The long-awaited “crossover point” when deficit spending occurs for the Sammamish city budget—in recent years 
projected to be early next decade—may be here now.
The City Council takes up the budget tonight and a comparison of revised figures by Council Candidate Mark Baughman shows proposed expenditures exceed projected revenues by $4m.
Update, July 25, 2017: The reporter for the Issaquah/Sammamish Reporter has been transferred to sister papers in the Bothell-Kenmore area.
A Special Report
This is seven pages when printed.
By Scott Hamilton
Analysis
Traffic and concurrency in Sammamish is a classic example of failure, and success, in 
government. It’s a glaring failure of the local newspaper.
It’s a success story of how a single citizen forced debate on an issue that even determined City Council members could not.
Here is the back-story of how traffic and concurrency became “the No. 1 priority in Sammamish.” A sequential history is necessary before we get to the punch line.
The day before the State Legislature began to reveal a big property tax hike is coming for education, Sammamish City Council members met with staff in a retreat to examine City finances.
The Council met with staff Thursday afternoon and evening. The State began releasing information about its new budget, with tax hikes, on Friday.
Council Member Tom Odell, looking at the 2017 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) that identifies nearly $90m in spending through 2023 and up to $165m in future years, inclusive of the $90m, and declared officials need to examine all potential revenue sources to pay for these projects.
Translated, this means potential new taxes.
At the same time, Council Member Tom Hornish remains unconvinced that budget cuts aren’t impossible and if these are deep enough, funding the road projects could come out of operations and current revenues.
Commentary
By Scott Hamilton
Scott Hamilton
The news yesterday that Sammamish has been using outdated traffic counts, mostly from 2012 but some from 2014 and none from 2016, to run its traffic concurrency tests for development applications is fundamentally cooking the books to approve projects.
I should be outraged, but I’m not.
I should be shocked, but I’m not.
I’m not even surprised.
It just goes to show you how far our city government and City Council declined over the years to become a mini-King County.
I reached this conclusion as far back as 2009. That was 10 years after Sammamish incorporated.
Thirteen candidates filed for four positions on the Sammamish City Council, the most since 1999 when 40 people filed for seven positions for the first Council.
This means there will be primary races in the August election for each seat up this year. The top two of each race will advance to the November general election.
Sammamish Comment 