The 11 active candidates running for Sammamish City Council have of local endorsements as the Aug. 1 primary closes in.
Some candidates have no endorsements listed on their web sites, which are also—for the most part—appallingly devoid of substantive discussion of their issues.
It’s less than one month away from the Aug. 1 Sammamish City Council primary and fund raising by the candidates ranges from nearly $20,000 to nothing, an examination of filings with the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission reveals.
The data below is through June. Each raised more money since then.
Minal Ghassemieh (Position 3) and Rituja Indapure (Position 5) raised the most money, at $17,384 and $19,400 respectively. However, only a small portion of their fund raising came from Sammamish: 26% of contributors totaling $5,050 for Ghassemieh, and 32% of the contributors donating $6,296 for Indapure.
Mark Baughman (Position 1) hasn’t raised any money, but there is no primary for this position. His sole opponent, Jason Ritchie, raised $3,569, who is self-funding most of his campaign so far.
John Robinson (Position 7) raised $1,500, of which $1,000 is from himself.
Miki Mullor
More questions about Sammamish’s method of applying traffic concurrency by the citizen who understood a controversial study last month.
Miki Mullor sent a new round of questions to the City Council and City Administration on July 4. (See the Power Point program here.) He submitted the questions in advance of a scheduled July 10 meeting at which the City Council is to get a detailed briefing from staff about concurrency and how Sammamish measures traffic in approving development.
The day before the State Legislature began to reveal a big property tax hike is coming for education, Sammamish City Council members met with staff in a retreat to examine City finances.
The Council met with staff Thursday afternoon and evening. The State began releasing information about its new budget, with tax hikes, on Friday.
Council Member Tom Odell, looking at the 2017 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) that identifies nearly $90m in spending through 2023 and up to $165m in future years, inclusive of the $90m, and declared officials need to examine all potential revenue sources to pay for these projects.
Translated, this means potential new taxes.
At the same time, Council Member Tom Hornish remains unconvinced that budget cuts aren’t impossible and if these are deep enough, funding the road projects could come out of operations and current revenues.
The new Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan approved by the Sammamish City Council Tuesday boosts projects costs to $165.36m.
This figure includes the cost of the projects that start within the six-year TIP period but continue beyond into a date not specified.
Costs for the Issaquah-Fall City Road widening along the greater Klahanie area goes to $44.8m from an estimated $23m in the months leading up to the annexation vote to Sammamish in April 2014.
Last March, only three months ago, the cost was pegged at $36m.
Sammamish Comment 