By Miki Mullor
Editor
The latest entrant to the election cycle is former Mayor Don Gerend, who has just formed a PAC (Political Action Committee), a PDC filing shows. Gerend has also recently initiated legal action to reverse the City Council’s new concurrency rules.
Continue readingBy Scott Hamilton
Sept. 20, 2019: It is now clear that the Sammamish City Council election this year has come down to one issue: unfettered development across the city vs controlling development so it doesn’t further overwhelm the roads and aggravate the congestion that already exists.
All other issues have taken a back seat.
If you support unfettered development, Karen McKnight, Rituja Indapure and Karen Howe are your choices for council.
If you want to control development and moderate traffic congestion, Christie Malchow, Kent Treen and Ken Gamblin are your choices.
By Scott Hamilton
Analysis
Sept. 16, 2019: The agreement between Sammamish and the YMCA for the latter to run the community center was the result of a sole-source, no-bid contract.
No Request for Proposals was issued that would compete management of the center.
The contract between Sammamish and the YMCA was a sole-source, no-bid arrangement. No Requests for Proposals were issued. A Sammamish businessman wanted to bid. City of Sammamish photo.
An offer by a Sammamish health club owner to submit a bid that would return 15% of the gross receipts to the city didn’t even get a hearing.
One of the leading advocates throughout the years for the YMCA was a city council member who also sat on the YMCA board, a clear conflict of interest that was ignore by the city administration and a successive series of city councils. (This member was off the council in 2012-13, when the votes were held.)
The YMCA was fundamentally the only entity supported by the city for nearly a decade before a contract was negotiated.
These lie at the roots of the current controversial examination of the city’s management contract with the YMCA that sees the agency siphoning off $1.4m a year to the Greater Seattle YMCA rather than keeping the money in Sammamish or sharing the profits with the city’s general fund.
The Sahalee (and Timberline) Candidate forum was 2:21 hours long. This is the first of series of short clips each featuring one question and the candidates’ responses.
We plan to provide the entire event in “bite size” clips.
The first clip is below.
The full length video of the City Council candidate forum that was held at the Sahalee Country Club on Sept. 5 is now available.
The event was hosted by Sahalee HOA and Timberline HOA and was moderated by David Steele, Vice President of Sahalee HOA. About 150 residents attended – 2/3 of which is estimated to be residents from other parts of the city.
Sammamish Comment 