Tag Archives: City Politics

That’s not tobacco they’re smoking at the City Council

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I was known as a tree-hugging environmentalist (among other things) during my 8 1/2 years of service on Sammamish committees and commissions but that doesn’t prevent me from saying the City Council is smoking something other than tobacco with the proposal to ban smoking in City Parks.

Despite some snide comments toward John Curley by one City Councilman and some Sammamish Review readers, I agree with him: the idea that second-hand smoke in an open-air park is hazardous (at least in the levels we’re talking about here) strikes me as pretty ludicrous.

I don’t like cigarette smoke; it’s obnoxious and has an odor that is particularly offensive to my sensitivities. But any time I go to the Sammamish Commons (for example) for the Fourth of July or Farmer’s Markets, if someone is smoking nearby, I can easily move upwind. In this case, I have to say smokers have their rights, too.

I think Washington’s smoking ban in buildings went too far. I am all for banning smoking in open areas within buildings (offices, restaurants, bars, etc.) or places like Safeco Field or the Clink (Century Link stadium), but I also believe that exceptions should have been allowed: a fully enclosed smoking area or provisions for “smoking clubs” would have been acceptable.

Sammamish has better things to do than pursuing this nanny state ordinance.

Final City Council results

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Well, almost. They won’t be completely counted until the end of today but this is, for all practical purposes, “it.” The City had a 52% turn-out, better than some other cities and worse than others. This is about normal for an off-year election for Sammamish.

One interesting note: the drop off from the top of the ballot (Whitten-Richardson) to the bottom (Vance-Bornfreund) was 6%. This is an unusually high number. Typically this ranges around 2%. The drop off is indicative of voters not wanting to vote for either candidate.

In the Valderrama-Wasnick race, the results were nearly in line with my prediction: that the 24% primary vote gained by John Galvin would pretty much evenly split between Valderrama (46%) and Wasnick (26%). It wasn’t quite 50-50 but it was very close. As I told a couple of interested parties, the math simply didn’t work for Wasnick. He had to win 24% plus one vote to win while Valderrama only had to gain 4% plus one. The strategy by some Wasnick supporters that 100% of Galvin’s vote would shift to Wasnick simply was fantasy land.

The final results were also very close to those on Election Night, as I also projected.

CITY OF SAMMAMISH
Ballots Cast/Registered Voters: * 14068 / 27117 51.88%
Council Position No. 2
Nancy Whitten 6485 53.84%
Kathy Richardson 5529 45.90%
Write-in 31 0.26%
Council Position No. 4
Ramiro Valderrama 6646 56.56%
Jim Wasnick 5076 43.20%
Write-in 29 0.25%
Council Position No. 6
Jesse Bornfreund 3622 31.91%
Tom Vance 7681 67.67%
Write-in 48 0.42%

It’s all over; losers concede to winners

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It’s done: the concessions have been given. Tom Vance, Ramiro Valderrama and Nancy Whitten are the winners (though there has been no doubt since Election Night). The Sammamish Patch has now weighed in and declared them winners.

So how does the voting bloc line up on the Council now?

Left-leaning

Nancy Whitten

Tom Vance

Right Leaning

John Curley

John James

Center-Left

Tom Odell

Ramiro Valderrama

Center-Right

Don Gerend

As with any label, however, it’s pretty tough to accurately portray someone. For example, none of the council members can be described as entirely property rights or environmentalists. Gerend is the most pro-development Council Member but he also has an environmental streak.

Curley, a Libertarian at heart, wants to increase tree retention requirements.

Whitten, perceived as the staunchest environmentalist on the Council before this election, has a contrarian property rights streak in her.

James, a solid Republican, surprised me with his pragmatic view from his real estate profession that the pave-it-over plans for the Town Center espoused by Gerend and others are feasible. In other words, he is no knee-jerk pro-development Council Member that many expected when he was elected.

Vance and Whitten will form the left wing of the Council.

Valderrama, whose base of support is the lakefront–a conservative wing–also drew solid support from environmentalists–the conservationists wing. He and Odell are fiscal conservatives but favor environmental issues.

In fact, the entire Council, except for Gerend, favor fiscal conservatism. (Gerend still favors doubling the real estate excise tax, or REET).

With that, we are done with our election coverage.

Watch this space periodically for updates on other issues affecting Sammamish.

Valderrama, Vance and Whitten win

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Note: Future results updates are available at the King County Elections website here.

The State’s Initiatives website results are here.

The Election Night tally, published about 8:15pm by King County Elections, provided the following results:

Position 2

Nancy Whitten               3,228     53.55%

Kathy Richardson         2,787    46.23%

Position 4

Ramiro Valderrama     3,345     56.47%

Jim Wasnick                    2,566      43.32%

Position 6

Jesse Bornfreund          1,833       31.96%

Tom Vance                      3,883       67.70%

Final results won’t be available until November 30. How, then, can I “call” the winners?

In every electoral race except one since Sammamish was incorporated in 1998, the results posted on Election Night mirrored the final results, within one or two percentage points. The sole exception was the 2001 race between Nancy Whitten and incumbent Ken Kilroy. Whitten led by 17 votes on Election night but lost by fewer than 150 votes when the final tally was in.

The County will post results updates daily; the link of the schedule is here (generally 4:30pm every work day). I’ll be watching the daily results and will update as well.

What do the results mean?

Continue reading →

Council results repudiate “pave-it-over” Town Center ambitions

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Two property owners in the Sammamish Town Center tried to frame this election as an up-or-down referendum of sorts on the Town Center Plan adopted by the City Council.

John Galvin and Mike Rutt, the former the most visible advocate for a pave-it-over approach to the Town Center, and both failed candidates for City Council in the past advocating for a massively up-scaled Town Center plan, clearly persuaded Jim Wasnick and Jesse Bornfreund to make a full review of the plan their top campaign priority.

Both candidates lost, and lost big.

Once again, the citizens have spoken. Time and time and time again since the Planning Advisory Board first proposed six commercial “villages” only to have massive opposition at a community meeting that drew an estimated 200 people, and from the 2001 election in which Nancy Whitten campaigned on an anti-village platform and came within a whisker of beating a complacent Ken Kilroy, citizens have said they prefer a modest Town Center plan to the huge ambitions proposed by Galvin and his fellow land-owners.

Continue reading →