Locally owned
December 17, 2014
Review sammamish
Most residents happy with city, survey states
Kings of the gridiron
By Tom Corrigan tcorrigan@isspress.com
By Greg Farrar
Eastside Catholic High School football team captains (above, from left) Cody Baker, Matt Kvech, Deion Fetui, Alex Neale and Harley Kirsch thank the school’s boisterous student body during a Dec. 10 assembly celebrating the school’s Class 3A state championship, which culminated in a 35-13 victory over Bellevue. A student-made poster (at left) hangs on the wall and is reflected in the gymnasium floor in front of the assembled student body. See more photos from Eastside Catholic’s championship celebration at www.sammamishreview.com.
Suspect in man’s slaying extradited Seattle Times staff
One of two men accused of beating a Boeing manager to death in his Sammamish home in September before fleeing to Canada in the victim’s car has been returned to the U.S., according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Christopher J. Shade, 18, was extradited from Canada last week and booked into the King County Jail. He was scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 11 at the King County
Courthouse. Co-defendant Kevin D. Patterson, 21, a Canadian citizen, remains in custody in Abbotsford, B.C., pending extradition to the U.S., the prosecutor’s office said. Shade and Patterson are each charged with first-degree murder, firstdegree robbery and theft of a motor vehicle. Police said in charging documents that Patterson and Shade told investigators that the victim, Richard Bergesen, 57, made a sexual advance on Patterson on Sept. 16. Bergesen had
met Patterson, who was homeless, through Overlake Christian Church, took him in and offered financial and emotional support, authorities said. But according to text messages exchanged between Bergesen and Patterson’s sister, Bergesen was concerned about Patterson’s progress registering for school and making monthly restitution payments in connection with a recent conviction for breaking into the Redmond Library, charges said.
At some point early Sept. 17, Patterson and Shade went into Bergesen’s bedroom and beat him with a shovel, prosecutors allege. Charging papers said that after killing Bergesen, Patterson and Shade stole his wallet and drove off in Bergesen’s 2013 BMW 328 sedan. The men drove to Spokane, and then north into Canada, crossing the border illegally on a dirt road, charges said. Sheriff’s investigators said they were able to find the men through a tracking device in the BMW.
• 77 percent are satisfied with how city officials handle finances. • A whopping 99 percent feel safe in their neighborhoods during the day. The number dips only slightly to 96 percent during nighttime hours. What do residents like about Sammamish? The survey said the city’s biggest appeal is its small-town feel. The biggest problem? Twenty-eight percent say traffic congestion. According to the survey, more than nine in 10 residents visited a city park last year, while more than half used a park 12 times or more. Those numbers please City Councilman Don Gerend, who said they justified the amount of time and money the city spends improving its parks. In answering council questions, Larson said the survey, done by a private contractor, reached 400 residents and had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. He said that based on Sammamish’s population, the number of people interviewed is statistically valid. Larson noted about 34 percent of residents were interviewed on their cell phones. He and others said that seemed to be in keeping with the fact many people now use cell phones as their primary phones and have no landline-based home phone. Full survey results are online on the city’s website, www.sammamish.us. A link to the results is posted on the home page.
People living in Sammamish in 2012 were really happy with the city. Fast forward to 2014 and they are not quite as overjoyed, but they are, overall, satisfied with the place they call home and the direction it is taking, according to results from a community survey done in October and presented to the Sammamish City Council on Dec. 9. City Communications Director Tim Larson admitted the figures are down a bit from 2012, but said he felt the numbers from that year were a bit of an aberration. He said the administration has done seven or eight surveys in the past 12 years. Of the 400 residents surveyed, 77 percent — or eight in 10 — said the city is on the right track. Break that number down into demographics and, according to the city’s released results, at least 30 percent of every age category studied believes the city is moving ahead in the right manner. The only “slight” exception, according to the results, came from residents 65 or older, of whom only 28 percent believe Sammamish is moving in the right direction. The survey report noted the tendency to “strongly agree” the city is on the right track drops the longer a resident has lived in Sammamish. For those who have been in the city five years or less, that number is 41 percent. It drops to 30 percent among longtime residents who have been here 21 years or more. Other numbers from the survey include: • 72 percent of resiPOSTAL dents are happy with CUSTOMER City Council leadership.
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