Category Archives: City Politics

First results: Ritchie, Moran, Ross, Stuart win City Council seats; Lambert reelected; Dems win 45th LD

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Jason Ritchie, Karen Moran, Chris Ross and Pam Stuart are projected winners of the Sammamish City Council seats.

Kathy Lambert has been reelected to a fifth term on the King County Council. Democrats flipped the State Senate seat for the 45th Legislative District.

Indications are there may have been an unusually heavy turnout for a City Council election.

So far, 26% of the ballots have been returned. By the time the last ballot is counted after Thanksgiving, typically the return about doubles. There are 36,136 registered voters in Sammamish. Typically, a City Council election sees a turnout of 40%-45%.

City Manager Lyman Howard announced at 7:20pm tonight during the Council meeting that the ballot drop box at City Hall had been emptied a couple of times today.

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Breaking News: Ritchie, Moran, Ross, Stuart win in Sammamish

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Here are the projected winners of today’s election. Details to come shortly.

Sammamish City Council:

  • Position 1: Jason Ritchie
  • Position 3: Karen Moran
  • Position 5: Chris Ross
  • Position 7: Pam Stuart

King County District 3:

Kathy Lambert

45th Legislative District:

Manka Dhingra

 

Sammamish’s Tax Day of Reckoning has arrived

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The Tax Day of Reckoning for Sammamish has arrived.

The City Council tonight may decide whether to adopt a 1% property tax hike, something Councils have avoided for the past eight years.

It could even decide to recapture the eight years of deferrals, or an 8% increase in property taxes, but this is unlikely.

Council Member Don Gerend also suggested the possibility of a utility tax during a study session last night.

Council Member Kathy Huckabay suggested a Transportation Benefit District tax dedicated only to road projects.

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Council takes up 2018 budget tonight–“crossover point” (deficit spending) appears to arrive years early

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The long-awaited “crossover point” when deficit spending occurs for the Sammamish city budget—in recent years projected to be early next decade—may be here now.

The City Council takes up the budget tonight and a comparison of revised figures by Council Candidate Mark Baughman shows proposed expenditures exceed projected revenues by $4m.

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In 2006, Sammamish pointed to concurrency to stop growth

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As the Sammamish City Council looks at alternatives for traffic concurrency policies to

SE 228th in Sammamish, off-rush hour. Seattle Times photo via Google images.

cope with development and growth, Members should revisit a May 2006 statement by the then-City Manager who said concurrency can be used to limit growth.

That statement, in the City Newsletter by Ben Yazici, stands in stark contrast to statements this summer by his successor, Lyman Howard, Vic Saleman, a traffic engineer consultant, and the City staff, that this isn’t strictly true.

The Council has a study session tonight beginning at 5:30pm at City Hall that includes a focus on concurrency options.

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