The Sammamish Review and Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter shirk their civic and Fourth Estate duties.
Neither makes endorsements in elections.
The Review used to, but stopped last year in advance of the Sammamish City Council races. The Reporter never has.
There was no explanation from The Review for its reversal. The Reporter said people can make their own decisions.
Sammamish will hold its annual Disaster Preparedness Fair Saturday, October 15, at City Hall from 9am to 3pm.
Details can be found here: Sammamish Disaster Preparedness Fair.
Several private and civic organizations will have displays in the Council Chambers and in the Courtyard, providing information residents need to survive disasters.
The principal focus is on earthquake preparedness, but other emergencies—such as downed power lines that can be dangerous—have been addressed in the past.
The City is the host but didn’t participate last year with a table of its own. It will this year.
Sammamish also was slow to participate in the Cascadia Rising emergency disaster drill last June, finally signing up after Sammamish Comment began asking questions about the City’s preparedness.
Since then, the new City Council (effective Jan. 1) and new City Manager (effective March 1) have undertaken numerous steps to bring the City to a state of preparedness.
Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama led the opposition to Sound Transit 3.
The Sammamish City Council’s vote Tuesday night to oppose Sound Transit 3 was the right choice for the City. The vote was 5-2.
ST3 takes bus service away from Sammamish but offers a park-and-ride for the north end, an obvious contradiction. Even the PNR is not a firm offer.
Taxpayers would fork out between $500m-$550m in taxes over 25 years for this.
Issaquah and Redmond get light rail extensions. But the Issaquah light rail goes to downtown Bellevue and south Kirkland, not Seattle. The rail station is projected to be at roughly I-90 and SR900, behind the QFC grocery store (presumably in the I-90 median.) It needs to go to Issaquah Highlands.
If Sammamish residents want to commute to Seattle by light rail, the choices would be to go to the QFC terminal, either by car or bus, then to Bellevue and connect to Seattle; or go to the potential north Park and Ride (if it happens), then to Redmond, through downtown Bellevue and on to Seattle.
Fat chance.
Oct. 4, 2016: The Sammamish City Council voted tonight to to oppose Sound Transit 3 for the $27bn tax package, a $54bn multi-modal transportation package that reduces service to Sammamish in exchange for citizens paying an estimated $500m-$550m in taxes over 25 years.
The measure is on the Nov. 8 ballot in the Sound Transit area that includes portions of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
Going into the meeting, five Council members told Sammamish Comment they opposed ST3. These were Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama and members Tom Hornish, Tom Odell and Christie Malchow.
Members Bob Keller and Kathy Huckabay supported ST3.
The vote tonight was 5-2 against the huge tax package. Keller and Huckabay were the dissenting votes.
As the Nov. 8 election approaches, the Sammamish City Council still has not taken a formal position on whether it supports Sound Transit 3 (ST3). The topic is set for discussion at the Oct. 4 Council meeting.
Sammamish City Council: Back row, L-R: Tom Odell, Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama, Tom Hornish. Front row, L-R: Kathy Huckabay, Christie Malchow, Bob Keller.
Five of the seven members previously said they oppose ST3 as it currently is laid out. Two members, Kathy Huckabay and Bob Keller, support ST3 in the name of regionalism. While regionalism is an admirable goal, the plan needs to make sense. ST3 has serious flaws.
Even Mayor Don Gerend, who is a regionalist and represents Sammamish on many such committees, finds the ST3 plan so bad and so disadvantageous to Sammamish, that he declared his opposition to ST3.
As this column has reported several times, the $54bn plan doesn’t even guarantee a single project. It only guarantees that taxpayers will no longer have the power of the vote over new taxes. This power shifts solely to the ST board, which is comprised of appointed people not the least bit accountable to taxpayers.
ST3 proposes less bus service for Sammamish, which now is the second or third largest city on the Eastside.
ST3 says it will give Sammamish a north end park-n-ride. But as noted, this isn’t guaranteed.
For this reduction in service, removal of direct taxpayer authority over new taxes and a park-n-ride that may not even get built, Sammamish taxpayers get to pay between $500m and $550m over the next 25 years.
It’s overdue for the City Council to stand up and take a position.
Supporting ST3—or not—is a matter of the City Council setting the right priorities for the people they were elected to represent. They were not elected to represent the greater King County, nor Piece County nor Snohomish County—all part of the Sound Transit taxing district.
Sammamish Comment 