Category Archives: City Politics

Heads up on ELSP Lake Trail: your trees are at risk

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While many letters to The Sammamish Review and comments to the Sammamish City Council have recently focused on the Lake Sammamish Trail from Inglewood Hill north to the Redmond city limits, residents south of Inglewood Hill to the Issaquah city limits are next on the trail “improvement” list.

Residents have until Oct. 29 to comment to the City and the County on plans to extend the 18 ft wide extreme makeover this distance. Trees will be destroyed in the name of building this “improvement” to city, county and federal standards. (Eighteen feet is the width of a land-and-a half of East Lake Sammamish Parkway.)

The City and the County have it within discretion to make small adjustments to standards. In most cases, aligning the trail slightly toward ELSP will save trees adjacent the west side of the trail. I spoke with a county official who said this would encroach on the wetlands. In walking the trail end-to-end, most “wetlands” are nothing more than drainage ditches, and in any event in most cases these ditches may be moved slightly toward ELSP.

Finally, the trade off between wetland and trees ignores the environmental benefits of trees: capturing stormwater runoff, stabilizing slopes and protecting the lake. They also help cool temperatures. My car’s thermometer shows as much as a 5 degree difference on hot days from the Safeway complex to my neighborhood, which is surrounded by cedar trees.

Residents need to flood the City and County with comments. Unfortunately, too many members of our city council appear uninterested in public opinion (as letter writers and the Oct. 8 editorial suggest). It took Councilmember Ramiro Valderrama months to get the city to put the north end on the agenda and to do something about the rape-and-scrape destruction of a thousand trees (by one count) on the north end of the trail. The County ran rough-shod over objections and pleas to be selective and careful.

The emergency tree ordinance just passed by the Council this week isn’t sufficient to prevent a similar slaughter on the south end of the project, Valderrama told me last night.

Public comments to the application by October 29 and public comment to the City Council is necessary. But in the end, appeals of the city permit and the shoreline management permit may be the only alternatives.

Klahanie PAA dodges Issaquah bullet; and the gift that keeps on giving

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The Klahanie Potential Annexation Area dodged the bullet from Issaquah, it turns out, as the city reveals its budget proposal.

One of the points the city promoted when seeking an affirmative vote from the PAA to annex to Issaquah was lower taxes.

The 2015 budget, just released, proposes raising property taxes 1% and nearly doubling most Business & Occupation taxes immediately and marginally in the following year.

Sammamish, which is now pursuing annexation of the PAA, hasn’t raised property taxes since incorporation in 1999 and it doesn’t have a B&O tax.

Issaquah needs to raise taxes because it’s essentially broke. The new budget projects an $8m surplus, which is really “nothing” for a government and city the size of Issaquah. There are little or no reserves for replacing aging water and sewer infrastructure, for example, or for doing many of the things the Klahanie PAA needs in terms of road improvements, maintenance and park upgrades. Sammamish, on the other hand, has a large cash balance and untapped bonding power of more than $400m, should it choose to use it.

Klahanie PAA voters were wise to reject annexation to Issaquah.

The gift that keeps on giving

Remember the City of Issaquah’s cybersquatting on the website domains of the Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District? I wrote several columns about this in September and October last year, beginning with this one. The Issaquah Press and Issaquah Reporter then named this event as the Top Story of 2013 in their January 2014 year-end recaps (just before the Klahanie PAA vote to annex to Issaquah, as it turned out).

On Oct. 6 this year, the Issaquah Press won first place in a national contest judged by the Arizona Newspaper Assn., which reviewed more than 2,300 entries for editorials.

The winner was The Press’ editorial condemning the city for the cybersquatting. Here’s the link to the story. Here’s the link to the editorial, which also ran in the sister paper, The Sammamish Review.

This bonehead move by Issaquah continues to haunt the government. Nobody was held accountable, and no elected official condemned the action until the mayoral campaign was well underway. This speaks volumes.

This is another reason the Klahanie PAA dodged a bullet.

 

Sammamish official asks how Issaquah-Pine Lake Road project can be funded while city plans spending spree

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It’s a very odd statement, reported by The Sammamish Review this week: the City doesn’t have the funds to complete improvements for Issaquah-Pine Lake Road.

The Review wrote, in part:

Councilwoman Nancy Whitten wanted the city to reprioritize a plan to improve Issaquah-Pine Lake Road between Klahanie Boulevard and Southeast 32nd Street. The project is on the improvement plan with an estimated cost of $16.5 million. However, it has no start date assigned, and Whitten hoped it would begin sooner.

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Whitten noted that the road needs to be fixed, even if the city does not end up annexing Klahanie.

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City Manager Ben Yazici agreed the road needs work, but said the city does not have funds to complete the project.

This strikes us as a very odd statement, since the City has a nine-figure spending spree that seems to be rising at every opportunity.

It’s also odd since the City boasts of no debt, more than $400m in bonding power and a cash balance in the tens of millions of dollars.

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Failing the public trust in Sammamish, failures of leadership from the Council

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The Sammamish City Council is failing the public trust.

All you have to do is watch the video of the June 17 City Council meeting to understand this bold statement.

When we became a city in 1999 (after the 1998 vote to incorporate), there were high hopes about getting out from under an unresponsive and arrogant King County government, the Council and departments, who viewed Sammamish as a dumping ground for development but without supporting infrastructure. We could communicate with “downtown” till the cows came home and our concerns would fall on deaf ears.

In the early days of our city, our council and staff indeed proved more responsive to citizen concerns. Today, our City is certainly more responsive to infrastructure requirements–but responsiveness to citizens has been slowly returning to “downtown” mentality.

Long-time readers of this column know the evolution of support I’ve expressed for the City Council and policies to a great deal of concern as arrogance and tone-deafness has set in. I need not recount all these issues, but instead will focus on what came up at the June 17 meeting.

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New water wars burbling in Sammamish

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The water wars between the Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District and Issaquah were entertaining. Despite the City of Sammamish watching this war, and becoming involved as an interested party, Sammamish city officials couldn’t resist approaching the Northeast Sammamish Sewer and Water District to invite a “discussion” about assuming the district.

To keep the players straight, here are the references we’ll use going forward:

Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District: “Plateau”.

City of Issaquah: “Issaquah”.

City of Sammamish: “City”.

Northeast Sammamish Sewer and Water District: “Northeast”.

Citizens for Sammamish: “C4S”.

Northeast went tilt over the City’s overture. Obviously having watched what was going on between Plateau and Issaquah, and the latter’s hostile takeover attempt of part of the Plateau’s assets and district, Northeast was paranoid. Not only did officials reject any call for “friendly” discussions, they fired up their customers, who flooded the City with emails and protests. Furthermore, Northeast budgeted $600,000 to defend the district against any attempt by the City to take over the district.

City officials seemed bewildered by Northeast’s reaction. We aren’t planning any move to assume Northeast, City officials protested. We just wanted to sit down and discuss the possibilities. A couple of City newsletters devoted a great deal of space to injured innocence.

Having watched the Plateau-Issaquah water wars (and participated in some of the negotiations to bring the wars to an end), I find it astounding that the City was so ham-handed in its timing to approach Northeast and even raise the issue when Plateau and Issaquah seemed headed for armageddon. Repeating, having become involved in talks as a neutral participant, so-to-speak, to resolve the dispute between Plateau and Issaquah, how could the City not understand the sensitivities of even raising the topic at that time with Northeast? It’s mind-boggling.

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