The Sammamish City Council continues to dither while residents in the Tamarack subdivision suffer from stormwater drainage from uphill development and fish downstream are threatened by the same drainage.
In a contentious Council meeting last week, accusations flew that a tax hike of 5% for stormwater management was a thinly disguised effort to force the City to accept the entire responsibility for solving the drainage problems affecting Tamarack that have been more than 10 years in the making.
The City of Sammamish has gone to court 28 times in the last 10 years on matters other than routine operational reasons. Half were for Land Use Petition (development) (LUP) appeals from Hearing Examiner decisions, a review of court records reveals.
In addition, the City wound up in Court over development of the East Lake Sammamish Trail for what’s called an Administrative Law Review, three times over Public Records and twice by parties seeking injunctions against the City.
The City also is a defendant in a damages lawsuit by developer William Buchan, which is also the plaintiff in one of the LUPs. Both are for the proposed development of Chestnut Estates West, west of 212th Ave. SE and SE 8th St.
The review of records in King County Superior Court this week revealed numerous other court actions relating to City requests to condemn land (usually for road rights of way) and Quit Claim deeds. These are routine cases related to the normal operation of the City.
The court cases do not include recent actions before the state Shorelines Hearing Board on appeals by King County and the Sammamish Homeowners group over a Hearing Examiner’s decision regarding development of the East Lake Sammamish Trail.
Ballots for the Nov. 8 election will be mailed Oct. 19 by King County Elections.
Like most states, Washington has early voting, this in the form of mail-in voting.
Because of ballots mailed overseas to expats and military personnel, the state counts ballots for two weeks after Election Day as long as the mailings are postmarked no later than this day.
Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama led the opposition to Sound Transit 3.
The Sammamish City Council’s vote Tuesday night to oppose Sound Transit 3 was the right choice for the City. The vote was 5-2.
ST3 takes bus service away from Sammamish but offers a park-and-ride for the north end, an obvious contradiction. Even the PNR is not a firm offer.
Taxpayers would fork out between $500m-$550m in taxes over 25 years for this.
Issaquah and Redmond get light rail extensions. But the Issaquah light rail goes to downtown Bellevue and south Kirkland, not Seattle. The rail station is projected to be at roughly I-90 and SR900, behind the QFC grocery store (presumably in the I-90 median.) It needs to go to Issaquah Highlands.
If Sammamish residents want to commute to Seattle by light rail, the choices would be to go to the QFC terminal, either by car or bus, then to Bellevue and connect to Seattle; or go to the potential north Park and Ride (if it happens), then to Redmond, through downtown Bellevue and on to Seattle.
Fat chance.
As the Nov. 8 election approaches, the Sammamish City Council still has not taken a formal position on whether it supports Sound Transit 3 (ST3). The topic is set for discussion at the Oct. 4 Council meeting.
Sammamish City Council: Back row, L-R: Tom Odell, Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama, Tom Hornish. Front row, L-R: Kathy Huckabay, Christie Malchow, Bob Keller.
Five of the seven members previously said they oppose ST3 as it currently is laid out. Two members, Kathy Huckabay and Bob Keller, support ST3 in the name of regionalism. While regionalism is an admirable goal, the plan needs to make sense. ST3 has serious flaws.
Even Mayor Don Gerend, who is a regionalist and represents Sammamish on many such committees, finds the ST3 plan so bad and so disadvantageous to Sammamish, that he declared his opposition to ST3.
As this column has reported several times, the $54bn plan doesn’t even guarantee a single project. It only guarantees that taxpayers will no longer have the power of the vote over new taxes. This power shifts solely to the ST board, which is comprised of appointed people not the least bit accountable to taxpayers.
ST3 proposes less bus service for Sammamish, which now is the second or third largest city on the Eastside.
ST3 says it will give Sammamish a north end park-n-ride. But as noted, this isn’t guaranteed.
For this reduction in service, removal of direct taxpayer authority over new taxes and a park-n-ride that may not even get built, Sammamish taxpayers get to pay between $500m and $550m over the next 25 years.
It’s overdue for the City Council to stand up and take a position.
Supporting ST3—or not—is a matter of the City Council setting the right priorities for the people they were elected to represent. They were not elected to represent the greater King County, nor Piece County nor Snohomish County—all part of the Sound Transit taxing district.
Sammamish Comment 