A Sammamish native will run as an independent against Republican Dave Reichert in the 8th Congressional District.

James Windle, who grew up in Sammamish and graduated from Redmond High School in 1994, said he would be an independent voice that could break the gridlock in Congress.

Windle, 36, said additional tax revenue and entitlement reform – the sacred cows of Republicans and Democrats, respectively – are needed to balance the federal budget and stimulate the economy.

Windle said only a political independent is capable of bridging that gap between the two parties.

“I don’t have to worry about the party pulling the carpet out from under me if I do something they don’t like,” he said.

Windle said the so-called Simpson-Bowles plan, crafted by a bipartisan commission in 2010, should serve as framework for fixing the country’s budget deficit.

The plan projects to trim the deficit by $4 trillion through a mixture of spending cuts and higher taxes, but has failed to garner support in Congress.

While he’s not beholden to a party platform, Windle is no stranger to the inner machinations of Washington, D.C.

He went east after graduating from the University of Washington, attended graduate school at Boston University and worked in the Office of Management and Budget in George W. Bush’s White House and on the Appropriations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He recently left a position educating members of the military as an Associate Dean of Admin-istration and Finance at the National Defense University to move back to Washington State and run against Reichert.

Windle said Reichert hasn’t done enough to become a big player within Congress.

“I haven’t seen him weigh in on the big issues,” Windle said.

Though he recognizes that he’s fighting an uphill battle by not aligning with a party during the campaign, he said he’s hopeful that he can raise enough money independently to place second in the state’s Top 2 primary. If he makes it to the general election, Windle said he’s confident that he’ll receive donations from sources all over the political spectrum.

“We’re pushing the envelope with our approach to this campaign,” he said.

Windle and his wife Anh-Thu Mai-Windle now own a home in Snoqualmie Pass.

Reporter Caleb Heeringa can be reached at 392-6434. ext. 247, or cheeringa@isspress.com.

The City Council tilted a set of regulations on home businesses to favor the neighbors of those businesses. The council, at its May 14 meeting, cited concerns about the traffic, noise and other impacts on residential neighborhoods.

The updated regulations passed 6-1 after extensive last-minute amendments. Councilwoman Nancy Whitten, the dissenting vote, led the charge on the neighbor-friendly tweaks, worrying that the Planning Commission-crafted law would lead to a proliferation of people running disruptive businesses out of their homes. She said that the changes still did not go far enough to protect the neighbors.

“The presumption needs to be in favor of residents and neighborhoods rather than in favor of people that want to have a business that is apt to be intrusive,” Whitten said.

According to U.S. Census figures, there are about 1,639 home businesses in the city. A majority of the people who work from home would likely not be affected by the new regulations, since current home businesses are grandfathered in under the old law. But a homeowner hoping to start a new business might face a few more restrictions, particularly if they plan to have customers coming and going or do anything that could draw the attention of a neighbor. Current businesses could also be affected if they make significant changes to their business model and have to reapply for a home business license.

The council retained bans on several types of businesses that the commission had suggested doing away with, including automobile, truck and heavy equipment repair, vehicle painting and veterinary clinics.

Commission members pointed out that Sammamish still has hundreds of multi-acre properties that could host such a business without imposing on the neighbors. The home business code contains multiple other requirements that such a business would have to meet, such as keeping business activity more than 20 feet from property lines. Any potentially disruptive business would also have to obtain a conditional use permit. The permitting process would give neighbors the opportunity to weigh in and the city the opportunity to place specific regulations on the business –such as when it can be open and how many clients can visit in a given day, for example.

But leaving the matter up to the judgment of city staff was not enough for several councilmembers, who recounted their own horror stories of living next to carpentry and automobile restoration businesses and conjured up theoretical problem businesses that could pop up in local neighborhoods.

Deputy Mayor John James said liberalizing the rules would “nullify” the concept of zoning in the city.

