Category Archives: Development & Planning

Common Cause Housing Balance for Sammamish-Part 3

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Part 1 may be found here. Part 2 may be found here.

  • How to attain sustainable housing affordability, create vast community wealth and improve driver experiences.

Paul Stickney

By Paul Stickney

Guest Contributor

Article Three of Three

 Statement:  As you have been reading these articles, you have seen me use “we” and “our” quite often. This refers to either The City, the Community or both.

For over four years, I have attended nearly all City Council meetings, Planning Commission meetings and Transportation Committee meetings plus others. I am definitely NOT a Politician. I see myself as a citizen “Statesman”–bringing a bedrock of principles that are right, to benefit the members of our community, with a vision of long-term housing affordability and sustainability.  I am working to build consensus for achieving that vision.

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Top issues for Sammamish city council in 2018

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Four new members of the Sammamish City Council are sworn in tonight. The mayor for the next two years and deputy mayor for the next year will also be selected.

This new Council has a plethora of thorny issues facing it this year. Many of them come with hefty price tags that could mean a need to raise new taxes, despite universal opposition to any in a county where tax fatigue has set in.

Top issues

Except for the declared No. 1 priority, traffic, there’s no attempt to prioritize these issues; they are listed in alphabetical order.

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After six years, Chestnut Estates West appeals appear to be nearing end

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After six years, the fight over approval of the Chestnut Estates West plat off 212th Ave. and SE 8th St. appears to be over.

The Washington Appellate Court denied an appeal by developer Buchan over a Hearing Examiner ruling that Sammamish erred in allowing Buchan to swap out “tract K,” permanent open space that was part of the first Chestnut Estates plat approval.

Buchan years later applied for approved for the West plat at the end of SE 8th in the original plat. But Buchan needed to swap tract K to another location in order to build a bridge and connect to the original plat.

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Valderrama cites fake facts in Town Center moratorium flip-flop

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Ramiro Valderrama

Sammamish City Council Member Ramiro Valderrama, citing what turns out to be a series of unsubstantiated claims, executed a pirouette on his previous vote supporting a moratorium including the Town Center—and went splat.

The Town Center was exempted from the moratorium at the Nov. 21 meeting by a 4-3 vote, with Valderrama, Mayor Bob Keller and Council Members Don Gerend and Kathy Huckabay voting to lift it.

Valderrama said his vote always was about storm water management for the Town Center. In voting to exempt the Town Center, Valderrama claimed the emergency moratorium was not about traffic concurrency.

This simply wasn’t true.

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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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