The Sammamish City Council gave a symbolic thumbs-up to the King County Metro Vanpool and Vanshare program at their May 8 meeting.

Councilman Don Gerend, who represents Sammamish at the Suburban Cities Association, asked the council their feelings on the various transportation options offered by King County Metro. Though no service cuts are planned in the immediate future, the SCA asked its board members to get a sense of what services the regional board should support if cuts come in the future.

King County Metro has made service cuts in the face of lagging sales tax revenues in recent years. In August 2011, the King County Council approved a temporary $20 license fee that will tide the agency over through 2013.

State and county officials continue to discuss alternative funding sources for the agency.

The council reached a consensus that the agency’s van pool program was important to Sammamish commuters. Using an online tool, the program lets commuters connect with others going to the same location at the same time and share a Metro-maintained van.

The program has grown in popularity in recent years. More than 2.83 million commuters boarded a commuter van in 2011 – an 11 percent increase from 2010. Linda Thilke, spokeswoman for King County Metro, said 74 vanpools originate in Sammamish, serving 470 commuters.

Mayor Tom Odell pointed out that the program is great for work commuters with a regular schedule, but it doesn’t replace regular bus service.

“Vanpool works well for people in 9 to 5 jobs, but if (your commute) is anything but that you’re in trouble,” Odell said.

The council also briefly debated the merits of Metro’s Access program, which provides door-to-door service for disabled users that can’t get to the normal bus routes. Gerend pointed out that the service does terribly from a cost-recovery standpoint – more than $38 per boarding, compared to $4 per boarding on the average bus boarding and about $1.70 for the typical Vanpool boarding.

“There’s got to be a better way of doing it,” Gerend said. “Taking a taxi is cheaper than Access.”

Councilman Tom Vance pointed out that not every disabled person can be served by a taxi, saying that not many taxis can handle a 300-pound electric wheelchair, for example.

“The people that the Access bus is serving are the people most in need of alternative services,” Vance said. “If they could use a taxi, most would.”

The Issaquah School District is wasting no time when it comes to putting the $219 million bond dollars into action.

The school board reviewed a preliminary schedule of projects and timeline for school construction and other district upgrades at its May 9 meeting. Some projects could begin as soon as July and others extend through the end of 2019.

“Somebody has to be first, and somebody has to be last,” said Jacob Kuper, chief operations officer for the district.

Phase 2 construction of Liberty High School and Phase 2 at Maywood Middle School are first in line with finishes projected by the end of 2013. At the caboose of the tentative timeline is the reconstruction of Sunny Hills Elementary School, which wouldn’t finish until December 2018.

Construction to improve Skyline High School’s stadium would begin April 2013 and run through September 2014. As a result, Skyline’s football team is likely to play away games for the entire 2013 season. Issaquah High School will have the same problem a few years later when its stadium remodel takes place from April 2016 to August 2017.

This summer, the district hopes to install artificial turf on the athletic fields at Beaver Lake and Maywood middle schools. It would then install turf fields at Pine Lake and Pacific Cascade middle schools the following summer.

“We didn’t want to take all the fields out over the course of the summer because it would be a huge impact on the community,” said Steve Crawford, director of capital projects for the district.

The tentative schedule only listed major projects, with repairs and other smaller projects bundled together to be done over the next seven years and possibly beyond.

“This is a draft schedule, subject to change,” said Kuper. “When you are talking about 80 percent of a decade, there are going to be changes.”

He and Crawford explained that there are a number of factors that influence the timeline, like permitting with different jurisdictions and whether or not construction is located in rural or urban areas.

A different contracting method

Crawford and Kuper also suggested using an alternative contracting method for the more complex project of relocating Issaquah Middle School, Clark Elementary School and Tiger Mountain High School. The method, General Contractor Construction Management, would replace the traditional bidding process.

Instead, the district would bring in a general contractor early on in the design phase to be a part of the multi-phase project throughout. By doing so, Crawford said the district would get the contractor’s expertise on things like materials and efficiencies. He said the district would negotiate costs with the contractor.

“I think there is the potential to save some money…we will know earlier in the process where the big costs are,” said Crawford.

Another area where it could save money, he said, is by potentially reducing delays. The threat of delays would be stronger, he explained, if three separate contractor bids are accepted for three different phases.

In this case, one general contractor would be responsible for the whole project. Ideally, each phase, including the relocation of three different student bodies, would be better synchronized if one firm is managing the entire process.

