Friends Endorsed Candidate List (Details)
Redmond Council
Pos #1
Christine Discoe
Pos #5 Lori Snodgrass
Pos #7 Jim Robinson
Mayor Rosemarie Ives
Sammamish
Council
Pos #2 Michele Petitti
Pos #4 Nancy Whitten
Pos #6 Mark Cross
Endorsement Lists from Cascade Bicycle Club and the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club
Friends Endorsed Candidate Details (List)
Redmond Council
Pos #1
Christine Discoe. Christine was the spokesperson for Friends on the WLSP
campaign. Being able to affect positive change, being encouraged to
run by an overwhelmingly popular Mayor Ives, bringing up a family in Redmond, and having family roots in
politics was the inspiration to run for council. She brings fresh ideas,
passion, and energy representing the future of Redmond. Her opponent,
while being rooted in Redmond and having good name recognition from his mother,
has no record of supporting a livable Redmond. 59% of his funding 3 weeks prior
to the election comes from outside Redmond, much of it from the developer
community and a Master Builder's Assoc endorsement. About a third of his Redmond
contributions come from a single donor on the lake side of WLSP.
Pos #5 Lori Snodgrass. Lori was motivated to challenge Richard Cole because of his consistent voting record rejecting bike-ped/trail/livability initiatives. With 16 yrs experience, but only the support of a handful of citizens, Cole was the major obstructionist to getting the WLSP improvements approved. Even with a bad voting record, it is not completely indicative of how he works against livable community initiatives. For instance, he voted last on the WLSP improvement with a yes vote after he knew it had the votes to pass so the voting record would reflect a yes vote despite his efforts to thwart it.
Pos #7 Jim Robinson. Jim was a strong supporter of the WLSP improvement project from the outset and his voting record reflects positively on his support of financially sound livable community initiatives. In the AAUW/LWV Redmond Candidates Forum he gave an inspirational speech about how citizens are going to have to make small sacrifices to change their behavior to maintain their quality of life. He was speaking largely of the congestion problem and he walks the talk by taking a bus to his Boeing workplace.
Mayor Rosemarie Ives. Mayor Ives has pushed forward many projects to increase the bike-ped friendliness downtown and throughout Redmond. She is very active in regional efforts to bring mass transportation to Redmond. Many of her initiatives have been thwarted by a council that believes we can pave our way out of the transportation mess.
Sammamish
Council
Pos #2 Michele Petitti
Pos #4 Nancy Whitten
Pos #6 Mark Cross
The photo at right is at the 10/13 groundbreaking for the East Lake Sammamish Trail in Issaquah with King County Executive Ron Sims. With your help, 3 of these members will comprise the Sammamish City Council. Michele Petitti and Nancy Whitten flank Ron Sims with Mark Cross at right (long time trail activist Bente Pasko is at left). All three candidates support working with King County to complete construction of the trail on the railbed and construct more ballfields on the plateau as well as include bike-ped considerations in all planning.
Nancy Whitten's opponent is a member of the planning commission pushing an agenda of more paved roads to solve congestion and was the campaign manager for other members of the existing council and City Manager who are obstructing the permit process for the ELST in Sammamish and who removed bike lanes from the 228th St renovation now under construction. They had the right-of-way, but claimed the $300K cost was too expensive. The cost to society for emergency response and costs directly rated to a pedestrian-motor vehicle accident, not taking into account the personal and emotional costs to the victim, friends, and family, is $312K - a literal drop in the bucket for the cost of a civil project of this size.
Nancy Whitten's opponent's protege on the planning commission is opposing Michele Petitti. The opponents' vision for the future of Sammamish was 4 lanes of traffic on East Lake Sammamish Parkway. They may be changing their thoughts and looking at adding a center turn lane, but it can not be done without removing the bike lanes or taking right-of-way back from many of the same affluent lakeside property owners who are obstructing the ELST. In a recent survey, 80% of Sammamish residents favored construction of the ELST on the railbed. The opponents of our candidates have latched on to this and unscrupulously and deceitfully put "Trail Yes" signs on their campaign signs and espouse their trail support while campaigning. What they're not saying is they do not support the alignment on the railbed. Their strategy is to get that alignment defeated and then wait for the other community members to fight the other alignment. This will simply start the NIMBY process all over again and there will never be a safe trail where kids can ride safely away from ELSP, where commuters and recreational cyclists and skaters can connect Marymoor Park with Sammamish SP and the Mtns to Sound Greenway, or where people bound by wheelchairs can enjoy smooth, gentle grades with good lines of sight.
Another deceitful campaign slogan is concerning ballfields. There are not enough ballfields to meet demand for soccer, baseball, etc in the city. King County, frustrated by the obstructionist practices of the current council not giving permits for the ELST, a trail that is very low cost and low impact with a very, very large benefit for King County members, is not granting permits for ballfields because of the existing council's obstructionist efforts catering to minority interests in the city.
Mark Cross' opponent is perhaps the most unscrupulous of all candidates. He owns nearly 2.5 acres of undeveloped lakefront property bisected by the railbanked right-of-way. If he and his cronies can get elected to council and defeat the ELST effort, this millionaire stands to gain millions of dollars of value in his land, all at the public's expense. He even claims to be a founding member of the Friends of ELST. He actually formed ELSCA, the organization which is trying to stop the last remaining permit needed to open the ELST rail-trail to the public and designed the alternative alignment to the railbed, the Haro-Rundle alignment.
80% of the community wants to see the trail
alignment on the railbed. Pass on the word to elect Cross, Whitten, and Petitti
to get the trail completed, move forward with ballfields, and create a more
multi-modal, livable community.