Tag Archives: Ramiro Valderrama

More study about new taxes or budget, service cuts for Sammamish

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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.

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City Council needs to adopt building moratorium tonight

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June 6: The Sammamish City Council needs to adopt an emergency building moratorium tonight at the Council meeting.

The meeting begins at 6:30pm. Public Comment is scheduled to begin about 7:25pm. Discussion of the study is not on the agenda (the issue came up too late for inclusion) but is certain to come up.

The findings of the study by Miki Mullor, which Sammamish Comment reported last night, justify a temporary pause in processing building permits while the serious allegations of manipulating traffic numbers and other data are investigated.

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13 candidates seek 4 Sammamish City Council positions

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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.

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Seatax fatigue may affect Sammamish tax need

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Sound Transit 3 would not have passed without an overwhelming Yes vote from Seattle. The tax hike still is reverberating. (Sammamish voted 52%-48% against this new tax.)

Dow Constantine, King County Executive headquartered in Seattle, proposes a $469m countywide tax for arts.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray proposed a $275m five-year city tax to combat homelessness. Then he dropped the idea and proposed instead a county-wide tax that would raise $335m over five years.

Seattle never met a tax it didn’t like. Despite the suburbs often rejecting new taxes, the overwhelming concentration of Yes votes in Seattle usually carriers the day.

It’s not Seattle anymore. It’s Seatax.

And Seatax fatigue may make it harder for Sammamish to raise taxes for new road projects or land preservation acquisition.

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Power shift now certain at Sammamish City Council

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Analysis

With Saturday’s declaration by Sammamish City Council Member Tom Odell that he will not seek reelection in November, this assures a major power shift is coming.

Three other incumbents previously said they aren’t running again. They are Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Bob Keller and Member Kathy Huckabay.

Figure 1.

Five candidates already announced candidacies to run this fall (Figure 1). At the moment, one—John Robinson—hasn’t identified which seat he will seat, but with Odell dropping out, no candidate is identified with Odell’s Position 7. Robinson is likely to go for this open seat.

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