“The advantage is to shorten the timeline,” said Crawford.

The district’s preliminary timeline includes two possible schedules for the Issaquah, Clark and Tiger Mountain project. The first, using the traditional bidding method, estimates that the project would begin this month with its design and permitting phase and continue through the beginning of 2017. The target move-in date for students would be August 2016.

The second schedule, using one general contractor, would also start this month with early designs and permitting. Construction would finish at the beginning of 2016 with students set to be in their new facilities by August 2015.

District officials have not made a final decision yet and Kuper said that at this point and time, both avenues – going the traditional bidding route or using its alternative – are still open.

While Washington school districts are allowed to pursue the latter option, this would be the first time that the Issaquah School District does so. (see sidebar)

First, however, the district must get approval from the state. Washington’s Capital Projects Advisory Review Board is expected to review the district’s projects’ proposals later this month or in June.

No-bid contracts would still be

competitive

Should Issaquah School District officials decide to use the general contractor construction method, they must still abide by state requirements for how the general contractor is picked. Under state law, the contractor must be hired through a competitive process that involves the district publicly posting that it is looking for proposals.

The call for proposals has to include details such as a description of the project, reasons for using this method in the first place and a description of how proposals will be scored. The state also has guidelines for how the proposals are evaluated, including requiring a committee to do the evaluating. The applicants would be judged on their reputation, workload and the amount of work their firm could do itself. Finalists would need to submit a more detailed proposal, which would include an estimated maximum cost.

To make the final choice, those proposals would then have to be opened and read publicly. The public would also then get the chance to see how the finalists were scored.

Learn more about guidelines for capital projects at www.ga.wa.gov/cparb/.

Lillian Tucker: 392-6434, ext. 242, or ltucker@sammamishreview.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Troy Alexander Lewis has been charged with indecent liberties, communication with a minor for immoral purposes and first-degree burglary with sexual motivation. Prosecutors allege that he grabbed and fondled a 10-year-old girl and a 26-year-old woman in two separate attacks.

The 10-year-old said she was attacked as she walked home from a bus stop on the 22700 block of Northeast Second Street around 3:30 p.m. The girl told police that an attacker grabbed her from behind, putting his arms over her shoulders and pulling her arms behind her back, according to a probable cause statement presented in court.

Police say the attacker then put his hands in the girls’s crotch and asked her a sexually explicit question. The girl then bit and kicked him to get away before running to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor called the girl’s father and walked the child home. The child’s father saw a person in the area matching the description of the male who attacked his child, but quickly lost sight of him. The father then called police, according court documents.

At around 7 p.m., the 26-year-old woman said she was grabbed from behind as she opened the door to her home on the 700 block of Southeast 240th Way. Prosecutors allege that the suspect grabbed the woman’s crotch, prompting her to scream. He then fled eastbound through the condominium complex.

The victim told police that her attacker was wearing all black and a dark mask of some sort during the attack.

A neighbor, who heard the victim scream, went looking for the suspect and found a teenage male matching the victim’s description, breathing heavily and hiding in the doorway of another condominium. According to court documents, the teen told the neighbor that he didn’t live in the area and was looking for a friend’s residence, but could not provide the neighbor with a name or apartment number of the friend. The neighbor took a photo of the teen that was given to police, who recognized the suspect as Lewis.

Police say that when they contacted Lewis two days later, he lied about who he was with when the attacks occurred and said he hadn’t had any contact with the two victims. After further questioning, Lewis allegedly admitted to being at the scene of both attacks, but told police that he had accidentally “bumped into” both victims and did not mean to hurt them, according to court documents.

A judge on May 10 ordered that Lewis remain in custody. Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, said Lewis will have a hearing in the next two weeks that will determine whether he will be tried as an adult.

More than three months after the death of Stan Chapin, local parents whose childrens’ lives were impacted by the revered Eastlake High School resource officer are working diligently to preserve his memory.

Residents can now raise money in support of the cause by purchasing a special edition wine dedicated to Chapin. Kathie Beutel, manager of Plateau Shell and one of several parents involved in fundraising efforts, said the wine – named Valor – is now on sale at the gas station, located near the corner of Inglewood Hill Road and 228th Avenue. Beutel hopes to get it served at local restaurants in the coming months.

The wine, produced by Woodinville-based Tefft Cellars, is available as both a red and white blend. Bottles are $20, with the proceeds going towards a fund in Chapin’s name.

