By Miki Mullor
Editor
King County Council today unanimously voted to appoint former Council Member Pam Stuart to Ken Gamblin’s vacant city council seat. Gamblin resigned in January. The City Council had 90 days to appoint a Sammamish resident to fill his vacant seat. However, because the 6 members of the city council couldn’t agree on who to appoint, by state law, the responsibility became King County council’s.
Stuart will serve on the city council until December 2023.
Continue readingBy Scott Hamilton
Guest Contributor
In a maneuver reminiscent of Sen. John Kerry’s infamous “I was for it before I voted against it” declaration in the 2004 presidential election, Sammamish Council Member Pam Stuart declared she would support taking the 1% property tax increase allowed by law.
Council Member Pam Stuart
Then she voted against it when the vote was called.
She was the deciding vote in causing the motion to fail.
The vote came after the council on Nov. 19 added $270,000 to the city’s expenditures for the next year that hadn’t been budgeted.
This included $120,100 for the Technology Fund and $150,000 for a grant in the Health and Human Services Commission dedicated for youth mental health.
By Scott Hamilton
Sept. 20, 2019: It is now clear that the Sammamish City Council election this year has come down to one issue: unfettered development across the city vs controlling development so it doesn’t further overwhelm the roads and aggravate the congestion that already exists.
All other issues have taken a back seat.
If you support unfettered development, Karen McKnight, Rituja Indapure and Karen Howe are your choices for council.
If you want to control development and moderate traffic congestion, Christie Malchow, Kent Treen and Ken Gamblin are your choices.
By Scott Hamilton
Analysis
Sept. 16, 2019: The agreement between Sammamish and the YMCA for the latter to run the community center was the result of a sole-source, no-bid contract.
No Request for Proposals was issued that would compete management of the center.
The contract between Sammamish and the YMCA was a sole-source, no-bid arrangement. No Requests for Proposals were issued. A Sammamish businessman wanted to bid. City of Sammamish photo.
An offer by a Sammamish health club owner to submit a bid that would return 15% of the gross receipts to the city didn’t even get a hearing.
One of the leading advocates throughout the years for the YMCA was a city council member who also sat on the YMCA board, a clear conflict of interest that was ignore by the city administration and a successive series of city councils. (This member was off the council in 2012-13, when the votes were held.)
The YMCA was fundamentally the only entity supported by the city for nearly a decade before a contract was negotiated.
These lie at the roots of the current controversial examination of the city’s management contract with the YMCA that sees the agency siphoning off $1.4m a year to the Greater Seattle YMCA rather than keeping the money in Sammamish or sharing the profits with the city’s general fund.
By Miki Mullor
Editor
The Growth Management Hearing Board (GMBH) has continued (postponed) Don Gerend’s lawsuit to invalidate the new concurrency rules enacted by the majority of City Council.
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Sammamish Comment 