Category Archives: City Politics

Election Day–and Night: What to expect

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Today is Election Day. Ballots have to be postmarked today or dropped off at a ballot collection station, in our case, at City Hall.

Three City Council positions are up for election: 2, 4 and 6. Sammamish Comment recommends Christie Malchow, Ramiro Valderrama and Tom Hornish respectively. Previous posts detail why.

In Washington State, we vote principally by mail. Accordingly, the final results won’t be certified for two weeks, but trends are known quickly. In fact, having been involved in every election of this City since the 1998 vote for Incorporation, history proves that the final result doesn’t vary more than 1% or 2% from Election night results.

Thus, unless the Election night is too close to call, the result then should tell us what the final result will be.

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Closing thoughts on the Sammamish City Council election

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Tuesday is Election Day, but ballots have been out for more than two weeks. As we count down to Tuesday’s voting for City Council, a few closing thoughts are in order.

Stepping up to the front lines

Hamilton KING5_2

By Scott Hamilton. Photo via Google images.

First, I want to say right up front that as much as I have come to disagree with the direction of the current City Council, I respect and applaud each member’s willingness to step up, serve and be in a position to take the criticism that comes with a public position. Having served eight years on the Planning Advisory Board and the Planning Commission, I was subjected to more than my share of abuse from the public. But let me tell you: each person serving on any city commission and on the City Council deserves the recognition that too few people step up to do the job, and those that do deserve at least a modicum of respect and thanks for doing so.

New Voices, New Perspectives Needed

Having said that, our City Council needs new voices and new perspectives.

I’ve chronicled all year issue after issue on which this City Council and its leadership has failed its citizens. Public records obtained through the Public Records Requests, documents on the City website and through interviews paint a picture of a City Council that has lost touch with its citizens and which has become more interested in maintaining its own power structure and agenda.

Even though the self-branded environmentalists indignantly protest criticism over a belief they have strayed from their brand, the evidence is compelling. The variances routinely granted by staff on traffic and environmental issues in approving development are well documented. Where have these self-branded environmentalists been in providing the oversight of the City Manager, and through him, the staff, for which they are responsible? One letter writer to The Sammamish Review supporting Mayor Tom Vance for reelection said the next council needs to focus on the environment. That’s what this Council and this mayor were supposed to do. The letter writer wrote, “Soon the current city manager will be leaving and I’m hoping that a new era will start – one that focuses on the environment and the original intention of incorporation.” Where was Vance’s leadership, as Mayor for two years and a Council Member for four years, in upholding the “original intention of incorporation”? There has been a huge failure of leadership–Vance’s leadership–and of the self-branded environmentalists on the current City Council. Why reelect the failed leadership in hopes of a “new era?”

When you have a staff that routinely ignores City codes in traffic and environment, and follows unwritten policies, something is very wrong.

When you have a Council that still does not get that the movement behind the Initiative and Referendum was the manifestation of citizens feeling unheard—not because of any burning issue to put up to an Initiative–something is very wrong.

When 55.5% of the people who voted approved the I&R and you still have members of the Council who attempt to diminish the result, something is very wrong.

When you have City Council Members who try to throw a planning commissioner off the commission because she supported the Initiative and Referendum, something is very wrong.

When you have the mayor of the City (not Vance in this case) calling the school superintendent to discipline a school principal because she supported retention of the Eastside Fire and Rescue in contrast to the mayor’s position, something is very wrong.

When you have scores and scores of property owners pleading with the City because King County is trashing the environment and over-reaching on property concerns to build a freeway-like lake trail, only to be ignored until it is too late, something is very wrong.

When the Ruling Majority blithely dismisses the minority members because they can, something is very wrong.

When you have members of the Ruling Majority undertake frontal and covert assaults on one Council member through front-people filing massive email Public Records Requests in an attempt to dig up dirt that doesn’t exist, something is very wrong.

When you have a City Administration and City Council give lip service to disaster preparedness, something is very wrong.

The examples go on and on.

