat begins at 5pm Thursday, the 14th, and continues to noon Saturday, the 16th. It’s at the Murano Hotel in Tacoma, not especially close to Sammamish but not over the Snolqualmie Pass, either. Officials did look into closer locations but these had already been booked. Previous Retreats were held at the Suncadia Lodge in Roslyn.
Sammamish Comment will attend. Look for posts each day.
The Issaquah Press and Sammamish Review have a new general manager and new editor. The Jan. 7 issues have full, front page pleas for people to voluntarily pay subscriptions. The whole thing
smacks of dying newspapers.
This may well be true. The diminishing size of the papers and the sparse advertising were clear signs of struggling papers. But the full, front page pleas? I’ve never seen anything like it. And my first full time job, at age 19, was with a community paper, The Wheaton Daily Journal in Wheaton (IL). The paper no longer exists, given up long, long ago.
But I’ve been in journalism for most of my professional career. I started two international aviation magazines, sold them, and started an paywall/freewall aviation blog, which is my full time profession with its companion consulting business. Sammamish Comment is a past time, a community service, really, started because the Sammamish Review and, later, Sammamish Reporter really don’t do a very good job of covering Sammamish on critical issues. See here for details. Last year, The Comment had record readership.
Having successfully created three money-making publications, including one that is entirely on the Internet, I think I know a thing or two about what makes a successful news outlet.
It’s called giving readers something worth reading.
The Sammamish City Council will hold its annual retreat Jan. 14-16 at the Murano Hotel in Tacoma.
The agenda is still pending. The plan is to being at 5pm Thursday, with a working dinner, all day Friday and a half day Saturday.
Don Gerend, the new Mayor of Sammamish. He will serve a two year term.
A new, inclusive approach for citizens was immediately apparent following the swearing in of two new Sammamish City Council members and selection of a new Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
Virtually since the forming of the City, public comment has been limited to three or five minutes. It was very rare that there would be interaction between the public and the Council, who usually sat mute while citizens often went away wondering whether anything they said sunk in.
That changed Jan. 5.
Jan. 5, 2016: The Sammamish City Council awarded the 7 1/2 refuse, recycling and yard waste contract to Republic Services.
The Council rejected a final plea by rival Waste Management (WM), which argued its bid is more than $6m lower over the life of the contract than the Republic bid.
The Council made the decision after an executive session, which discussed a lawsuit filed by WM over the staff recommendation to award the contract to Republic and to disqualify the WM bid as “non-responsive” on technical reasons. The staff analysis also concluded WM had undervalued its bid by a net of $183,000, resulting in a final price that was marginally higher than Republic.
Sammamish Comment 