Christie Malchow, now Mayor of Sammamish.
Tom Hornish, now deputy mayor of Sammamish.
Christie Malchow and Tom Hornish were voted to be mayor and deputy mayor by their fellow council members tonight, at the first meeting of the meeting of the new year.
The votes were unanimous.
Malchow, who was deputy mayor for a portion of last year, will serve for two years. Hornish will serve one year. (The deputy position is a one-year term.)
Both are in the middle of their first two-year term.
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.
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.
Traffic clearly was the No. 1 topic of interest in Sammamish during 2017. It made five of the Top 10 stories posted in Sammamish Comment.
Miki Mullor. One citizen can make a difference.
The issue exploded after citizen Miki Mullor performed his own study of the City’s traffic concurrency system. He concluded traffic concurrency data and policies were manipulated by City staff. The Comment, which reviewed Mullor’s work before he went public with it, revealed the findings.
The study and story set off a series of events that reverberate to this day.
Christie Malchow
Tom Hornish
Commentary
As the Sammamish City Council prepares to transition next month to the largest makeover in a single year since incorporation, the first order of business after the swearing in of four new council members will be to select a mayor for the next two years and deputy mayor for the next year.
Christie Malchow earned selection as mayor. Tom Hornish earned selection as deputy mayor.
Both are two years in to their first, four-year term.
Their leadership and willingness to dig deeply into issues during their first two years has been nothing short of outstanding. Their honor and integrity is likewise outstanding.
Sammamish Comment 