Don Gerend was selected Mayor for the next two years and Ramiro Valderrama Deputy Mayor for the next year at the first Sammamish City Council meeting today (Jan. 5).
The positions are selected by the City Council under the City Manager form of government, rather than voters.
The votes for both were unanimous.
Christie Malchow
Ramiro Valderrama
Tom Hornish
Don Gerend
The mayor and deputy mayor for the Sammamish City Council will be named tomorrow night at the first City Council meeting of the New Year.
Two new Council members will be sworn in.
The leadership roles have come down to Don Gerend, who has been on the Council since the first one was elected in 1999, and Ramiro Valderrama, who was reelected to his second term in November. It’s unclear who will be selected for a two year term as mayor and a one-year term as deputy mayor. The positions are selected by a vote of the seven member council, and not the public in a general election. This is due to Sammamish being a City Manager form of government with what’s called a weak mayor system.
The newcomers to the Council are Christie Malchow and Tom Hornish.
Harry Shedd, chairman of Citizens for Sammamish.
Citizens for Sammamish holds its first meeting of the year tonight at a new location due to construction at its usual meeting place. CSF will meet at the Bellwood Center.
From the website:
We will meet at Bellewood (Residential Living), 3710 Providence Point Dr. SE, Issaquah, WA. at 7 PM. The Fire Station is not available (construction). You will be guided from the front entrance.
Nancy Whitten ends 12 years on the Sammamish City Council as its leading environmentalist.
With the year-end Sammamish City Council meeting last night, the end of an era comes with it.
Nancy Whitten ends 12 years on the Council. With her departure comes the loss of the Council’s most aggressive, consistent advocate for the environment. Others on the Council can legitimately lay claim to environmental credentials, but it’s Whitten and her lawyerly approach to documents who so often spotted loopholes, reversals and inconsistencies in ordinances and, more recently, in the rewrite of the City’s Comprehensive Plan.
Who’s going to be the leading environmentalist on the Council now that she is gone?
The answer may surprise you. It’s Bob Keller.
A precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Nov. 3 Sammamish City Council election demonstrates that 
Ramiro Valderrama faced only token opposition, and therefore Sammamish Comment hasn’t spent a lot of time analyzing his race against Hank Klein. Klein dropped out of the race too late to take his name off the ballot. He didn’t campaign or raise money.
Here’s what The Comment’s analysis found:
Sammamish Comment 