Miki Mullor
Editor
In a 4/3 split vote, Sammamish City Council voted to officially oppose Sen. Palumbo’s bill to mandate upzoning in areas within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB).
Council member Chris Ross said:
Continue reading“I am very strongly against ceding control over our community… to allow the state to take over our planning and treating an urban rural suburb [Sammamish] the same as core urban city like Seattle is completely irresponsible”.
The Top 10 stories in Sammamish for 2018 revolved around traffic, the 
building moratorium and—surprisingly—a state legislative action concerning public records.
The Sammamish Town Center was the focus of controversy in 2018, connected to many of the Top 10 stories for the year.
Here are the stories most viewed on Sammamish Comment for the year. Continue reading
By Scott Hamilton
Founder, Sammamish Comment
The Sammamish City Council held its last meeting of 2018 yesterday, ending the most contentious and divisive year I’ve seen since the incorporation vote in 1998.
As 2019 prepares to arrive, it’s time for a fresh approach to how this city is governed.
The city council, administration and staff has been consumed by traffic concurrency, the resulting building moratorium and related development regulations all year—really, since October 2017, when the moratorium was adopted to give the government time to sort out the concurrency issues.
These issues consumed the city nearly to the exclusion of all else.
A split Sammamish City Council tonight passed the new traffic concurrency rules.
The “M4,” Mayor Christie Malchow, Deputy Mayor Karen Moran and Council Members Tom Hornish and Chris Ross, voted for the new volume/capacity (V/C) rule that brings some measurement of reality on the roads into Sammamish concurrency rules.
The “V3,” Council Members Ramiro Valderrama, Pam Stuart and Jason Ritchie, voted against.
Continue readingBy Scott Hamilton
A second Sammamish city council member went on record, declaring that
Jason Ritchie
future growth should “focus” on the Town Center.
Jason Ritchie Tuesday joined Member Pam Stuart in calling for future growth to go to the Town Center.
As Sanmamsih Comment wrote Oct. 22, suggesting that future development be directed to the Town Center raises a host of questions.
The Comment posed these to Ritchie. He wrote back, “I’m happy with my statement as is. Nothing more to add at this point. I’ll be working with my fellow council members and their positions to find compromise and a path forward.” Continue reading
Sammamish Comment 