“It’s a slippery slope to go down this path and allow these types of uses in residential zones,” he said. “This is the quickest way to get us off the (CNN/Money Magazine Top Cities list).”

The council also retained a requirement that a maximum of 50 percent of the floor area of a home be dedicated to business and required that Type 1 businesses – generally low impact businesses like lawyers and consultants – have no more than three non-resident employees and no more than three cars on site related to the business.

Whitten also insisted on adding language prohibiting businesses from creating vibrations that affect neighbors. Whitten recalled being bothered by a neighbor who did lots of carpentry work.

“In the summer time the garage doors open and the saws come outside,” she said. “It made my whole deck wobble.”

During deliberations, Whitten attempted to delay the passage of the ordinance, suggesting that the council form a committee to do more outreach and get more information from neighborhoods. Much of the testimony heard by the commission came from home business owners and the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce.

“We need a public dialogue – not just with the business owners, but with homeowners to see what their input is,” she said.

Whitten was overruled after City Manager Ben Yazici noted that the commission had held six public hearings on the matter, in addition to the two times it had been discussed at council meetings.

Councilman John Curley said tighter regulations likely wouldn’t stop residents from running businesses out of their homes, just make people less likely to apply for a permit with the city, giving the city and neighbors a chance to weigh in. He noted that the city had received only two complaints about a home business’s impact in the last four years.

“When you outlaw auto body painting, only outlaws will auto body paint,” he said.

Councilman Don Gerend agreed, saying that intermixing businesses amongst residential zones was part of the new “paradigm” in urban design that the city is trying to model its Town Center after.

“I think we’re making a mountain out of a molehill here,” he said.

Though much of the concern from the council centered around the amount of cars coming and going from a home business, Claudia Haunreiter, a retired hairdresser who ran a salon out of her Sammamish home for 26 years, noted there may be some positives to added activity in a neighborhood.

“Our neighborhood can feel assured that we do watch the coming and going of cars while most of the neighbors are gone to work, leaving their home empty and ready for intruders,” she wrote in an email to the council. “An empty neighborhood is an open invitation for intruders.”

The City Council got a look at updated traffic data throughout the city at a joint meeting with the Planning Commission May 8. They debated whether to look into significant changes to their transportation policies sooner rather than later, given that future growth and plans for development in Town Center could affect traffic all over the city. The council elected to have the commission take up the matter sometime next year.The council paid special attention to brand new traffic counts, which showed that several major road projects were likely successful in easing traffic congestion while also pointing out new bottlenecks in the city that will have to be addressed in the coming years.

The traffic counts, taken on weekdays, show a small easing of traffic levels on 228th Avenue from 2006 until now. The city counted 25,590 trips on 228th Avenue just south of Northeast Eighth Street and Inglewood Hill Road on the average weekday in 2006, but 24,480 in 2012. Issaquah-Pine Lake Road near Southeast 32nd Street also saw declining traffic – from 17,804 trips to 15,110.

While a drop of a couple thousand trips over the course of a day may not seem like much, Sammamish also continued to grow over that period, adding 649 residential units, more than 135,000 square feet of commercial space and 550,000 square feet of civic development like churches, schools and the library.

City staff attribute the declining traffic to road improvements in recent years – particularly the connection of the two ends of 244th Avenue near Allen Lake in 2010. The project has made the road function as something of a third north-south arterial in the city, likely diverting trips from 228th.

Victor Salemann, a senior associate at Bellevue-based traffic consultant firm David Evans and Associates, said there are likely other factors involved in the lighter than expected traffic volumes. The stagnant economy in recent years means more unemployed people staying home and less disposable income to go out and spend. Rising fuel costs also don’t help.

“You don’t drive to the store for mayonnaise just to finish your sandwich anymore,” Salemann said.

But the news wasn’t all so rosy. Sahalee Way just south of state Highway 202 is the site of extended traffic backups and has the unfortunate distinction of being the only stretch of road in the city deemed to be over capacity. Councilman Don Gerend pointed out that the city is limited in what they can do about the matter, since much of the backups come from cars waiting for the stop light on the state-maintained highway to turn.