“All of the responses we’ve gotten have been, ‘Wow, that is one classy bottle of wine,” Beutel said.

Tefft Cellars’ web site describes the wine as “a premiere hand-crafted blend of Tempranillo, Cab Sauv and Merlot from Washington State’s Yakima Valley, representing Stan’s own unique blend of courage, loyalty and commitment.”

Chapin, who died at the age of 61, served as the school resource officer at Eastlake and Inglewood Junior High and was well loved by students and staff.

Beutel hopes the wine will help raise the $35,000 to $40,000 necessary for a bronze statue of Chapin to be placedat the entrance to Eastlake. She aims to erect the statue next January, on the one-year anniversary of Chapin’s death.

The school district, however, has yet to approve such a statue, according to district officials.

Lake Washington School District has a policy that memorials and statues are allowed only for deceased students and staff members. Chapin was technically a city employee, meaning the school board would have to make an exception to the rule to approve the statue.

Doug Eglington, Sammamish’s representative on the board, said the board had yet to hear about the statue but said he would not be opposed.

“(A statue) may be an appropriate way to honor his memory and there may be other ways too,” Eglington said. “I’m open to whatever the consensus seems to be in the community.”

Any leftover money is going to go into a Stan Chapin memorial fund, which will go to “college-bound youth that make the right decisions in the face of adversity.” Beutel has raised more than $3,000 by selling Chapin-themed bracelets at $5 a pop and said she hopes the wine will bring in even more and serve as a constant fundraiser for the scholarship fund.

Beutel unveiled the wine at a May 10 Sammamish Chamber of Commerce event and promptly sold five cases.

“To see the outpouring of support from the community is heartwarming,” Beutel said. “This community wants that statue up.”

Want some wine

To buy a bottle of Valor, visit Plateau Shell, 22631 Inglewood Hill Rd. or order online at http://www.tefftcellars.com.

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

King County officials reminded boaters to avoid environmental monitoring buoys in lakes Sammamish and Washington after a Lake Washington buoy sustained damage.

Officials said a boat struck the bright yellow buoy between 4 and 6 p.m. April 23. The impact caused the buoy to flip and submerged sensitive data-collection equipment. The tally for damage is expected to reach at least $5,600.

The incident echoes a similar problem from Lake Sammamish. In July 2010, vandals flipped a buoy bobbing in the lake and caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. In May 2009, vandals also damaged a buoy on Lake Sammamish.

Crews managed to repair the buoys involved in the earlier vandalism incidents.

In the most recent incident, county staffers estimated the time of impact because the buoy’s data-collection equipment ceased functioning at the same time.

The buoys provide a variety of real-time data, such as wind speed and direction, air temperature, atmospheric pressure and other environmental conditions.

The buoys form a key part of the Major Lakes Monitoring Program. Staffers use equipment on the buoys to record and analyze the long-term environmental quality of lakes Sammamish, Union and Washington.

County scientists share buoy-collected information with the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network as part of a broader investigation into the effects of local human activity and climate change on lake ecosystems.

Federal agents arrested a substitute bus driver for the Issaquah School District on child pornography charges Thursday.

In the course of the investigation, security officials told district officials no evidence exists to believe any inappropriate or illegal activities occurred as the driver — identified as Carnation resident Andrew Bernard Rekdahl in court documents — worked for the district.

“This is obviously a very serious charge, and our first priority is making sure that he acted as a professional at all times while driving for us,” Superintendent Steve Rasmussen said in a statement released early Friday afternoon.

Prosecutors said Rekdahl shared explicit images and videos of boys online.

In customary procedure, the Issaquah district cleared the substitute driver through mandatory state and federal background checks before he started driving in November. Both background checks accurately showed a clean record.

The district never received complaints or concerns about the driver during his short employment.

District administrators have immediately stopped employing the driver with any future substitute assignments. The district is also investigating footage of him driving his routes. Officials confirmed he never activated or used his employee email account.

A 16-year-old Eastlake High School student is in juvenile detention as police investigate the seemingly random sexual attacks of a Sammamish woman and child May 7.

A judge ordered May 10 that the teen remain in custody based on his threat to community safety. According to a statement of probable cause presented in court, he is accused of grabbing and fondling a 10-year-old girl and 26-year-old woman in two separate attacks.

Sammamish Review is not naming the accused because he has not yet been charged with a crime.

The 10-year-old victim was attacked as she walked home from a bus stop on the 22700 block of Northeast Second Street around 3:30 p.m. The victim told police that an attacker grabbed her from behind, putting his arms over her shoulders and pulling her arms behind her back.

