Here are the Top 10 stories in Sammamish for 2015, as measured by readership on Sammamish Comment:
Top 10 stories of 2015 in Sammamish
4
Category Archives: Police & Fire
What’s next for Sammamish: balance of 2015 and in 2016
Although votes are still being counted and the election results won’t be certified until Nov. 24, Christie 
Malchow and Tom Hornish have been elected to the Sammamish City Council; their Election Night margins were too great for Mark Cross and Tom Vance to overcome. Their vote tallies have only increased each day additional votes have been tabulated.
So the questions become, What’s next? What’s next for the balance of 2015 in what is now a lame duck period of the City Council, and What’s next in 2016?
Share this:
Blustery weather adds realism to Info Hub exercise
Saturday was a blustery, rainy and generally miserable day.
It wasn’t conducive to getting a lot of citizens to outdoor events but it many ways it was perfect for the 
Sammamish Citizens Corp. to hold its Info Hub exercise. There were reports of power outages. Trees limbs and debris came down throughout the City. On 212th Ave. SE between SE 29th and SE 33rd streets, a limb came down on power lines, severing one and landing on two or three, causing shorts and a small fire at the out-of-reach power lines where the limb crossed the lines. The Eastside Fire & Rescue and the Sammamish Police blocked off the southbound lane of 212th through the area.
Share this:
Closing thoughts on the Sammamish City Council election
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
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.
Share this:
City sponsors, skips Sammamish Disaster Preparedness Fair in City Hall
- October 15’s Great Washington ShakeOut drill reveals City’s Emergency Operations Center radio system was boxed up and inoperable since the remodeling more than a year ago.
- City claimed regular drills with activated EOC.
- State law requires annual emergency plan drills.
- City skipped signing up last year to participate in four-day Cascadia Rising drill next year, joining after Sammamish Comment revealed the inaction.
- Ten days later inoperative radio system discovered in EOC.
- 12 days later City skips its own Preparedness Fair.
- State law requires plan update every two years; last plan dated 2012, being updated now.
Eastside Fire and Rescue and Sammamish Police had tables. So did the Sammamish Citizens Corp, Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District, the Red Cross and several private enterprises displaying (and selling) survival kits. There was even a hot dog stand selling refreshments.
But no table from City Hall.
Sammamish’s own five year old Emergency Management Plan says “City and County governments will take the lead in managing public health, safety and welfare services.”
Sammamish Comment 