Some on the council struggled to understand the city’s method of measuring road capacity. The transportation chapter of the city’s comprehensive plan defines capacity in the context of moving people, regardless of whether they’re in a vehicle, on a bike or on foot. That means that according to the city’s metrics, a project like the East Lake Sammamish Parkway expansion, which added bike lanes and a center median and turn lane increased the road’s capacity by 27 percent, though no additional lane space was added. The reworked road, north of Inglewood Hill Road, can now handle up to 22,010 people a day rather than 17,370, according to the city’s measurements.

Salemann said anyone who has driven behind a bike that is sharing a lane of travel with vehicles can appreciate how much quicker they can travel when that bike has its own lane.

“These policies are not just about how to move cars, they’re developed to move people and create a more urban environment,” Salemann said. “The roads are safer when we add (turn lanes and bike lanes) … there are fewer accidents on a three-lane road than there are on a two-lane road.”

Public Works Director Laura Philpot said the city’s tallies of accidents show that the road is indeed safer than it was. The parkway saw four collisions in the year after construction was finished, down from an average of 10 every year before construction. Injury collisions also went down, from an average of four a year to two.

Will the parkway project ever end?

The unfinished portions of the East Lake Samammish Parkway were a major topic of discussion during the meeting, with several councilmembers advocating that the city move them completely off the city’s long-term road projects list – essentially killing the project for good.

The city finished the $10.3 million first phase of the road in 2010 but elected last year to indefinitely delay future phases, and their estimated $27 million price tag. The worth of the road has been a contentious campaign issue in recent years.

But Public Works Director Laura Philpot explained that it wouldn’t be as easy as simply erasing the project from city planning documents and moving on. The city classifies the road as a “minor arterial” – a type of road that warrants more capacity than is currently provided. The Growth Management Act also requires that the city plan ahead for future growth that is likely to add cars on the road.

A solution suggested by staff and embraced by several councilmembers is to give the road its own special classification when the council next looks at its broader transportation policies – essentially rewriting the rules to avoid having to upgrade the road. Traffic engineer Jeff Brauns noted the downsides to such an approach – treating one road with X amount of traffic differently than a similar road on the other side of town could be perceived as “inconsistent or political.”

Councilman Ramiro Valderrama, who lives near the parkway and has long been opposed to its expansion, said that might be a small price to pay.

“This is a project that is cited by citizens and present councilmembers as the most wasteful project in the city’s history,” Valderrama said. “We need to reclassify it and move off this project or we’re just offending citizens and councilmembers.”

•  Display a grand ol’ flag at your home (remember to put it out again for Flag Day, June 14).

• Visit a national cemetery where volunteers have decorated each gravesite with a U.S. flag. The Tahoma National Cemetery is located east of Kent on 158 acres. Noteworthy is the Memorial Walkway containing 23 memorials that commemorate soldiers of various 20th century wars. A Blue Star Memorial to honor all veterans is located north of the Public Information Center.

• Attend a special service and presentation of the colors by local Veterans of Foreign Wars. In Issaquah, the VFW will hold a service at 10 a.m. Monday, May 28 at Hillside Cematery. The Redmond VFW will hold a ceremony 11 a.m. at Sunset Hills Memorial Park, 1215 145th Place S.E., Bellevue.

• Some Americans use Memorial Day to also honor any family members who have died, not just servicemen and women.

• Plant a flower or a tree in honor of a family member.

• Say thanks to a living veteran.

• Make a commitment to volunteer to assist veterans in need. The Dept. of Veterans Affairs has many ways to help; visit www.volunteer.va.gov.

• Take time to learn a little about the holiday and its Civil War roots.

While most enjoy the three-day holiday, Memorial Day is so much more, and is especially poignant while our country is at war.