Police say he then put his hands in her crotch and asked her a sexually explicit question. The girl then bit and kicked him to get away before running to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor called the girl’s father and walked the child home. The child’s father saw a male in the area matching the description of the man who attacked his child, but quickly lost sight of him. The father the called police, according court documents.

At around 7 p.m., the 26-year-old woman was grabbed from behind as she opened the door to her home on the 700 block of Southeast 240th Way. Police allege the teen grabbed the woman’s crotch, prompting her to scream. He then fled eastbound through the condominium complex.

The victim told police that he was wearing all black and a dark mask of some sort during the attack.

A neighbor, who heard the victim scream, went looking for the attacker and found him, breathing heavily, in the doorway of another condominium. According to court documents, the teen told the neighbor that he didn’t live in the area and was looking for a friend’s residence, but could not provide the neighbor with a name or apartment number of the friend. The neighbor took a photo of the teen that was given to police.

Police say that when they contacted the teen May 9, he lied about who he was with when the attacks occurred. After further questioning Police say he admitted to being at the scene of both attacks, but told police that they were accidents and that he “never intended to harm either victim.”

He is being held on investigation of child molestation, communicating with a minor for immoral purposes and indecent liberties. The King County Prosecutor’s Office has until May 14 to formally file charges.

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

May 16 marks opening day of the fifth season of the Sammamish Farmers Market, which continues to grow in variety and popularity each year. Deb Sogge, executive director of the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce, said the market seems to have caught on among Sammamish shoppers who value locally grown and organic foods.

“We’ve made it five years, which is a big deal to us,” she said. “It keeps growing every year, so we feel good about that.”

The market will have new, earlier hours this year, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., which Sogge said is aimed at parents who pick up their children after school, as well as to accommodate vendors who come from as far as Eastern Washington to peddle their goods at the market and have to drive home after the market closes.

“We heard from a lot of people that said they were picking up their kids at 2:30 p.m. or 3 p.m. and wanted to go right after school,” Sogge said.

Juliana Pash, the market’s manager, said at least two new vendors are on tap this year – a farmer specializing in Asian produce and an independent coffee roaster. More than 40 vendors are signed up to sell at the market this year, including most of the market favorites from last year. Of the 13 farmers signed up to sell at the market, four are certified organic, Pash said.

Also new this year is a monthly emphasis on arts and crafts. The last Wednesday of every month will be geared towards artists – from pottery to paintings to blown glass.

“(The art available at the market) is really eclectic,” Sogge said. “We wanted to find artists who had some really unique pieces.”

Keeping with the “shop local” theme of the market, organizers are trying to encourage attendees to spend their dollars at Sammamish businesses.

Every week, shoppers turn in their receipts from local businesses within the last week for a chance to win raffle prizes, including gift boxes and gift certificates from local businesses.

Pash, who volunteered during the early years of the market, said it’s been a joy to watch the market grow in popularity over the years.

What began with about 10 vendors and 300 attendees in 2008 has morphed into something bigger. The market was averaging more than 800 shoppers a week last year and shows no signs of slowing down.

“To oversee all that has been really wonderful,” she said.

If you go

The Sammamish Farmers Market runs from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. every Wednesday through Oct. 3 (except July 4) at Sammamish Commons, next to City Hall. Parking is limited, but overflow parking is available at nearby Mary, Queen of Peace Catholic Church and Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church. For more information, visit www.sammamishfarmersmarket.org or like them on Facebook.

The City Council continued that trend while making tweaks to the city’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space (PRO) Plan at a May 1 meeting, prioritizing an investment in its newest park – currently going by the name of Southeast Eighth Street Park – over a lakeside restroom and improved swim beach and fishing area at Beaver Lake Park.

The Beaver Lake improvements are still scheduled to happen in 2015, but not until the city figures out what it needs to do to Southeast Eighth Street Park.

The city has already held two public meetings in the master plan process and will be holding a third in the coming months.

Once the master plan is finished, the city will have a better idea of what to do at the property, but it has earmarked $448,000 in future parks funds for the project. Initial work at the park is scheduled for 2013-2014.

Parks Director Jessi Richardson said that money may be needed to make the existing home on the north parcel of the Pigott property useable.

The PRO Plan, the product of months of work by the Parks and Recreation Commission, is a rough draft outlining how the city intends to spend the $1.5 million or so a year it receives in real estate excise taxes and impact fees from developers earmarked for parks.

