By Miki Mullor
Editor
Sammamish Chamber of Commerce President Karen McKnight announced candidacy for Sammamish city council, a filing with the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) reveals.
According to her LinkedIn profile, McKnight is a Managing Broker at Keller Williams Eastside and a top producing, award winning realtor at Keller Williams Realty, Windermere Real Estate and the Heller Company.
On Chamber since 2006
McKnight has been a real estate broker since 1983 and a Board Member at the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce since 2006. She earned a B.S. degree in Psychology from University of Puget Sound.
On multiple occasions and in an email to Council from March 4, 2018, McKnight urged the council to lift the moratorium off the Town Center.
Excerpts from McKnight’s email:
I urge you to exempt town center from the moratorium, because I believe this moratorium is harming our city and it’s future.
I worked half my career with developers and builders, so I understand their risk. I am also currently president of the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce and am an advocate for our businesses
The developers who have invested tens of thousands (some hundreds of thousands) of dollars to be ready to submit for permits can lose their investment dollars and their opportunity. As they sit and wait, their holding costs escalate dramatically and can mean the difference between profit and huge losses, making it more likely they will cut their losses and withdraw their projects.
We are currently thought of as a development friendly city. If we lose that reputation, we can lose our opportunity as a city to create a lovely, cohesive, vibrant Town Center.
Sammamish, due to it’s location and natural beauty, will continue to grow. Our zoning laws are strong, our traffic plans and infrastructure plans are good, our tree canopy regulations are great.
I feel the group opposing Town Center’s progress does not understand all the ramifications of stopping the development of Town Center. My council representative, please be visionary, and don’t only listen to a small group of loud, relatively new resident, voices.
Second candidate to announce
McKnight is the second person to announce her candidacy. Rituja Indapure, a member of the Sammamish Planning Commission, announced early this month. Indapure lost her first election effort in 2017 to Chris Ross, who now sits on the council.
Neither candidate indicated which seat they will seek. Terms of three members of the council expire this year: Mayor Christie Malchow, Tom Hornish and Ramiro Valderrama. None has indicated if they will seek reelection.
Sammamish Comment 
🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁
No way!!! Traffic is horrendous already. We’ve almost reached our house building goal ten years ahead of schedule!!! That’ll be a no vote from me. Slow down the building!
Another Real Estate Professional® with a vested, financial interest in development, the likes of which have served the city so well in the past. Of course, they’ve served their own financial agenda at the same time, but clearly, given the dedication to Public Service, any personal profiteering must have been just a coincidental and totally unintended consequence of said “Public Service.” Yeah.
At least there’s enough history here to know who she’ll really represent, not to mention the ease with which she dismisses those who disagree with her as “failing to understand” the importance of developers’ profits: loud, new, ignorant city residents all, who haven’t put up the “tens of thousands (some hundreds of thousands) of dollars” it takes to EARN a seat at the public table around here. Yeah.