A city gets started
August 11, 2009
By J.B. Wogan
Fed up with King County, area residents sought to make their own city
This is the first in a two-part series on the founding of Sammamish 10 years ago.
The November 1997 issue of the Sammamish Review recounts a meeting at Inglewood Junior High School where more than 500 King County residents packed into a room to give then-King County Executive Ron Sims a piece of their mind.
“We just don’t want to be left with all the messes that you’ve created,” Tom Harman told Sims.
Harman, a member of a citizen group called Sammamish Home Owners/Renters United Together (SHOUT), advocated that plateau residents form a city.
“I think this area’s angry,” said Karen Moran, another incorporation advocate. “I think this area wants roads. (The county) chose to make us urban, and they forgot to give us urban things.”
A year later, 66.85 percent of the 13,124 votes were for becoming a city and on Aug. 31, 1999, a 21-square mile area became Sammamish.
The city celebrates its 10-year anniversary Aug. 29 and many say they’re glad the plateau established its own local government; the area has its own City Hall, a slate of city-owned parks, a wider 228th Avenue (with sidewalks) and a Public Works Department busily working on the area’s transportation infrastructure this summer.
The Sammamish Review checked in with people involved with the incorporation to see why residents opted to create a city and whether the city they envisioned is the city they have.
Uncertainty in the beginning
Urban Masset authored a statement against incorporation in the 1998 voters’ pamphlet, saying forming a city would add an unnecessary layer of government and run the risk of adding new taxes to plateau residents.
“Tax increases are inevitable,” Masset wrote.
While that point of view might have been in the minority, 4,247 residents did vote against incorporation in 1998.
With a degree of hesitation in his voice, City Councilman Lee Fellinge admitted he didn’t support incorporation at first. In 1992, when plateau residents took a vote on the issue, Fellinge was against cityhood. He was in the majority at the time. In the September 1992 vote, 61.9 percent of the 1,175 ballots cast were against incorporation.
“What a lot of people didn’t understand in the mid-90s was that the county policies were to rapidly approve growth,” Fellinge said.
Phil Dougherty, a historian who is in the process of documenting the area’s past for the Sammamish Heritage Society, said the plateau in the 1990s was experiencing a population boom like nothing it had ever seen.
Between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, the population doubled from about 5,000 to 10,000. But in the next 15 years, the population kicked up to about 28,400 people. Today, the city holds more than 40,000.
He said the area experienced rapid urbanization.
“Sammamish was a very rural area and there’s hardly any trace of that anymore,” Dougherty said. “It’s mostly gone now.”
By the time the second vote for incorporation rolled around in 1998, Fellinge changed his mind about the area’s needs — he said it needed infrastructure to support new growth and it wasn’t receiving enough funding from King County.
Phil Dyer, who later became the city’s first mayor, was also against incorporation initially. It wasn’t until the King County Boundary Review Board published a feasibility study in July 1998 that Dyer started to believe in the concept, he said. That study said that residents could conceivably form a city using property tax revenues.
The movement for change
Vicki Baggette remembered when she got on the incorporation bandwagon: She had escorted a group of elementary school children to a public meeting where they addressed then-King County Executive Ron Sims about tree cutting on the plateau.
The overarching problem, Baggette said, was that developers were building neighborhoods without investing in local improvements.
Baggette said she was impressed by Sims’ willingness to listen about the development problems, but it was clear from his answers that the plateau wasn’t a priority for King County.
“This is a big county and this is one of the small problems he’s got,” she recalled thinking at the time. “That’s when we started the movement toward incorporation.”
Baggette eventually ran an unsuccessful campaign in the first City Council election.
Troy Romero, a member of the original City Council, was a longtime believer in creating a city, having voted for incorporation in 1992 and 1998. He pointed to the King County Library System’s repeated delays in building the Sammamish Public Library — construction began five years after its initial announced start date — as an example of what the city could influence.
Romero said property taxes were increasing without seeing an increase in services.
“There was no reciprocal benefit. We weren’t getting anything out of that,” he said. “People were just twigged.”
Kathy Huckabay, a member of the original City Council, said she thought the turning point for the incorporation movement was when trees were cut down on the north corners of Northeast 8th Street and 228th Avenue.
“That was really what brought home to (people against incorporation) that staying in the county offered them no protection,” she said. By forming a city, residents would have a say in controlling development near their homes, she said.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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As I said in the beginning the creation of the city of Sammamish was a sham. All it has done is create another burocracy. Just look and see, Who is still maintaining all the facilities up here????? King County of course. Just look at any project that is going on and it is the County workers and equipment that is doing the work or it is being sub-ed out. We have the same old wanta be’s in office that promised Oh yes we are going to make a city out of this well where is the city. Churches and schools along the main drag of the city do not make a city have any of you ever seen a city with nothing but churches and schools and a monster of a city hall in the center of it built on residenual ground. How did they do it they gave themselves a varience. The job that was done on the so called city hall has it so the up stairs cannot be used. Then what did they do they bought an old Mansion next door to them for what 3.2 million and what is being done with it Nothing. It just shows another waste if the tax payers money. Now then how can they sell property that is residentual to the library which is already on residenual land that the city hall sits on. Where is all this parking coming from for this. Now to top it all they are buying the old library Ummm will call it that as was in there once and all there was that I could see was a bunch of ladies having their coffee while there little kids ran all over the place. We needed a library like a dog needed another flea. A short distance away in Issaquah and Redmond they have first class librarys. ( I don’t know why we need all these librarys as when I grew up never knew anyone to use a library except at school. But lets get to the subject of the city buying the library which they plan on making into some kind of club or what ever. Lets look at parking???? what about 25 spaces at the most. and where is it to try and get back on to the worse intersection in the city the corner of NE 8th St. and 228th Ave NE. If ever there was a traffic jam that is it. I can just see it. Wonder if the city will go into the wrecker business to haul all the wrecks from this intersection away. Be a dandy place to have a body repair shop down the street maybe the city will put that in to. I could tell you so much about the mistakes this so called city has made and can never straighten out they are talking about 20 years down the line now??????? Is this what you wanted in a city where is the shops and other things that people can go get when they need them instead of having to run to Redmond or Issaquah. The only way I can ever see this city going is to Un- encorporate and then start new with people that know what they are doing it starting a city not a bunch of what a be’s