It projects revenues and schedules specific parks projects through 2018. All expenditures must still be formally approved by the council during their normal budget process.

Aside from Southeast Eighth Street Park, the PRO Plan is noticeably light on major projects in the immediate future, instead delaying major projects at East Sammamish Park and Beaver Lake Park until 2016 or later. That’s because of the elephant in the room when it comes to city parks projects – whether or not Sammamish will go ahead with some sort of community and aquatic center.

The project has been on the back burner in recent months after last year’s study put the cost at more than $64 million for a 98,000 square foot on the Kellman property, behind the library. City Manager Ben Yazici said in an interview that the city has been in discussions with the YMCA about partnering on a facility in that location. Yazici said he hoped to have a better idea about the feasibility of a partnership before the council delves into next year’s budget this fall.

Nearly every city councilmember has indicated that they envision putting the project up to a public vote before moving forward, though parks capital revenue could be used for the project as well.

With that looming on the horizon, Councilwoman Nancy Whitten said it’s best to take the scheduled PRO Plan projects with a grain of salt. If the community center idea falters, the council may take a longer look at some of the projects envisioned in the master plans, such as Sammamish Landing or Beaver Lake Park.

“I think we can come back to this,” she said. “I think we’re going to be making a decision on the community center fairly soon and that’s a competing interest here.”

The council is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the PRO Plan at its May 14 meeting.

How far will you walk?

At a May 1 meeting, Councilman Ramiro Valderrama insisted that a map in the city’s long-term parks plan that examines residents’ proximity to city parks show a mile radius around each park.

Though the map is simply for illustrative purposes, Valderrama pointed out that a majority of Sammamish citizens reported in a recent phone survey that they would be willing to walk a mile or more to get to a park.

More than 38 percent said they would be willing to walk one mile and 23 percent said they would be willing to walk two miles, according to the survey results.

Parks Director Jessi Richardson said city staff elected to draw circles within a half-mile radius around the parks, since users can rarely walk directly from their home to a park in the scattered street grid of the city.

“Unfortunately, as the crow flies isn’t always the way people get from their front door to a park,” she said.

At the insistence of Valderrama, Richardson agreed to include a second map in the document that shows the city’s parks with a mile-diameter circle around them and also includes Lake Sammamish State Park, Klahanie Park and Duthie Hill Park.

New park design meetings

The Sammamish City Council is due to get a look at several proposed designs for Southeast Eighth Street Park, also known as the Pigott property, at their May 14 meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. A third public meeting will be held this summer. For more information, visit www.ci.sammamish.wa.us/departments/parksandrec/projects/SE8thStPark.aspx.

Ella Moore, president of the Sammamish Heritage Society, said the 115-year-old farm house is scheduled to be moved in early June. An exact date for the move has yet to be set.

The city-owned house, which has been in limbo for many years, will move approximately a mile from its current location, off 212th Avenue just north of Southeast 16th Street, to the second parcel of the Pigott property, off 220th Avenue Southeast north of Southeast 20th Street.

The property is due to be transferred to the city sometime in the next five or so years. The land is being called Southeast Eighth Street Park until the city holds a naming contest in the coming years.

The heritage society is leasing the home from the city for a dollar a year and plans to refurbish the dilapidated structure and turn it in to some sort of heritage-themed facility.

Moore said the society is leaving decisions about exactly how the home will be used up to the broader master plan process for the Pigott property.

But Moore said some of the grants that the organization has received for the rehabbing the home require that at least a portion of it be used as a museum of sorts, with revolving exhibits of historical items.

The society has raised more than $77,000 for the project, from both private donations and grants from regional heritage groups. Moore said the group recently received $12,000 from 4Culture, King County’s arts and heritage agency, for restoration of the home’s windows. The agency has donated a total of more than $50,000 to the project. The Washington Trust of Historic Preservation has also chipped in $500 for structural repair of the building.

“We feel very gratified being that we are such a small volunteer organization going up against the giants in the grant hunt, such as Historic Seattle, Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of History and Industry,” Moore wrote in an email.

The society estimates they’ll need approximately $230,000 to complete interior repairs of the building, though they hope local volunteers could handle a lot of the work. The City Council budgeted $70,000 in city funds for the project, but has yet to approve handing the money over for the project. Mayor Tom Odell and Councilwoman Nancy Whitten voted against previous attempts to spend city money on the project in recent years.

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