Tag Archives: Sammamish

Candidate questionnaires for City Council begin July 12; ballots go into mail

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Candidate questionnaires for Sammamish City Council begin publishing tomorrow, July 12, in Sammamish Comment.

Tomorrow is also when King County Elections mails the ballots for the Aug. 1 primary.

Four Council seats are up for vote in the Nov. 8 general election: Positions 1, 3, 5 and 7. Three of the races, 3, 5 and 7, have three active candidates running, requiring a primary vote Aug. 1. The top two vote-getters will advance to the November election.

Position 1 has only two candidates running. This position won’t appear on the Aug. 1 ballot, with these two candidates going directly to the November election.

Sammamish Comment submitted a three-page questionnaire about City issues to the candidates last month. They were asked to return them by July 7, allowing for processing for publication beginning tomorrow.

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Paucity of local endorsements mark City Council races

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The 11 active candidates running for Sammamish City Council have of local endorsements as the Aug. 1 primary closes in.

Some candidates have no endorsements listed on their web sites, which are also—for the most part—appallingly devoid of substantive discussion of their issues.

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Ghassemieh, Indapure each raise nearly $20,000 for Sammamish Council primary

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It’s less than one month away from the Aug. 1 Sammamish City Council primary and fund raising by the candidates ranges from nearly $20,000 to nothing, an examination of filings with the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission reveals.

The data below is through June. Each raised more money since then.

Minal Ghassemieh (Position 3) and Rituja Indapure (Position 5) raised the most money, at $17,384 and $19,400 respectively. However, only a small portion of their fund raising came from Sammamish: 26% of contributors totaling $5,050 for Ghassemieh, and 32% of the contributors donating $6,296 for Indapure.

Mark Baughman (Position 1) hasn’t raised any money, but there is no primary for this position. His sole opponent, Jason Ritchie, raised $3,569, who is self-funding most of his campaign so far.

John Robinson (Position 7) raised $1,500, of which $1,000 is from himself.

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More questions posed in Sammamish concurrency kerfuffle

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Miki Mullor

More questions about Sammamish’s method of applying traffic concurrency by the citizen who understood a controversial study last month.

Miki Mullor sent a new round of questions to the City Council and City Administration on July 4. (See the Power Point program here.) He submitted the questions in advance of a scheduled July 10 meeting at which the City Council is to get a detailed briefing from staff about concurrency and how Sammamish measures traffic in approving development.

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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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