Tag Archives: Tom Hornish

Council tree huggers vote against motion intended to save trees

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City_of_SammamishJune 13, 2016: It was an odd vote: three of the most fervent tree huggers on the Sammamish City Council voted June 7 against a motion intended to save trees.

Kathy Huckabay, Tom Odell and Bob Keller opposed a motion by Council Member Tom Hornish to remove the East Lake Sammamish Trail exemption from language defining wetland buffers. Hornish said the language, which stopped buffers on the west side former railbed that is now the ELST, put trees on the east side at risk of removal if they were inside wetland buffers as defined throughout the rest of the City.

Code says buffers end at streets and, up until a 4-3 vote June 7, the rail bed. Hornish, joined by Mayor Don Gerend, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama and Member Christie Malchow, voted to extend the wetland buffers to the east side of the ELST, where applicable. Hornish said the result would be to save some trees on the east side of the trail.

None of the three dissenters explained their negative votes. Each asked some clarifying questions during the discussion of Hornish’s motion.

Discussion begins at the 3:40 hour mark in the nearly seven hour council meeting and ends at 4:07 in the meeting with the vote.

Keller later spoke with Sammamish Comment explain his vote. Odell did not respond to a request for comment.

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Lake Trail overhangs Sammamish politics for 20 years

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  • This is about 10 pages when printed.

City_of_SammamishJune 5, 2016: Development of the East Lake Sammamish Trail has been an overhang of Sammamish politics for 20 years.

It was a dominate factor in the first City Council race 1999 and surfaced again in 2001. It became a key issue in the 2003 election, with a flood of “outside” money flowing to candidates favoring the Trail.

The issue surfaced periodically in subsequent elections. It wasn’t until 2015 that once more it became a key election issue, as Trail residents rallied behind three candidates to win bitterly contested races. For the first time, they helped elect a resident who lives along the Trail.

And the issue hasn’t subsided, either.

In April, three Council Members voted to undercut the City’s own Hearing Examiner and side with King County, developer of the Trail, on a jurisdictional issue in an appeal before the State Shoreline Hearings Board.

This is the story behind the 20-year battle of the ELST.

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Council opposes ST3 plan, debates principals of document

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Valderrama

Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama: ST3 is “taxation without transportation.”

The Sammamish City Council was clear at its May 10 meeting: the draft plan for Sound Transit 3 does nothing for our taxpayers.

A majority of the Council was also clear: they didn’t want to support a statement sought by the Suburban Cities Association (SCA) in support of principals of mass transit, because these were viewed as a “Trojan Horse” for ST3.

Led by Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama, members feared that there would not be an opportunity to later weigh in on ST3 itself and any expression of support for the SCA principals would be taken as support for ST3.

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Hearing Examiner OKs Conner-Jarvis project, says Kempton Downs failed to meet burden

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City_of_SammamishJan. 20, 2016: The Sammamish Hearing Examiner Tuesday rejected the appeal by the Kempton Downs Homeowners Assn. of the Conner-Jarvis project. Approval was given with minor modifications to conditions.

The approval, by Examiner John Gault, was a sweeping victory for Conner-Jarvis and the City’s Development and Public Works departments. Gault ruled that Kempton Downs failed in issue after issue to meet the burden required under state law to overturn the professional judgment of the City’s staff.

State law says that deference to the professionals takes preference. This means that in appeals, the burden of proof that the staff erred is on the appellants.

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Sammamish Retreat analysis

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The Sammamish City Council’s 2016 Retreat wrapped up Saturday. Here are thoughts and analysis:

  •  Retreat location: This was the first time in about 10 years Sammamish held its Retreat on this side of the Cascade Mountains. Given how often Snoqualmie Pass closed this season (including City_of_Sammamishtwice on Saturday alone), holding it in Tacoma was good from this perspective alone. Council members and the Administration liked the remote location because it discouraged public participation and afforded total candor–sometimes to the point of open warfare (as occurred last year, despite presence by Sammamish Comment and others). In Tacoma, The Comment and others were present all three days, with the public attendance of almost a dozen on Saturday. The sky didn’t fall in. The atmosphere was far more civil this year as well (see below).

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