Tag Archives: Nancy Whitten

Poll: Do you approve or disapprove of the Sammamish City Council?

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This is a long post: be sure to scroll down.

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?

Question #9

Question #10

Question #11

Whitten to voters: you’re stupid, drop dead

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Update, Nov. 5: Council Member Whitten issued this statement to us late today in response to our question to her, “Did you really say this?”

Partly right and partly not.  I said I had strongly supported a vote and that I had always thought I would regard it as binding.  I differentiated between extremely negative campaigning funded largely by someone self-interested in the outcome and something more, potentially constituting incorrect statements of alleged fact.  I also made it clear I was not in any way able to form a personal opinion at this time, and any such determination would need to have a careful review etc.  If an advisory election is won unfairly — not just by extremely negative campaigning, but rather e.g., in circumstances supporting a stronger conclusion of misconduct, I don’t think it should necessarily be binding.  That could mean a lot of things, e.g. a new election would only be one option etc.  I am anticipating the majority of the community wants a community / aquatic center and will vote accordingly, and then the quesion of whether or not the advisory vote should be obviated by misconduct would be moot.

Original Post:

The Sammamish Patch had this story about the Community Center and fears by the City Council that voters are getting misinformation about Proposition 1 and the deal with the YMCA. (Yet another reason putting this to the vote was a dumb idea.)

Council Member Nancy Whitten said, according to the article, this:

And Councilwoman Nancy Whitten said she’s concerned enough about the misinformation that if she feels, after the election, that people were misled enough to result in a negative response, that she would not consider the advisory vote valid.

“It struck me that some of them are clearly incorrect, the total perspective is that they are extremely negative by someone who has a financial interest,” Whitten said, adding that the advisory vote is just that, advisory, and if she believes it’s been unduly influenced by inaccurate information, she won’t feel bound by it.

How in the world will Whitten conclude voters were mislead enough to conclude the advisory vote is invalid?

We agree some of the information put out there is clearly wrong and biased, but unfortunately that’s what political campaigning has become. Having decided they wanted an advisory vote, the City Council has to sleep in the bed it made. This was the risk it took and as my previous post detailing why this was a dumb idea in the first place demonstrated, there could be all kinds of reasons people vote against this Proposition and most of them have nothing to do with “someone who has a financial interest.”

Although this “someone” is not a resident of Sammamish (as one Council Member complained in another newspaper), he is a corporate citizen of Sammamish. As such, is view is as valid to express as much as the next vested interest.

For example, the City has said no new taxes will be “required” in its public statements. But in the legal language of the Proposition, it says no new taxes are “expected.” These have two very different  meanings, and one can easily argue the City is being misleading in its marketing statements vs its legal language.

Note to Whitten: I opposed this because there should have been a Request for Proposals issued. Maybe the Y deal is the best deal, but without an RFP, we’ll never know. I can see past the negative campaigning of “someone with a financial interest.” I don’t buy into the thesis that this is a “gift” to the YMCA. I can see the City owns the building and the Y gets a management contract. I think it highly unlikely any other entity would put up $5m for a building it doesn’t own, add $1m in equipment and personnel and lease seven acres to the City at $1 a year. I get that.

I also get that this Community Center is far more than “just another health club” competing with private interests. See this post.

At the same time, I don’t like members of our City Council blithely dismissing voters as stupid. Michele Petitti did that once and got her head handed to her. Whitten’s statement falls in this same realm.

Analyzing the Sammamish Community Center

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Websites:

Common Sense Sammamish, a “No” Vote website.

YSoHigh, another “No” Vote website.

YesSammCAC, a “Yes” Vote website.

My Previous Posts:

Risks for the Community Center-YMCA deal

Why the Advisory Vote is a Bad Idea, Part 2

Why the Advisory Vote is a Bad Idea, part 1

Two Hour Long Community Forum.

Ballots arrived last week for the Nov. 6 election and one of the issues is Sammamish Proposition 1, an advisory vote on the proposed public-private partnership between Sammamish and the YMCA for a 40,000+ sf community center with aquatic features.

I’ve previously written that I think an advisory vote is a dumb idea and detailed why in two posts (see above). I still think it’s dumb, but you can’t un-ring this bell, so it’s time to get down and really analyze the issues.

I met Friday and Monday with opponents and supporters of the Proposition. I’ve read the web sites, the newspaper articles and I’ve followed the debate. I participated in one of the public meetings. When it is all said and done, here are the issues as I see them. Continue reading →

Risks for Community Center-YMCA deal

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I appeared before the City Council Oct. 9 to make a public comment about something I read in the Sammamish Review concerning the proposed YMCA-Community Center deal and advisory vote.

