Tag Archives: Kathy Huckabay

Council tree huggers vote against motion intended to save trees

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City_of_SammamishJune 13, 2016: It was an odd vote: three of the most fervent tree huggers on the Sammamish City Council voted June 7 against a motion intended to save trees.

Kathy Huckabay, Tom Odell and Bob Keller opposed a motion by Council Member Tom Hornish to remove the East Lake Sammamish Trail exemption from language defining wetland buffers. Hornish said the language, which stopped buffers on the west side former railbed that is now the ELST, put trees on the east side at risk of removal if they were inside wetland buffers as defined throughout the rest of the City.

Code says buffers end at streets and, up until a 4-3 vote June 7, the rail bed. Hornish, joined by Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama and Member Christie Malchow, voted to extend the wetland buffers to the east side of the ELST, where applicable. Hornish said the result would be to save some trees on the east side of the trail.

None of the three dissenters explained their negative votes. Each asked some clarifying questions during the discussion of Hornish’s motion.

Discussion begins at the 3:40 hour mark in the nearly seven hour council meeting and ends at 4:07 in the meeting with the vote.

Keller later spoke with Sammamish Comment explain his vote. Odell did not respond to a request for comment.

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Lake Trail overhangs Sammamish politics for 20 years

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  • This is about 10 pages when printed.

City_of_SammamishJune 5, 2016: Development of the East Lake Sammamish Trail has been an overhang of Sammamish politics for 20 years.

It was a dominate factor in the first City Council race 1999 and surfaced again in 2001. It became a key issue in the 2003 election, with a flood of “outside” money flowing to candidates favoring the Trail.

The issue surfaced periodically in subsequent elections. It wasn’t until 2015 that once more it became a key election issue, as Trail residents rallied behind three candidates to win bitterly contested races. For the first time, they helped elect a resident who lives along the Trail.

And the issue hasn’t subsided, either.

In April, three Council Members voted to undercut the City’s own Hearing Examiner and side with King County, developer of the Trail, on a jurisdictional issue in an appeal before the State Shoreline Hearings Board.

This is the story behind the 20-year battle of the ELST.

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Council opposes ST3 plan, debates principals of document

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Valderrama

Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama: ST3 is “taxation without transportation.”

The Sammamish City Council was clear at its May 10 meeting: the draft plan for Sound Transit 3 does nothing for our taxpayers.

A majority of the Council was also clear: they didn’t want to support a statement sought by the Suburban Cities Association (SCA) in support of principals of mass transit, because these were viewed as a “Trojan Horse” for ST3.

Led by Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama, members feared that there would not be an opportunity to later weigh in on ST3 itself and any expression of support for the SCA principals would be taken as support for ST3.

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The Greenies fight back: the 2001 Sammamish City Council election

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After being routed in the 1999 City Council elections and licking their wounds for the better part of two years, the environmentalists in Sammamish—the “greenies—“ began a comeback.

All seven Council seats were up for election in 2001. This was because that as a new city, two- and four-year terms had to be established. The largest vote-getters in 2001 would get four year terms. The three lowest vote getters would get two year terms.

As it happened, only three Council members were challenged by people backed by the Greenies, and by SHOUT officials (see the post of March 28 to understand who SHOUT was): Ron Haworth, Ken Kilroy and Phil Dyer. Don Gerend, Kathy Huckabay, Jack Barry and Troy Romero were unopposed. By default, they would receive the most votes and four year terms.

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Sammamish, the first two years

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City_of_Sammamish

The new City’s logo was adopted from a combination of entries from school children in a contest.

After the first City Council election for the new Sammamish, the task of creating a new city was enormous.

The City Council had to select its leadership and committees for key “needs,” such as transportation. Ordinances had to be created. Contracts for essential services had to be negotiated. An interim City Manager and staff had to be hired. Eventually a Comprehensive Plan would have to be written. A temporary City Hall had to be located, no small task in a community with no business complexes. A place to hold City Council meetings had to be identified.

And these are just some of the priority issues.

One of the top issues, the reason for incorporating in the first place, was to put a halt to the runaway development.

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