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Eastlake trounces Olympic Page 8
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July 9, 2014
Sammamish approves homeless camp regulations
Cap on the Plateau
By Ari Cetron
Photo by Neil Pierson
Alex Streit, 4, donned his Captain America outfit and joined hundreds of other families for Fourth on the Plateau festivities at the Sammamish Commons. More photos Page 7.
Sammamish Parks plan approved after testy exchange By Ari Cetron
It was only supposed to take a couple minutes, but instead. approval of a long-term plan for parks improvements turned into a testy exchange between the Sammamish city manager and a city councilman. The council ended up approving the parks’ capital improvements plan on a 5-2 vote, with councilmen Ramiro Valderrama and Tom Odell dissenting at a July 1 meeting. The council had previously discussed the issue in a June 10
study session. The six-year plan lays out a wish list of new parksrelated features and suggests when the city might begin to study or build them. It does not appropriate any funds for any of the projects; that must still happen through the normal budgeting process. If everything were to be built as scheduled, the plan would cost $35.7 million over those six years. Of that, $22.6 million would go to the new Community Center. Valderrama criticized the plan. He said it simply lays out
what the city wants to buy, but does not list what the priorities are. He argued that the City Council needs to know those priorities, and to be able to place them within a larger budget context, in order to make decisions about which ones to fund. City Manager Ben Yazici appeared frustrated with the line of questioning, since many of these issues had already been raised during the study session. “We had that very discusSee PLAN, Page 3
Homeless camps will be allowed to stay longer in Sammamish than in any other Eastside city under regulations approved by the City Council July 2. After hours’ worth of emotional pleas on both sides of the issue, the council unanimously approved the regulations. Under the new rules, camps will be permitted to stay in Sammamish for four months – the standard on the Eastside is three months. After the stay, however, the camp won’t be back for a while. A camp is only allowed in the city once per year. And it may only stay in the same place once every 18 months. The 18-month clock starts ticking on the day the camp leaves. Over the objections of some residents, there will be no random background checks, but there will be warrant checks (see sidebar) when the camp first comes to town, and again for each new camper who arrives during its stay. The city began studying the issue last October, when Tent City IV, a traveling homeless camp, stayed at Mary, Queen of Peace Catholic Church for three months. Until then, city leaders had never expected the camp to come to Sammamish, owing to the city’s relative paucity of access to transit and other services. Before voting, the City Council discussed the matter briefly. They noted that localities cannot reject a church’s bid to host the camps, since courts have recognized helping the homeless is part of a religious organization’s freedom of religion. However, the rules sought to balance that right with the public safety concerns of residents.
Several councilmembers called on the regulations to be a living document, which would be amended as needed if future camps expose weaknesses in the plans. Others noted that homelessness is a much bigger issue than the couple dozen people who stay at camps such as Tent City. “We’re not dealing with the homeless. We’re dealing with some of the homeless,” Mayor Tom Vance said. “We need to develop a holistic solution, as a nation, to deal with this,” Councilman Tom Odell said. Failed amendments A pair of amendments that would have created notification requirements broader than the city’s standard failed. The first, suggested by Odell, would have required notifying property owners within 1,000 feet of the host site of a community meeting to discuss the camp. The typical notification requirement – for developments – is 500 feet. Odell said the larger number is the same size as a drug-free school zone, while Councilwoman Kathleen Huckabay said the wider zone would allow greater transparency. Others failed to see the benefit of the larger size. Councilman See CAMPS, Page 3