July 13, 2011 Locally owned Founded 1992 50 cents
Council race pits Whitten against Richardson
Photo by Christopher Huber
Hank Klein, Beaver Lake resident and Sammamish Parks Commission chairman, explains how his duck boxes work. The seven that line his and his neighbor’s waterfront provide a safe place for mother ducks to lay eggs and care for their offspring. Klein’s yard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Backyards become habitats By Christopher Huber
Sammamish goes green
When Don Gerend and his wife bought their home on Pine Lake decades ago, they didn’t think much of the list of nearly 70 bird species the previous owner spotted around the property. The lakeside lot set in a wooded area naturally provided some of the basic elements that attract all sorts of wildlife, in particular, birds. But in 2010, the Gerends decided to make their property more wildlife friendly by creating a Certified Wildlife Habitat with the National Wildlife Federation. They started taking seriously the idea that little changes or additions could make their yard safer or more appealing to critters, as well as lessen their impact on the larger ecosystem. “We realized we have lot of
People in Sammamish have caught the bug. Around the city, in ways large and small, they are latching on to the national trend and finding ways to “go green.” They are making changes to the way they live and the way they interact with the world to try and decrease the negative impacts they have on the environment, without hurting the quality of their lives. This story is the first in a series that will examine what people in the city are doing to become more ecologically friendly. birds around the house that we didn’t pay a lot of attention to,”
Gerend, who is mayor of Sammamish, said. “I thought, ‘well shoot, if I certify, I should take this seriously.’” And although he doesn’t consider himself to be quite the avid birder that his home’s previous owner was, Gerend said he loves identifying the birds that eat from the feeders suctioned to the kitchen windows. The Gerend property is among more than 160 homes in Sammamish that are Certified Wildlife Habitats, as of March 4, when the city was officially certified. Another See HABITAT, Page 6
Kathy Richardson wants to move up from Planning Commission
Nancy Whitten changes her seat but hopes to stay on the Council
By Caleb Heeringa
By Caleb Heeringa
After a year and a half of shaping the nitty gritty details of city policy, Kathy Richardson says she’s ready to have a greater say. Richardson, a 43-year-old Lake Sammamish shoreline homeowner and current vicechairwoman of the Planning
In March, the Sammamish City Council had reached something of a consensus on a set of regulations for electric car chargers in the city – leave it up to commercial property owners to determine whether they wanted to install the new technology, where to put it and how much
See RICHARDSON, Page 2
See WHITTEN, Page 3
Metro plan could cut city bus routes By Caleb Heeringa
Sammamish’s already meager bus service could be drastically cut as King County Metro grapples with an estimated $60 million annual defecit in the coming years. A series of cuts proposed by County Executive Dow Constantine suggest eliminating the 927 route, which runs between Sammamish and Issaquah, as soon as February 2012.
Trip of a lifetime
Teed off at Sahalee
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Constantine’s proposal also suggests cutting back on the frequency of busses on the 269 route, which runs from the Overlake Park and Ride, through Redmond and Sammamish to Issaquah. In total, Metro expects to have to cut up to 600,000 hours of bus service, or up to 17 percent of the entire system, in order to make the program break even. Metro gets about 60
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See BUS, Page 3