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Low ballot return so far in Sammamish City Council race

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With six days to do to the November 3 election, in which three positions for the Sammamish City Council are on the ballot, City ballot returns through Oct. 26 are a dismal 7.8% of registered voters.

This is fractionally behind neighboring cities, Issaquah, Redmond and Kirkland, which are hovering around 8% ballot returns. Bellevue is slightly higher at 8.4%. All of King County, including Seattle where there are City Council races, is hovering around 8% ballot returns so far.

Off-year elections typically have dramatically lower voter turnout than presidential years or mid-term years in which the top of the ballot has a US Senator race. In Washington, the governor is elected in the same year as the president and mid-term elections have a US Senate seat at the top of the ballot.

City Council races are in the odd years, and don’t draw much in the way of turnout. Top top-of-the-ballot office races in King County are for Assessor and Director of Elections, two yawners that won’t help draw voters.

The top ballot initiative this year is I-1136, another Tim Eyman tax initiative that most people believe will be ruled invalid in a court challenge should it pass. A number of arcane advisory votes are on the ballot.

Eighty five percent of Sammamish voters typically turn out in a presidential election. This historically drops to 50% or less in an odd-year election. But since the City Council races are “down ballot,” by the time voters get down to these races, the actual voter participation is even lower.

Sammamish Comment has charted the statistics in three recent odd-year elections:

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Openness, transparency take another hit in Sammamish as Vance, Huckabay appear to withhold emails in Public Records Request

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Openness and transparency in Sammamish have taken another hit as Mayor Tom Vance and Deputy Mayor Kathy Huckabay appear to have withheld emails requested under

Tom Vance

the State Public Records Act.

This is especially ironic because Huckabay, in a last-minute email and letter-writing campaign against Council Member Ramiro Valderrama, who is seeking reelection, and candidates Tom Hornish and Christie Malchow, has made openness and transparency her top point against these three.

Sammamish Comment filed a multi-part Public Records Request (PRR) August 27 in pursuit of several stories that subsequently were posted as information was developed through interviews and records. Included in that multi-part request was the following:

Request #2:

Subject: All emails from the City server and the personal email accounts:

Kathy Huckabay

  1. relating any and all Public Records Requests of any kind to, from and/or between Tom Vance, Tom Odell and Kathy Huckabay on any subject.

City Clerk Melonie Anderson responded Thursday last week:

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Malchow, Valderrama, Hornish for City Council; ballot returns now

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Sammamish voters are beginning to mail their ballots for the November 3 City Council election. It’s a good time to review endorsements.

Position 2

Christie Malchow is the recommended choice over Mark Cross.

Christie Malchow, Position 2

Malchow is an energetic professional who got her baptism under fire in Sammamish as an appellant of a proposed project, Chestnut Estates West, that would have a material adverse impact on salmon-bearing Ebright Creek, traffic and a proposal to build on what had been designated as open space when the developer built Chestnut Estates (East). The City Hearing Examiner threw out the City Staff approval of West as improperly approved.

As with many who enter public service because of a passionate issue, Malchow came to understand there are bigger issues at stake than just a NIMBY issue. She learned that the City staff routinely waivers, ignores or grants variances to code to approve projects. City transparency and responsiveness is lacking. Malchow pledges to hold the staff’s feet to the fire, pry open the doors to transparency and to restore responsive government to Sammamish.

Malchow, if elected, will be the youngest member on the Council and the only one not eligible for membership to AARP. She’s 42 and has two small children, representative of the demographics of Sammamish.

Cross is a career government employee who served eight years on the Council, from 2004-2012. He seeks to return to Council after a four year break.

Cross, 65, served admirably on Council and is a faithful public servant. But his principal objective is to add staff to manage future road projects and to pave over the rest of the East Lake Sammamish Trail, though from his public statements, there is no evidence that environmental protection and property rights along the trail figure into his agenda. Cross will be a reliable member of the ruling majority, the so-called Gang of 4, all of whom have endorsed Cross for election. He also endorse Mayor Tom Vance, a member of the Gang, for reelection.

We need independent voices to challenge the Gang, not a reliable member to make it the Gang of 5.

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