Tag Archives: Bob Keller

Handing over the environmental baton in Sammamish

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Nancy Whitten ends 12 years on the Sammamish City Council as its leading environmentalist.

With the year-end Sammamish City Council meeting last night, the end of an era comes with it.

Nancy Whitten ends 12 years on the Council. With her departure comes the loss of the Council’s most aggressive, consistent advocate for the environment. Others on the Council can legitimately lay claim to environmental credentials, but it’s Whitten and her lawyerly approach to documents who so often spotted loopholes, reversals and inconsistencies in ordinances and, more recently, in the rewrite of the City’s Comprehensive Plan.

Who’s going to be the leading environmentalist on the Council now that she is gone?

The answer may surprise you. It’s Bob Keller.

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Thanks and respect owed to Whitten, Vance as their terms wind down

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Two City Council Members will be leaving office on Dec. 31. Regardless of politics surrounding each,

Nancy Whitten

regardless of differences over policies and demeanor, each deserves the thanks of Sammamish residents for their willingness to step up and provide public service. Too few people are willing to do so.

Nancy Whitten decided to retire after three terms on the Council. She is unquestionably the leading environmentalist on the Council, and her interest in this arena predates her service on the Council and incorporation of Sammamish.

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What’s next for Sammamish: balance of 2015 and in 2016

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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?

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How Sammamish veterans lost their City Council races

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  • Note: This is 11 pages when printed.
Nov 4 results

Click on image to enlarge.

How did two veterans of Sammamish public service lose their bids for election to the City Council in the Nov. 3 election to two unknown newcomers to the City?

They lost through a combination of miscalculation, arrogance, the split of traditional coalitions, angry opposition, tenacious newcomers and a one-term Council Member who wasn’t about to cower in the face of determined opposition.

They also had an unwitting helping hand from their own Deputy Mayor, whose obsessions galvanized the opposition to upset her allies.

This is the inside story of how Mayor Tom Vance lost to two-year resident Tom Hornish and how former Mayor and Council Member Mark Cross lost a comeback bid to a feisty young Mom in tennis shoes, Christie Malchow, invoking remembrances of another tennis shoe Mom campaign in Washington long before Malchow moved here.

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Blustery weather adds realism to Info Hub exercise

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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.

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