Category Archives: City Politics

City shifts $23m from City Roads to Klahanie project–but had vowed not to affect legacy Sammamish

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When Sammamish officials in the summer of 2014 lopped around $19m off its 2015 Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan from four long-standing road projects, they had already pledged to improve and widen Issaquah-Fall City Road along the entire length of the east side of the Klahanie Potential Annexation Area if voters there agreed to annex to Sammamish.

Klahanie PAA voters rejected a plan the previous January to annex to Issaquah. Sammamish, which campaigned against the Issaquah vote, promised to take on the road project if a subsequent vote to annex to Sammamish was held and approved. King County at one time placed a price tag of $32m on the project. Sammamish officials studied the plan and concluded King County had double-counted some of the work in a two-phase plan and estimated the cost was closer to $23m.

For several consecutive TIPs, costs for four key projects within Sammamish remained constant. Facing the Klahanie project, the 2015 TIP cut$19m from these projects. Another $3.6m was further reduced from the 2015 TIP for the 2016 TIP, approved last month.

The analysis that revealed City officials shifted $22.5m from road projects to fund the $23m Issaquah-Fall City road widening to fulfill a commitment for the Klahanie area annexation appears to go back on a pledge to Sammamish residents that they wouldn’t be impacted by the annexation.

It also appears to be an effort to mask early statements by City officials that Sammamish would have to issue $23m in bond debt to pay for the Issaquah-Fall City/Klahanie road widening project.

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Sammamish’s Six Year Transportation Plan’s disappearing costs

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  • $22.5m in project costs disappear from 2014 TIP to 2016 TIP for same projects.
  • $20m in grants assumed in current TIP and ending fund balance in 2021 is forecast to be depleted.
  • Under-costing projects create $22.4m ending fund deficit, based on the 2014 TIP.
  • Costs were constant for several consecutive years, until 2015.
  • Big drop came from 2014 to 2015, smaller drop from 2015 to 2016.

The new 2016-2021 Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) approved on July 7 by the Sammamish City Council appears to understate the projects costs by nearly $22.5m, a side-by-side comparison with the 2014-2019 TIP shows.

The City updates and adopts a TIP every year. The big drop came from the 2014 TIP to the 2015 TIP, with a further but much smaller reduction from 2015 to 2016.

For several years before the 2015 TIP, the four projects common to several back-to-back TIPs remained constant. The 2015 TIP dropped an additional $3.6m compared with the 2014 TIP, which is $22.5m higher than the 2016 TIP approved by the City Council last month.

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City may discuss Transportation TIP funding–after the election

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The Sammamish City Council may discuss the controversial Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), but not until after the November election, Sammamish Comment has learned.

City Manager Ben Yacizi wrote Council Member Nancy Whitten on Aug. 5 that a budget review meeting in November, which will “authorize the funding of various TIP projects” “might be a good meeting to further discuss this topic.”

Whitten had written Yacizi supporting Council Member Ramiro Valderrama’s concern that the August City Newsletter and its articles about the TIP were political in nature.

Sammamish Comment detailed the politicalization of the Newsletter in an August 12 post. The Newsletter had a front page article defending the funding of the TIP, along with a Mayor’s Message doing the same thing.

“I join in Councilmember Valderrama’s request that we have further council discussion about these road projects…and how we might pay for them and the potential bonding before such an article goes into our newsletter,” Whitten wrote, noting that “inconsistency with prior statements made about bonding are very convenient timewise during an election year.”

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Transparency (or the lack of it), the evolving Sammamish City Newsletter and taxpayer dollars

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The August Sammamish City Newsletter contained a front page article about the state of the City’s finances and the Six Year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).

This was followed on the next page by the Mayor’s Message, in this case from Tom Vance, who is in his second year as mayor.

The articles are clearly responses to public questions about the TIP funding and proposed City expenditures in the hundreds of millions of dollars over the next six years for a variety of projects, notably from Council Member Ramiro Valderrama. He’s repeatedly questioned the financial viability of the road projects and how these will be funded.

This column also questioned the TIP and its ending fund balance as adopted, showing a near-depletion by 2020.

The article is a clear response to Valderrama and to The Sammamish Comment. The Mayor’s Message is a clear puff piece, transparently touting policies and promotions as Vance heads into a reelection campaign that will get underway after Labor Day.

The City Newsletter has transformed from a means to inform citizens to a propaganda piece to refute questions raised by members of the City Council and the Public and, in the case of the Mayor, to defend his own practices from criticism.

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Vance, Huckabay criticized over Comp Plan maneuvers

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The leadership of the Sammamish City Council was criticized by one of its own July 21 over their refusal to delay approval of the Comprehensive Plan when the final, 250-page version was presented by staff the day before adoption was on the agenda.

Nancy Whitten rapped Mayor Tom Vance and Deputy Mayor Kathy Huckabay for ignoring requests from the other five Council Members to delay a vote until the large document, which is a complete rewrite of the original Comp Plan, could be reviewed.

State law requires a major updating of the Comp Plan every 10 years.

Vance, Huckabay and City Manager Ben Yacizi make of the leadership team that sets the agenda. They pushed the City Council to approve the Comp Plan before the August recess. Huckabay made the motion to approve the Comp Plan, but the motion died for lack of a second. The Mayor typically does not move or second motions.

During Council reports at the end of the July 21 meeting, Whitten made these remarks rapping the leadership. Her remarks begin at 2:06:18 into the meeting.

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