Soldiers are still fighting in far-flung corners of the world for the liberty that affords us a carefree day in the park, chowing down on barbeque or watching the Indianapolis 500 — what most of us will be doing this weekend. It’s okay, veterans can be remembered there, too.

On April 29th, we celebrated our seventh annual ARAS African Bike Drive by collecting 700 bikes plus parts bound for Africa.

Thank you to those who transported the pre-collected bikes to City Hall, our 84 volunteers who helped to prep and load the bikes for shipment, to those who held bike drives for us and of course to all those who donated so their bikes will have a second life.

Mary Trask

ARAS Community Service Director

Everyone wants to help the environment

I take issue with the recent article in the Sammamish Review “Planners, citizens study proposed regs.”

I am thankful that the author is reminding Sammamish citizens that this process is ongoing by writing the article but, in my opinion, the participants have been incorrectly characterized.

It is mentioned that, “Most of the public are property owners who have had development plans stymied by the city’s current regulations.”

On the contrary, I find that there is a fairly even mix of those asking the commission to preserve environmental protection and those who want to preserve their property rights.

Many of those asking to preserve protections for the environment are themselves living in critical areas that require buffers.

At tonight’s meeting (May 17), except for the developer and lawyer for a proposed development, the majority of speakers were for preserving what we have left of the environment.

I agree with the author that the rubber will meet the road when the issue of the landslide hazard, erosion hazard areas comes up as a topic.

The meetings to address those topics will be from 6-9 p.m. June 14 and June 28 at City Hall.

I would encourage anyone concerned with building on steep slopes to come to those meetings, they even have coffee and cookies provided.

Barbara Raabe

Sammamish

Thanks you schools foundations donors

The Lake Washington Schools Foundation raises funds to support academic excellence and success for all students in the Lake Washington School District. The Foundation does this through funding Equal Access to Educational Opportunities, Quality Teaching and Leadership, and Future Ready Skills.

Within these priorities, programs are funded that fulfill needs of students, schools and the district.

These needs include the LINKS Mentoring program that matches caring adults with students who need one-on-one mentoring, help with homework or developing social skills.

School needs can be met with our Reaching for Success grants that provide funds to assist schools in meeting their state-mandated (but unfunded) continuous improvement process plan.

The district benefits from foundation funding through district-wide grants like providing scholarships for summer school to low-income students who are academically at-risk.

To date the foundation has provided nearly $1 million in programs to benefit students throughout the district.

The foundation vision is that each student in the Lake Washington School District will receive an education that ensures future success.

Foundation programs strive to accomplish this vision and are in alignment with the school district’s vision of Every Student Future Ready – prepared for college, prepared for the global workplace, prepared for personal success.

Community support sustains this vision.

Please join us, along with your local community members and businesses, for our seventh annual “A Legacy for Learning” benefit luncheon May 23 at Lake Washington High School in Kirkland.

Our presentation team will include Tony Ventrella as the keynote speaker, Andy Wappler with the “Call to Action”, and returning again this year, Monica Hart as the emcee.

Thanks to our sponsors, the lunch is complimentary so all donations support programs. For more information and to register visit www.lwsf.org.

We are fortunate to live in a community that values and supports excellent education.

Thank you to the thousands who have supported the foundation the past seven years.

Your generosity is appreciated and we look forward to increasing the impact that community makes on education.

Please consider making a donation if you are unable to attend the luncheon. Community support makes a difference.

Terri Blier,

President

Lake Washington Schools Foundation

In the 45th District, which covers the north half of Sammamish, Democratic Rep. Roger Goodman has drawn two opponents in his search for a fourth term.

Joel Hussey, CEO of a Redmond-based aircraft leasing company, will run as a Republican.

Jacob Bond, a 27-year-old former U.S. Marine, has filed as a Democrat in his run against Goodman.

Fellow Democratic incumbent Larry Springer, going for a fifth term, has drawn a Republican opponent in Jim Thatcher, a program manager at Microsoft and Redmond resident.

