Last week the Sammamish City Council approved a motion to accept funding from the Federal Stimulus package for expansion of the East Lake Sammamish Parkway project beyond Phase 1A.

This decision is a huge disappointment to those of us who had thought, mistakenly, that the Council had finally accepted that the majority of the citizens in Sammamish do not want or need this project when it voted earlier in the year to only fund a small portion that would focus on improving the safety at the Inglewood Hill Road intersection.

For those who may not know, at the same time that our City Council voted to reduce the scope of the ELSP last January, it was actively applying to receive funding from the Federal Stimulus package to expand the project.

With the exception of the safety features planned for the Inglewood Hill intersection, the rest of this project does not provide any value in exchange for the cost.

Perhaps the Council believes that because the Stimulus funds do not come out of its own City budget, that they have somehow found a way to pay for this part of the project that the citizens do not want by announcing the tab is being picked up by the Federal government, not by Sammamish.

But there is no mistaking that the full cost of this project is being paid by us all-whether it be the taxes we pay for living in Sammamish, or the taxes we pay at the Federal level, the citizens of Sammamish are still going to foot the bill for an expensive project that does not provide value, and that we do not need.

Is this how government is supposed to work?

I know that this is not what President Obama had in mind in making the stimulus money available.

When he announced the package, Obama asked that citizens at the local level watch carefully how the funds are spent, and if we see waste, we should call it out.

Well, I for one, plan to call this out.

Shame on the city for taking the stimulus money and wasting it on this project.

There are many other needs within our city that could have used the funding and provided jobs and value to our citizens.

This, unfortunately, is a waste.

Sherie Valderrama

Sammamish