Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, June 8, 2012
www.issaquahreporter.com
No more plastic Issaquah City Council passes bag ban with a 5-2 vote
Right, a truck from Everettbased Nickel Bros., moves the ReardFreed House from its 212th Avenue Southeast location early Sunday morning. Bottom, several neighbors got up in the early hours to watch the house move.
BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
STEVEN DEMPSEY, www. stevendempsey.500PX. com
ON THE MOVE
Sammamish’s historic Reard-Freed House finds permanent home BY KEVIN ENDEJAN KENDEJAN@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
W
“There was a big sense of relief knowing it was going to its final resting place.”
hen Mary Moore heard the city was considering demolishing Sammamish’s 115-year-old Reard-Freed House and using its parts for park benches, she knew something had to be done.
“That kind of moved a lot of people to get involved,” said Moore, who more than two years ago took the lead on a project to save the historic house. Early Sunday morning, all the hard work of Moore and several other Sammamish Heritage Society members paid off when the house arrived at its permanent location at the new Southeast Eighth Street Park — part of a 51-acre land donation made by Sammamish resident Mary Pigott. “There was a big sense of relief knowing it was going to its final resting place,” said Moore, who was up at 3 a.m. with several others to watch a large truck move the house approximately a mile from its old location on 212th Avenue Southeast.
– Mary Moore During the past two-plus years, the Sammamish Heritage Society raised more than $80,000 from grants and various fundraisers to relocate and preserve the house. Originally built in 1890 by Jacob D. Reard, the home was eventually sold to Oscar Freed in 1930. In 2010, the Reard-Freed House was placed on the Washington Trust for Historic Pres-
ervation’s List of the top most endangered historic sites. In 2011, the City of Sammamish and the King County Landmark Commission designated the Jacob and Emma Reard House the first historic landmark in the City of Sammamish. The house is also notable for its SEE REARD-FREED, 7
The days of plastic bags are numbered in Issaquah. In a 5-2 vote Monday, City Council decided to ban plastic shopping bags and impose a 5 cent fee on paper, beginning March 2013. The law is similar to Seattle’s with a few exceptions, primarily it allows organizations, such as Salmon Days, to apply for exemptions. “This is not Seattle’s bill. This is not anyone else’s bill. This is Issaquah’s bill,” said Issaquah Council President Tola Marts. Championed by Councilmember Mark Mullet, the bill was first introduced in January. He believed similar bans proved this one would work. Future generations will have to deal with the plastic bag waste we create today, he said, politicians need to speak for them. The same goes for marine wildlife, because they can’t speak for themselves. Dissenters to the bill weren’t convinced that it was the best way to approach the plastic bag problem. Councilmember Joshua Schaer hoped to impose a fee on the bags instead, and counterpart Eileen Barber preferred that the city SEE BAG BAN, 6
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