In third campaign, Amato emphasizes accountability and budget oversight
Josh Amato, 36, is taking the phrase “third time’s the charm” to heart. After unsuccessful campaigns for Sammamish City Council in 2021 and 2023, he is once again seeking a seat. He is running for Position No. 3 on a platform emphasizing city finances, infrastructure and accountability.
Amato and his wife moved to Sammamish from Mercer Island in 2018 and quickly became involved in the community.
“I joined the Sammamish Rotary Club pretty much as soon as I moved here. We support the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank pretty heavily, and we raise money for educational grants,” Amato said in an interview with the Sammamish Independent.
If elected, Amato’s top priorities would include balancing the budget, strengthening financial oversight, and addressing infrastructure needs.
For the budget, he proposed creating a Budget Advisory Task Force to gather resident input.
“That means aligning our residents’ values with our spending and strengthening financial oversight. If we’re going to ask residents to pay more in taxes, or we’re looking at cutting some services, we definitely need to make sure that we get some good feedback from people,” he said.
Amato’s proposed task force would broaden the scope compared to past efforts. Earlier budget task forces focused mainly on suggesting alternative revenue sources or identifying possible cost reductions. Amato envisions a group that would also engage residents in more conversations, for example giving them a voice in evaluating which city services might be scaled back.
Amato also outlined how he would approach city finances, saying he opposes the 6% utility tax recently approved by the council. Instead, he supports performance-based budgeting, which ties funding decisions to measurable outcomes.
“What that means is we are looking at the outcomes of the money we spend and then evaluating the efficiency of the spend and the community impact to make sure that those dollars that we’re deploying are getting the results we need. If they’re not, then we need to reevaluate the project, potentially cut it, and move the money elsewhere,” Amato said.
Though he acknowledges that performance-based budgeting requires significant work, he believes it is part of a councilmember’s responsibility. He suggested dividing expenses into three categories: must-fund, should-fund, and nice-to-fund.
“Must-fund services include police, fire, roads, parks and emergency response. These must be fully funded. Next come the should-fund programs that reflect long-term goals or community priorities like park improvements. We should fund this based on the revenue that we have at the moment. For the nice-to-fund, those are like new initiatives or quality-of-life programs that should only move forward if we’ve got a budget stabilized or residents supporting new revenue,” Amato said.
Amato’s approach differs from current strategies by significantly reducing the number of items considered high priority. Under his plan, “nice-to-fund” items would only move forward if the budget allows or if residents specifically support a tax increase dedicated to funding them.
On infrastructure, Amato’s priority is ensuring the city follows through on projects that have already been proposed or started but remain unfinished. He argued that reducing bottlenecks and addressing utility needs will depend less on new studies and more on completing construction already in the pipeline, particularly as Town Center development advances.
His decision to run for council partially stemmed from frustration with delays in execution. As examples, he cited two projects currently on hold: work on the Issaquah-Fall City Road/Duthie Hill corridor was paused in 2022 while the city updated its six-year Transportation Improvement Plan. Similarly, improvements at the intersection of 228th Avenue SE and SE 32nd/Issaquah-Pine Lake Road are also on hold, pending incorporation into a larger project.
“I don’t think that right now the council has been very focused on delivering results. That’s my goal: to create a local government that really works for people, and I don’t think that’s happening right now,” he said.
Amato believes one way to ensure projects are completed is to give residents clearer tools to track the city’s progress. He has proposed creating more accessible and widespread public dashboards for city projects to improve transparency and accountability.
On Town Center, Amato said the development should remain consistent with original plans. He supports a cap of 2,000 housing units if paired with necessary infrastructure improvements but does not back proposals for 4,000 units, sharing concerns that Sammamish’s infrastructure could not support that scale of growth.
As Amato launches his third campaign, he said his focus remains on improving accountability and ensuring Sammamish residents see tangible results from their city government.
Josh Amato is running for Sammamish City Council Position No. 3.
