City Staff Secretly Meets With King County On Growth

By Miki Mullor
Editor

Sammamish staff took deliberate steps to keep a meeting with county officials secret in order to avoid public records requests, Sammamish Comment discovered.

The meeting involved discussion to set growth targets for Sammamish. 

Staff-to-staff meetings aren’t typically public. They aren’t announced on government websites, meeting notices aren’t issued and the public isn’t invited to attend. But it’s highly unusual that a government takes steps to keep the meeting secret from public records.

Sammamish did just that over a meeting last month. Calendar entries for Sammamish staffers didn’t list the purpose of the meeting. A voice mail specifically detailed the motive to avoid public records requests.

Ironically, The Comment obtained the entries and voice mail under a public records request and was nevertheless able to piece together the purpose of the meeting and the motive for hiding it.

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Breaking news: Acting City Manager publicly resigns – blames City Council and the community

By Miki Mullor
Editor

Acting City Manager Chip Corder publicly resigned today in a note addressed to Mayor Karen Moran and that he emailed to all employees in City hall. 

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City Council Selects a New Interim City Manager

By Miki Mullor
Editor

The Sammamish City Council, in a 5-2 vote, selected David Rudat as its new interim City Manager. Rudat replaces former City Manager Rick Rudometkin, who was fired after only six months. 

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City listens to Gerend on legal representation in his case against the city

By Miki Mullor
Editor

  • Former Mayor Don Gerend, suing the city, advises who city’s attorneys should be – and the city is set to award a contract.
  • Mass exodus of lawyers sets up new firm Gerend recommends.

Former Mayor Don Gerend, who challenged Sammamish’s stricter traffic concurrency testing ordinance adopted last year, recommended that the city council keep its attorneys after a group of them defected from Kenyon Disend and set up their own law firm.

And, tonight at the council appears ready to follow the advice of the plaintiff asking the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB) to overturn a piece of legislation that is critical to measuring traffic in future development applications.

The city’s law firm since incorporation in 1999, Kenyon Disend, lost five of its 10 attorneys in November, when those five attorneys abruptly resigned to start their own law firm. Two of those attorneys represented the city in the Gerend case. 

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