Kathy Huckabay will begin her Sammamish City Council tenure in a couple of weeks, and as a former council member, she couldn’t be more ready.

Huckabay was elected to the first Sammamish council in 1999 and served for 10 years, one of which was as mayor. And she already has a couple items on her agenda for January, including discussing the long-debated issue of Sammamish creating its own fire department.

Approximately one year ago, Huckabay was invited by the current city council to look at how fire services could best be provided to the community. As one of Sammamish’s founding council members, Huckabay has believed for some time that the city should have its own fire service.

And with a Jan. 17 deadline quickly approaching to keep the current arrangement, Huckabay’s first couple weeks should be nothing less than exciting.

“It’s been left to the very last minute,” Huckabay said. “There’s an awful lot still on the table.”

Another item on Huckabay’s agenda is increasing city staff.

“We have excellent, talented and well-educated staff,” Huckabay said. “But now that we’re going into the comprehensive plan, we need to reach out the community and get a sense of what the community wants. All of that needs to be polled, and we don’t ave enough staff right now to do that. Now that we’re growing again, we could definitely use some additional resources.”

Huckabay said she is looking forward to working with the other council members. She explained that on the original council, despite having many political differences, they were able to put their differences aside, work together and focus on putting together a great city. Huckabay said that the current council hasn’t gotten along as well as she would hope.

“I don’t see that sort of collaborative effort,” she said. “And I’m very interested in making sure that we have a very collaborative council, that all of the city council members are fully informed, and, more importantly, that we bring the citizens into the process.”