For Sammamish City Councilman Mark Cross, Key Issues Revolve Around Connectivity, Qualify of Life

Sammamish City Councilman Mark Cross grew up in Marin County, Calif. But his parents attended the University of Washington. So, when he had the opportunity, he moved to the Seattle area and studied urban planning at the UW.

These days, when he's not pursuing work, he spends his time at his day job - as an associate planner for the city of Bellevue.

He sat down with Sammamish Patch to talk about his work and outlook on policy. Here are excerpts of his talk:

ON POLICY AND PLANNING FOR SAMMAMISH 

Cross: Sammamish is a young city, being only 10 years old, 11 years old. To me, that’s when you have this opportunity to make some of the big decisions and to have that long view. The things that you do are really important. So, in 30, 40, 50 years, there will be parkland. There will have been trails that were linked together. As difficult as some of those things are to do today, they become increasingly difficult over time.

We’re going to have parks that we’re developing now that are going to be a benefit to the community for, I hope, hundreds of years. We have a lakefront park that is coming that might go into construction (this year), down on Lake Sammamish.

ON HIS PHILOSOPHY ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Cross: I guess my philosophy is right now, in the city being young, that we do have to try to link streets when we can, when it’s reasonable. We need to link trail segments together. We need to link parks together. To me, my key philosophy is probably linkage. 

…To the extent that we can make linkages between these things and become a whole system of trails and a system of parks, then you’ve really created great value for the residents.

ON 'OLD' AND 'NEW' SAMMAMISH

Cross: In the early days, we were busy building sidewalks around schools. Now, we’re at the point where we can try and be strategic in building sidewalks and pedestrian access to hook residential areas into the trail system.

ON THE NUMBER OF CITY STAFF

Cross: We also are finding the limits of our small staff. We can have a lot of good ideas and things we want to accomplish. But by having a limited staff, you have to expect things to take longer. And that’s been disappointing for people. We had expected to make some decisions on , which I expect to be one of the hotter issues going forward in 2011 and 2012. I thought we were going to make a decision (in 2010).

It’s not that we have staff that can’t be helpful and aren’t knowledgeable. We’re at the limit of what we can expect to accomplish each year with the staffing levels that we have.

ON HOW RESIDENTS CAN PARTICIPATE IN CIVIC LIFE 

Cross: There are a lot of different ways to participate in city life. It’s not just being on the Council or Planning Commission. It’s volunteering on the Fourth of July. It’s planting plants in a wetland. There’s a lot of things people can do in a few hours on the weekend to make the city great.