On a 4 /3 split, City Council Tuesday night voted to keep the moratorium on the Town Center.
Mayor Malchow, Deputy mayor Moran and Council members Hornish and Ross voted to keep the moratorium.
Council members Ritchie, Stuart and Valderrama voted to lift it.
On a second matter related to exempting 65 homes from the new interim design regulations the council decided to delay a vote until the public hearing on November 6.
More details to follow.
By Miki Mullor
Deputy Editor
A day after staff revealed the last data on the new concurrency rules, a split Sammamish city council took action to save development of hundreds, potentially thousands, of new homes, from what looks like an inevitable shut down of growth in Sammamish due to lack of road capacity.
The Sammamish City Council last night effectively lifted the year-long building moratorium, with some conditions for the Town Center.
In a surprise action, city council also adopted an emergency development regulations that will impact the neighborhood character of new development, adding restrictions to projects that aren’t already vested.
Kendra Breiland, Fehr & Peers
Recent emails discovered on Fehr & Peers servers, obtained through a public records request, reveal separate, secret meetings between Kendra Breiland from Fehr & Peers, former City Manager Lyman Howard and Town Center developer STCA.
“This is confidential correspondence from the City Manager’s office,” wrote former Deputy City Manager Jessi Bon to Breiland in an email dated July 22, 2017. “We would like to meet with you on Thursday at on off-site location. At this time it will just be myself and the City Manager. The other staff are not aware of this meeting, so again, please keep this confidential.”
Meetings between developers and government officials are common. What is uncommon–and suspicious–are meetings that are labeled confidential and specifically excluding staff under a request for confidentiality.
A contractor’s emails are subject to the State Public Records Act under certain circumstances, which applied in this case. The complete email exchange is here.
Mayor Christie Malchow announced Thursday night on her Facebook page the appointment of Larry Patterson as the new Interim City Manager.
No additional details are available at this time.
Sammamish Comment 