The article, at this writing, is not on the paper’s website. The paragraph that caught my eye was this:

“Councilman Don Gerend said he didn’t think voters should worry about the prospect if the YMCA backing out of the agreement several years in if the facility is running a large annual deficit–the council would never sign off an agreement that left the city at risk for that.”

I disagree with this statement and appeared at the meeting to say so. (Also at this writing, the tape of the meeting has yet to be posted to the city’s website. My comments are within the first 15 minutes of the meeting when it is posted.)

There is no doubt in my mind that if the Community Center is running a big deficit that the YMCA would come back to the city council to renegotiate the contract. Nor is there any doubt the if the Community Center becomes a black hole the Y wouldn’t seek to walk away. A contract is only as good as the next crisis and then it’s a starting point to renegotiate.

In an unusual move, several members of the council broke from practice and commented on my comments. Mayor Tom Odell said the Y has every motivation to make the deal work: a $5m capital investment and a $1m investment in staff and support time. I agree. But what if the deal doesn’t work? Fiduciary duty demands you change the deal or take the loss and get out.

With respect (and I meant it), I said Gerend’s remarks were naive and blithely dismissive of voters. Council Member Nancy Whitten said it was her understanding the contract would have a mutually-agreed termination clause. If Whitten is right (and I suspect any contract would include such a clause) Gerend’s statement is also misleading.

Councilman John Curley remarked that if the Y can’t make a go of it as a 501 (c) 3 and with taxpayer dollar support, then no private enterprise could do so.

If the Y walks, I said the city will have 100% responsibility for the Community Center.

Citizens have a right to know the risks of this deal since they are being asked to vote on it.

I have yet to decide how I will vote in the silly advisory vote, but I do know that the city isn’t forthcoming to the citizens with all the facts, details and risks so that voters can make an informed choice on the Nov. 6 ballot. By law the city can’t promote the vote but I believe it can sit down with the paper and answer a series of detailed questions posed by the reporter. I suggested the city do so.

Previous posts I’ve written on this topic may be found:

Citizens for Sammamish Community Forum

Why the Advisory Vote is a Bad Idea, Part 2

Why the Advisory Vote is a Bad Idea, part 1

Another risk factor: The Y’s representative told the Council on July 16 she did not know when the operation will break even. Any business plan should have this projection. The inability to answer this question suggests there is no business plan.

Frankly, if I were on the Y board and my staff came to me asking to spend $5m but didn’t have a business plan to say when the project would break even, I’d fire somebody. (Like Mitt Romney, I like having this option.) If I were on the city council and staff came to me seeking $25m and there wasn’t a business plan for this project, I’d throw them out of the room. (Only the city manager can hire and fire in the city manager form of government.)

I don’t have any philosophical issues with public-private partnerships under certain circumstances and if the deal is structured properly. It’s a way to stretch dollars and turning government functions over to private enterprise to operate more efficiently is a well-known principal advocated by both political parties (but mostly Republicans, which thereby perplexes me with our local critics who are Republicans opposing on principal this public-private partnership).

But up to this point, this deal seems to be poorly thought out and rushed to put it to an advisory vote, subjecting the citizens to voting on something on which they are largely without facts.

Common sense on the Community Center

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It appears that common sense may prevail on the proposed Sammamish Community Center.

That’s the project, readers will recall, that last year was headed toward a $64m, 98,000sf extravaganza that would have been the biggest city community center in King County, according to some.

It would have been roughly 2 1/2 times the size of our City Hall at roughly seven times the cost of the building.

Note that now City officials are putting the price tag of City Hall at around $28m, “including land costs.” I think this is somewhat misleading, but I won’t argue the point.

We already own the land on which the Community Center will be built, the so-called Kellman property. This was purchased not so much with a Community Center in mind; affordable housing was one preferred use, a folly–but that’s another story. So the original Community Center concept at $64m was breath-taking. It got a lot of justifiable push-back from the public and some council members who were fiscally alert and not interested in a Taj Mahal. The City was also charging ahead alone rather than partnering with a private entity well-versed in operating community centers.

According to this article in the Sammamish Review, the City is now talking with the YMCA about a sharply scaled down project that is priced at $29m for a 64,000sf building (the City Hall is just over 39,000sf). Further, Council Member Nancy Whitten thinks the YMCA should deed over the property it owns near the Pine Lake Middle School as part of the deal–an idea I think has great merit.

Kudos to the City for coming around to considering a solution that wasn’t even on the table.