Category Archives: City Politics

Give Hornish a chance, city attorney advises council

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  • The city council meeting may be viewed here. The discussion begins at 8:30 and continues o 46:30 minutes. It resumes at the 2:11 hour mark for committee assignments.

The Sammamish city council should give Tom Hornish up to 90-120 days to assimilate into his new job and determine how much time he can devote to the council, the city attorney said Tuesday.

Tom Hornish

But three council members pressed instead to hold Hornish’s feet to the fire and require him to maintain his committee memberships.

Members Ramiro Valderrama, Jason Ritchie and Pam Stuart were unwilling to give Hornish a pass until they lost on his announcement Tuesday that a new job requires he relinquish his position as deputy mayor and membership to the council finance committee and regional groups, Eastside Fire & Rescue and ARCH, the affordable housing group.

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Hornish steps down as deputy mayor in heated meeting

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Tom Hornish

Tom Hornish stepped down Tuesday as deputy mayor but remains on then Sammamish City Council as an elected member.

Hornish has taken a new job that will require heavy travel in the next several months. He announced that he has to step down from council and regional committees while he assimilates into the new position.

Karen Moran was selected by the council to be deputy mayor on a 4-3 vote. Ramiro Valderrama was nominated by Pam Stuart to succeed Hornish. Jason Ritchie joined with Stuart and Valderrama to vote for Valderrama.

Moran, nominated by Chris Ross, receive her own vote along with Ross, Mayor Christie Malchow and Hornish.

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Sammamish extends building moratorium

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The Sammamish City Council extended the building moratorium to allow staff and the council to complete a revised traffic concurrency plan by July. The Town Center was not exempted.

The vote was 7-0.

Council member Jason Ritchie said STCA, a developer of the Town Center, “will be fine either way.”

But he expressed concern about the individual homeowners being prevented from building.

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Why I support the Town Center

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By Jason Ritchie

Member, Sammamish City Council

Guest Contributor

By Jason Ritchie

I stand by my words in the email quoted in the Sammamish Comment. I’m a strong supporter of the Town Center development plan. But that’s not the whole story. So let’s get specific.

Hold developers accountable

The Town Center plan is simply a plan. It has a lot of details that need to be negotiated. Implementing any plan is where we will determine our success. It’s up to the citizens of Sammamish, their elected City Council and city staff to hold all developers accountable. I intend to keep doing that.

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Council quietly killed STCA plans out of public view last year

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Sammamish City Council members quietly and out of the public view closed down efforts by developer STCA to dramatically upzone the Town Center.

The effort by STCA and the Council’s action never emerged into the public domain, it was revealed at the Save Sammamish meeting last night.

The revelation came after Sammamish Comment revealed the plans in a post Monday morning. The issue quickly became a hot topic on Facebook in various activist pages.

Council member Ramiro Valderrama, in a posting on The Comment, responded that, “I know of no current discussions for upcoming the Town Center.” But he did not reveal the Council had shut the effort down last fall, at a time when the City was preparing to accept “Docket Requests” to the Comprehensive Plan.

One Valderrama critic noted the parsing of words: there are no “current” discussions.

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