ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, October 28, 2011
www.issaquahreporter.com
Sammamish council race a personal test Kathy Richardson, Nancy Whitten spar over property rights, the environment
Kathy Richardson (left) became polically involved over concerns about property rights while Nancy Whitten says environment issues drive her interest. CELESTE GRACEY, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
O
nce a corporate lawyer, Nancy Whitten is still surprised that it was the environment that first pulled her into Sammamish politics. After eight years in Position 4 on the City Council, she gave it up this year to challenge Kathy Richardson for Position 2. For two women who claim conservative leanings, their views about the environment and property rights are as different as
their disposition and personalities. While neither woman would say the two are mutually exclusive, Whitten owned her partiality to the environment as much as Richardson owned to her concerns about property rights. Calling herself a centrist on the issues, Whitten says she challenged Richardson for fear that she was not. Some speculate Whitten had other reasons. Though both Jim Wasnick and John Galvin had filed for her seat when she made the decision, she said “I could have won.”
WHITTEN In the view from Whitten’s living room, patches of light flicker from Pine Lake and through towering evergreen trees. A storm sent one of the towering giants through her roof last winter. It was an unfortunate loss – the tree was still healthy, she said, and of course they had to replace their flooring. Little has changed on her 5-acre wooded parcel since she purchased it 30 years ago, except for her home, which she carefully built 120 feet from the shore and over the same footprint as the lake house she raised her four children in.
“We tried to keep it fairly natural,” she said. Her activism began outside her window, when in 1981 she learned the Department of Fish and Wildlife regularly poisoned Pine Lake to benefit its trout. The issue was resolved with a petition, but the lake was already on its way to becoming a swamp, she said. In 1989, she helped lead a committee in passing a plan that would reduce phosphorous in the lake, which would have caused the lake to be overwhelmed by algae. For the next 10 years she watched SEE ELECTION, 5
Mt. bikers pack meeting on trails Park Board considering plan to improve biking for Issaquah trails BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
Scott Petty rises to speak at the Issaquah Park Board meeting. The Tibbets Creek Manor was packed with mountain bikers eager to support a new task force recommendation that would ease the way for more trails in the city. CELESTE GRACEY, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
Spurred on by opposition from an established Issaquah hiking group, mountain bikers packed a park board meeting Monday night to ask for more trails. It was a spectacle for the board, which is often so scarcely attended it uses a historic farmhouse for its meetings. The board is considering a plan that would map possible mountain bike trails and push the city to better manage its green spaces.
The response highlighted a change in public support. Years past, the Issaquah Alps Trails Club dominated public opinion and saw trail access closed to bikers. Monday, comments in favor of mountain bike improvements in Issaquah had a ratio of about 6-1. The meeting ran so late, the board didn’t even discuss the plan, much less vote on whether to send it to City Council for ratification. The proposal, presented about a month ago from the Mountain Bike Task Force, was nothing new. However, the mountain bikers showed up after strongly-worded letters from the trails club began to circulate in the community. SEE TRAILS, 12