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Home / Archive: May 2010
New: May 31, 10 a.m.
Skyline junior Kasen Williams is still chasing the 50-foot mark in the triple jump, but he has plenty to be happy about after taking a first-place and two second-place medals home from the 2010 state 4A track and field meet.
Williams won the triple jump with a leap of 47-06, which was 7 inches farther than Lewis and Clark’s Levi Taylor.
Skyline's Kasen Williams finished second in the state in the long jump. Williams took first in the triple jump (not pictured). Photo by Greg Farrar
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New: May 30, 11:39 a.m.
Last fall, every candidate in the City Council elections cited public outreach as an area in need of reform.
More town hall meetings. More live videos online. More opportunities for people to tell government officials how it is.
At the very least, the council needed to learn how to listen better. Read more
New: May 29, 2:38 p.m.
Families who schedule tutoring or other appointments during the school day will feel some changes under a new Issaquah School District attendance policy.
“We want our kids at school,” said Marilyn Holm, director of special education. “We are pleased to have our parents work with us. If there are special circumstances, we will consider those on an individual basis.” Read more
New: May 28, 2:37 p.m.
Before the state championship game against Kennedy Catholic May 15, Colette Foreman, Eastside Catholic girls lacrosse head coach, picked out about 20 small stones from her garden. She washed them off and gave one to each player to hold onto during the game.
The Crusaders were in a David versus Goliath situation and were not expected to win. So each girl wore the stone under her uniform. It helped them visualize their individual and collective strength during the match, Foreman said.
The Eastside Catholic girls lacrosse team gathers with its trophy after winning the state Division II lacrosse title May 15 at Eastside Catholic School. Contributed
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New: May 27, 1:07 p.m.
The city’s finance experts are calling a budget report by citizen activists “flawed,” due to gross miscalculations.
Harry Shedd, who heads the budget and finance division for Citizens for Sammamish, produced a graph for fellow residents showing that city employee salaries and benefits were the major operational expense for the city. Read more
New: May 26, 11:59 a.m.
Eastlake’s head girls basketball coach Scott Sartorius recently announced he is stepping down from the position.
Sartorius spent four years rebuilding the Wolves’ program and leaves so he can spend more time with his family, he said in a letter to the Eastlake community.
“There is no easy way to say this as it has been the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make,” Sartorius said in the letter.
Read moreNew: May 26, 10:22 a.m.
Dino Rossi — the former Sammamish representative in the state Senate and the Republican nominee for governor in 2004 and 2008 — has entered the race to unseat U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.
In a short video posted on his campaign website early Wednesday morning, the Sammamish resident joined a crowded field seeking the GOP nomination — and ended months of speculation about whether he might enter the race. Read more
What’s more valuable to the community: having 200 homes that are slightly inexpensive or 100 homes that are really inexpensive?
The City Council took up that question May 17 during a discussion of affordable housing in the future Town Center.
A plan proposed by city staff and the Planning Commission would give developers the ability to choose between building a greater number of moderately affordable homes or fewer very affordable homes.
Read moreIf you are planning to avoid the traffic, save some gas expense and enjoy Memorial Day close to home this weekend, there are some simple ways to honor the men and women from the United States military who died in military service to our country.
Read moreStop the Freed House
Freed House is once again in the headlines. The wise words of Deputy Mayor Nancy Whitten, who said she fears a black hole, says it all.
She also states that she has still not seen enough community support to justify spending money on the Freed House.
To Michele Petitti I say this is not just a little bridge. It is a lot of money to save one house when you are contemplating balancing a budget by cutting funding for more important causes like children and the elderly.
This is the project that is going to keep costing and it will be a never ending pit.
I still say put up a photo gallery of its history on a wall in the huge over-budgeted City Hall so everyone going through the doors can enjoy it.
Is there a plan in place if we save the Freed House so that it will then pay for itself or is it going to become a never-ending money pit?
Claudia Haunreiter
Sammamish
Let the children at the stumps
As a member of the community who is always searching for ways to involve our youth and encourage them to invest in their community in ways that will build a sense of pride and protective custody of their surroundings, I would like to suggest the following:
We have numerous trees on 228th Avenue Northeast at the entrance to Eastlake High School, that have been stripped of their branches and cut off. There is talk of making them into art.
My recommendation/suggestion is this: Hold a competition among our three plateau high schools: Eastlake, Skyline and Eastside Catholic. Invite the students to present drawings or concepts for these trees.
Draw up whatever parameters you deem to be appropriate for tasteful artistic expression and get the kids to present their designs.
Savings: Not hiring professional artists to provide something our own community can do.
Benefits: Kids would be recognized in positive ways.
Perhaps students from all three schools could participate, and hence a competition to vandalize would not be tempting.
Hiring someone to actually do the carving on the trees would probably need to happen to reduce liability should a student take a fall or be otherwise injured while creating the art work.
But this would be substantially more cost effective, right?
Perhaps a plaque of some sort could be mounted on each tree indicating the name and school of the artist.
Just because these current eyesores are located at the entry to Eastlake High School should not mean automatic ownership for Eastlake students.
Jennifer Bloxom Eckles
Sammamish
Ideology versus considered politics
John Burg, in his letter to the editor in the May 19 Sammamish Review, accused me of being the liberal blogger who lamented being challenged on the issues by an RNC phone caller.
Perhaps he should have actually read my letter.
The point I was making was that the caller was doing disservice to our political system by using inflammatory rhetoric that ignored the real issues we face as a country.
Anytime someone promotes a policy or position that ignores the underlying facts, they risk fanning the fires of division and inhibiting meaningful progress.
Burg appears to exhibit the same lack of consideration in his political thinking.
He cites the stimulus package as an apparently unnecessary liberal expense.
According to prominent scholars, and those of us who learned something from studying the great depression, the stimulus was necessary to keep our economy from falling over the brink.
Interestingly, Mr. Burg didn’t mention the TARP program launched by the Bush administration, which provided an equal amount in bailout funds to financial institutions and far more in additional guarantees.
I guess the deregulation that created the casino on Wall Street and the taxpayer-funded bailout are simply part of the natural ebb and flow of American capitalism.
Perhaps we should stop whining and simply pay the price of a demolished economy and extremely high unemployment so those at the top can continue to drive the middle class and poor into the ground.
Does Burg also attribute the $1 trillion Iraq war to Obama? How about the eight-year conflict in Afghanistan?
To restate my point, informed politics and governance should not be sacrificed to rhetorical propaganda.
Those who unintelligently follow ideology are just as detrimental to the health of our political system as the RNC dialing for dollars callers who are nothing less than a cancer eating away at the same.
Michael J O’Connell
Sammamish
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