In the 41st, Republican Sen. Steve Litzow will face a challenge from Democrat Maureen Judge, a Mercer Island resident and former executive director of the Washington Toxics Coalition. In the House, incumbent Democrat Marcie Maxwell will face Republican Tim Eaves. No one filed against incumbent Judy Clibborn.

On the national front, incumbent Dave Reichert has drawn challengers from both sides of the aisle as he seeks a fifth term in the newly redrawn Eighth Congressional District, which now stretches across the mountains to Wenatchee.

Puyallup resident Keith Swank, a Seattle Police Sergeant, and Issaquah resident Ernest Huber have filed as Republicans to face Reichert.

Auburn resident Keith Arnold, an accountant with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Issaquah resident and management consultant Karen Porterfield will challenge the incumbent as Democrats.

James Windle, who grew up in Sammamish and lives in Snoqualmie Pass, has filed as an independent in the race.

Each year state law calls for each school district to go through two audits; an accountability report and a financial audit report. The audit took place between September 1, 2010 and August 31, 2011 and, just like the previous nine, found no blemishes on Issaquah’s record.

The accountability report examines how well the District complies with its own policies and state and federal laws such as the Open Public Meetings Act, bidding compliance, and enrollment reporting. Its results were released March 30 and concluded that the district’s “internal controls were adequate to safeguard public assets.” The Financial Audit Report, which measures the District’s financial statements and processes using Government Auditing Standards, was also issued March 30. In it, there were no findings of noncompliance or other serious problems.

To mark the 10-year milestone for the district, State Auditor Brian Sonntag wrote the school board a congratulatory letter.

“This accomplishment reflects the dedication of the district board and the district staff to strong oversight of operations, good internal controls, and accurate financial reporting,” Sonntag wrote.

During discussions about the city’s long term parks plans at the council’s May 14 meeting, Deputy Mayor John James proposed that the city plan to partner with the Issaquah School District on sports field improvements at Pine Lake Middle School, similar to the current fields at Skyline and Eastlake high schools.

The middle school is due to get new turf fields as part of the $219 capital improvement bond approved by Issaquah School District voters in April. James suggested the city set aside money for adding lights to the field in the coming years.

The city, which struggles to keep pace with demand from adult and youth sports teams during busy parts of the year, has funded improvements at Skyline and Eastlake in years past and has use of the field after school hours. City Manager Ben Yazici said it would be premature to earmark money for such a project when the city has yet to gauge whether the school district would be interested in partnering on the fields in the first place.

Councilwoman Nancy Whitten noted that the city and the school district have not always seen eye to eye on the Skyline field in recent years. In 2010, the district asked for an extra hour of playtime for the students, and suggested the city leave the lights on an hour later, until 10 p.m. During negotiations, district officials threatened to rescind the interlocal agreement for the fields. The idea drew the ire of several neighbors who had negotiated a 9 p.m. end time for the use of the fields several years prior.

The district and city eventually compromised, giving the district an extra half-hour of field time before the city takes over.

“It’s something that we’ll want to explore, but I don’t think we want to go gung-ho,” she said. “We had a bad experience with (Issaquah School District) on the Skyline field.”

Yazici said staff would be reaching out to the district about the idea in the coming months.

The Sammamish City Council unanimously approved the $108,000 project at their May 14 meeting. The city aims to have construction finished by July.

The wooden staircase, which connects 223rd Place with 222nd Avenue Northeast, about 75 feet below, is rotting and unsafe for pedestrians, according to the city staff report. The concrete and metal stair system is designed to be more permanent and not decay.

Heeringa won third place for spot news reporting for his story “Sahalee man pulls neighbor from burning building.” He also won third for Personalities reporting for his story “Sammamish 9/11 survivor, conflicted about bin Laden death, remembers.”

The Review competes against other non daily publications in Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Oregon.