Citizens for Sammamish plan to push Tuesday for the Initiative at the City Council meeting. Harry Shedd, head of C4S, sent this email to the Council last week:
Next Tuesday’s meeting will offer you one more chance to certify the “Initiative Process” for Sammamish citizens. It is a simple offering and you have discussed it in the past. Personal freedoms should trump any reasonable alternatives. Please don’t kick this matter down the road…vote YES to allow this right to the citizenry and end your year on a high note.
As I’ve written previously, I’m conflicted about the Initiative process.
Also on the agenda Tuesday is an item starting the process for changes to the Comprehensive Plan, including the Town Center. Citizens and land owners may suggest changes in zoning, policies and permitted uses.
As November fades to December and the last City Council meetings in Sammamish of the year, Members are going to be considering whether to grant citizens the right to Initiative.
The City Council has to allow this right—it didn’t come as part of incorporation.
The request for the right to Initiative comes from long-simmering frustration with the City and a perception that neither the Council nor the employees listen to Citizens.
As with most things, the reality is more a shade of gray than black and white. But there is certainly enough evidence over the course of the City’s 13 year history to understand the pent-up frustration.
Opinion polls gave failing grades to six of seven City Council Members, the work of the City Council as a whole, the City Staff and the City Manager.
The polls, conducted on this blog, are, to be sure, unscientific. But an unscientific poll conducted to gauge support for the Community Center proved to come within 2.5 percentage points of the final result.
Graphs of the Opinion polling about the City appear below the jump.
Except for Council Member Ramiro Valderrama, whose Favorable score was 78%, each council member’s favorables-unfavorables fell below any passing grade metric anywhere in any school.
Approve-disapprove polling for the City Council as a while, the City Staff and the City Manager also were failing scores.
And Don Gerend, who has been a council member since the formation of the City in 1999 and who has told people he intends to run for another term next year (after 14 years in office), should retire, respondents voted. Gerend, Mayor Tom Odell, Deputy Mayor John James and John Curley are up for election next year. Curley said when he was campaigning in 2009 he planned to serve only one term. If he follows through, this guarantees one open seat in the 2013 election.
My analysis of each poll results follows the graphs.
Through Nov. 14, King County Elections ballot results give the Sammamish Community Center a 53.18% Yes vote to 46.82% No. The margin is 1,402.
Through Nov. 14, 24,504 votes had been cast in all races and 22,030 in the Proposition 1 ballot. Total voter turnout recorded through Nov. 14 was 84.66% of the 28,998 registered voters.
Only 115 ballots from Sammamish were received Nov. 14.
This data is close enough to being finished that I can offer these observations:
My unscientific poll finished pre-election with a 55.73% Yes polling. (Since then, a couple of more people voted No in the poll, but since this is after the election, these votes don’t count.) My polling was 2.55 percentage points at variance with the Nov. 14 results, well within standard margins of error. (Keep this in mind; this will relate to a future post.)
With a margin spread of 6.36 points, the City Council has a comfortable win. It’s not a landslide but neither is it a squeaker. (President Obama and Gov.-elect Jay Inslee would have wished they had a similar margin.) The City Council can fairly and confidently conclude it has a solid basis on which to go forward with the Community Center and with final negotiations for a management contract with the YMCA.
Concerned citizens have no solid basis to try and block moving forward, but they certainly can pressure the Council to negotiate a contract that minimizes risk to the City and, hopefully, shares in the profits. Although the Y is said to want the City to share in the P&L risk if it wants a share of the profits, my view is that the City is absorbing 83% of the construction risk and this is plenty, thank you very much.
The name “City of Sammamish” better be the Big Type on the side of the building. “Managed by YMCA” should be the sub-type.
Following the election and the controversial advisory vote for the Community Center, I thought a poll about the job the City Council is doing might be worthwhile.
Although unscientific, my Go Daddy poll about the advisory center is turning out to be pretty close to the mark: 55.7% of the respondents favored the Community Center and through Nov. 13, actually ballot results give the Yes vote 53%, well within standard margins of error of scientific polls. (The Sammamish Review’s unscientific poll wasn’t so good; it gave the Center a 62% Yes vote.)
A recent Citizens for Sammamish meeting turned into a massive venting session about frustrations with the City. The Council, the staff and the manager all came under fire. So I’m polling on this, too, as well as the Favorables-Unfavorables of each Council Member.
Feel free to comment in the Comment section. BUT: keep it clean, no swearing, no insults. Concisely state your opinions and the reasons for it in a clean and respectful way. I’ll delete comments that resort to name-calling and obscenities.
Question #1
Question #2
Question #3
I know this election is barely over but in 2013, four City Council seats are up for election. Mayor Tom Odell, Deputy Mayor John James, and Council Members John Curley and Don Gerend are up for election. Let’s get some favorable-unfavorable ratings.
Question #4
Question #5
Question #6
Question #7
Council Member Don Gerend has been on the council since the city elected its first council in 1999-13 years. I’m told he plans to run for another term next November, his 14th year on the Council. If elected, he would serve 17 years by the end of his term.
Question #8
The other three Councl Members, Nancy Whitten, Tom Vance and Ramiro Valderrama, were elected in 2011 and won’t be up for reelection until 2015. What is your opinion about them?
Sammamish Comment 