As I watch the city council candidate forum I am intrigued as an incumbent city councilor back peddles on his past position on East Lake Sammamish.

It is public record that the councilor supported the wasteful project.

At every opportunity, he voted for it, saying “let’s just get on with it” and turned down requests from citizens and even other council members to review alternatives as well as requests that the first phase not include sidewalks — that even the city recognized no one was going to use.

Now as he is more enlightened, the incumbent councilor says he only wants what has been done to date, and boasts that the $9 million the city spent so far on phase one was well spent and is already being utilized.

The councilor claims we have a safe intersection, sidewalks used by children waiting for the school buses, and the filtration system is protecting Lake Sammamish.

The Inglewood Hill intersection is now under its third reconstruction (not a bragging point). It is still questionable whether it will be any safer.

The sidewalks are not being used, by pedestrians or schoolchildren awaiting buses.

If the city councilor checked he would see that despite his assertion, our children do not wait for the bus on the sidewalk but 30 feet up the street away from traffic.

The filtration system was not needed until the council put in the sidewalks and we had more spillover. Now we have spent millions more of our money on a filtration system and the on-going maintenance for a project the city councilor now says he is in favor of stopping.

The only thing being used are the newly planted flowers — the deer have already eaten them all on the east side — and I expect them to go after the ones in the medians causing further havoc and accidents on ELSP. All of which citizens warned the city council in 2006 when an alternate plan was presented.

We need real cost effective transportation solutions. Though one can hope the deer will use the costly sidewalk.

Ramiro Valderrama

Sammamish