Tag Archives: Tom Vance

County, State, water district elections for Sammamish

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Filings for candidates for the November election ended Friday. There are races other than those for Sammamish City Council of local interest.

King County Council

Kathy Lambert

As expected, incumbent Kathy Lambert filed for reelection to the District 3 seat of the King County Council. Sammamish is part of District 3.

Former Sammamish Mayor Tom Vance in March filed the necessary paperwork with the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) to challenge Lambert, but in the end, he did not file the required documents to become a candidate.

Instead, John Murphy of North Bend filed to challenge Lambert. Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Ex-Mayor Vance to oppose County Council Member Lambert

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Tom Vance

Former Sammamish Mayor Tom Vance yesterday filed with the State Public Disclosure Commission to run against incumbent Kathy Lambert, King County Council member of District 3, which includes Sammamish and Issaquah.

Sammamish Comment revealed March 20 Vance was trying to line up endorsements and had filed broad public records requests from Lambert’s office.

Continue reading →

Issaquah-Fall City Road cost jumps 36% over pre-annexation estimate

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The construction cost of Issaquah-Fall City Road (IFC) improvements quietly has gone up by 36%.

Or has it?

The Sammamish City Newsletter says the improvements to Issaquah-Fall City Road will now cost $36m. In 2015, the figure was $23m.

The March Sammamish City Newsletter’s page 1 article updating the plans to widen Issaquah-Fall City Road is the following, opening paragraph:

“When 10,000 Klahanie-area residents came into Sammamish last year, the city knew that a big responsibility was going to follow them through the door – a $36 million item known as Issaquah-Fall City Road.”

This figure is not what the City told Klahanie residents and the taxpayers of legacy Sammamish when promoting annexation to Sammamish.

Instead, then-City Manager Ben Yazici and then-Mayor Tom Vance said IFC Road would cost $23m, a reduction from the $38.8m King County priced the road improvements, cited by Issaquah.

Continue reading →

Sammamish hires full-time emergency management director

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Sammamish has hired its first emergency preparedness director.

Andrew Stevens, the emergency manager of Downey (CA), starts work April 17. He holds

Andrew Stevens, Sammamish’s first full-time emergency management director.

the same position in Downey (CA).

“I’m very pleased that we were able to attract and hire Andrew Stevens to the position of Emergency Manager,” Sammamish City Manager Lyman Howard wrote in an email to The Sammamish Comment..
The folks on the interview panel were impressed and delighted as well.  I’ve also heard positive comments from the regional Emergency Management community, that we made a good choice.  Andrew starts April 17th.”

The appointment comes nearly two years after The Comment revealed Sammamish was going skip a multi-state, multi-jurisdictional, Canadian-US earthquake disaster drill called Cascadia Rising. Sammamish scrambled to join after the revelation.

Continue reading →