City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. I'd like to call to order the city council meeting on 02/03/2026. City clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Tim Chisholm? Here. Councilmember Arnold? Here. Councilmember Prem? Here. Councilmember Pascal?

Here.

Councilmember Falcone? Here. Deputy Mayor Black?

Here.

Mayor Curtis? Here. All present. All right. Our today's session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have an overview of the municipal court caseloads, financial obligations, release and bail. Second, we will have a joint meeting with the Transportation Commission to discuss the commission's twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven work plan. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 07:30, city manager.

Okay. Thank you, madam mayor. Deputy mayor, members of the council. So once again, we have the honor of having our honorable judge John Olson, the presiding judge for the abusable court here to make the presentation, and also our court administrator, Aaron Wheeler. So I'm going go ahead and turn it over to them. Honorable Campbell is also helping operate the technology. So take it away,

your honor.

Thank you so much. We are pleased to be here again. I feel almost like a regular, and I'm going to carve out my own parking spot here when I come. But this has been fun for us to share what we do. And I think, as you can tell, we like what we do, and we like working for the council. So Aaron is going to go first on the caseloads and those type of things. And then I'll go ahead and cover some of the bail issues that have been raised and arraignments and that. When we if you want I don't know, last time, Mayor Curtissy wanted to wait until the end for questions. And sometimes, I was telling Aaron, we get into it, and the questions may be appropriate then. But whatever you want to do, we'll follow-up.

It's easier if we wait until the end. And, Judge and Aaron, I do want to thank you for being here. We recognize this is a huge time commitment, but

I got one more.

I know. I know. So thank you.

Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead, Aaron.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to the members of the council for this opportunity to speak today and present. So today, we're doing an overview. We have the court's mission statement, caseload reports, our operational data, language access, our youth court and Court for Kids and our community, financial independence, bail, state v. Blasina, fines and fees, our payment plans, collections and our unified payment program.

Our mission statement is Welcome to the Kirkland Municipal Court. Our mission is to provide the community with access to justice with respect and integrity. The court proudly serves the citizens of Kirkland, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Medina, Woodinville and Yarrow Point. Looking at this chart, in 2023, it's highlighted at the top, showing the number of filings for each city we represent. For instance, in 2023, there were 3,437 infraction traffic tickets filed in Kirkland and two twelve criminal tickets filed in Kirkland.

There were five fourteen Clyde Hill tickets filed for infraction traffic, and for criminal nontraffic, there were seven. So that helps you flow through the chart. The total cases filed in 2023 was forty eight thousand nine hundred and eighteen. Following the post COVID period, filings increased by over 13.5% in 2024 to fifty five thousand six hundred and fifty cases, although in 2025, overall caseloads decreased about 8% to 51,296. Our total caseloads for the 2025 for Kirkland were 49,811, and our contract cities were fourteen eighty five.

In 2025, our parking and school zone tickets that were filed were 24,940 Kirkland parking cases and 18,285 school zone cases. This chart shows a reduction in school zone filings from the year 2023 to 'twenty four to 'twenty five, which may be attributed to lower vehicle speeds in designated school zone areas. This suggests that the presence of the cameras has helped reduce the speeds in these areas, indicating that they are achieving their intended effect. Our 2025 operational data is that we assisted over 34,000 incoming phone calls. We processed eight sixty five record requests through our city portal.

We handled eight jury trials and had two ninety two jurors present. We had over 24,000 court hearings held. We had six zero five interpreter hearings scheduled and 25 youth court hearings held. Our language access. Again, we had six zero five interpreter hearings scheduled in 2025.

We have access to over 40 AOC, which is the Administrative Office of the Courts, certified languages and over 90 registered languages. We have access to court forms in multiple languages. We use the language line for assistance. We have a Pocketalk device that was issued by the administrative office of the courts, and it assists in multiple languages when helping people at the front counter. We're part of a King County Municipal Court Language Access Plan called an LAP, and that King County Access Plan brings multiple courts together to coordinate and share interpreter resources so individuals with limited English proficiency or who are deaf or hard of hearing can fully access court services.

This coordinated approach ensures timely, cost effective interpretation and translation services in compliance with state and federal assistant, which matches interpreters with assignments, making it possible to manage six zero five hearings. In 2025, we had 38 languages that were represented in our court, Spanish being the largest percentage. The 42.3% Spanish cases that we had, that is two forty two hearings. That's what that equals. Our Portuguese at 14.9% is 86 hearings that we had scheduled, and our Mandarin and Russian for 39 hearings each Farsi, 21 hearings, and all other languages attribute to percent, which include all the other languages, 31 languages, that are represented in that category.

And that actually concludes my portion of caseloads and interpreter services and I'll turn it over to Judge Olson.

Thank you. This is the Student Traffic Court. It's been going on in our court for quite a while. It's run by Reggie, who is one of the Kirkland employees here, and she runs it usually think it's every Wednesday a Yes, on Wednesdays. It's a great program. Have students all participate. They serve as jurors. They'll have a different student sit as a judge every time. And those they're tough. I mean they don't take any excuses about why they were driving so fast or why they didn't pay attention to road signs.

They'll impose some type of combination of community service and a monetary penalty. And it's I think they enjoy it. I think it's a good opportunity for younger people who are 16 or 17 who haven't had a ticket before to kind of firsthand experience the kind of the court experience without damaging the record. So it works pretty well and I think the kids like it and I know Reggie does a great job with their students and I still see some of the kids when they come back periodically. It's a great program that's been going and we just try to give them a place to work and let them go.

And so it's if you ever have an opportunity, I don't think they zoom it in, but like I said, Wednesdays, once a month at, I think, 01:00 in afternoon. You can sit in and watch a case. They usually have, I think, three or four every week, and it's kind of enjoyable to see. Okay. I'm going to flip here. This is some stuff. Aaron really knows more about this. I know last year, one of our pro tems, Risa Wu, had a mock trial for third graders. I didn't get to see it, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I guess it was a trial that people really had fun with.

And Risa brought kids from where her daughter goes to school and showed them kind of the process and how we work and I think it was well received. We work also with the Kirkland initiative. Once a year now, we've been doing that and that seems to really generate some great questions from the community. We like being a part of this. And then we also worked with the Evergreen Transition Program last year.

One of the council members or council directors brought her daughter and her class to court and they sat through I think they watched Pro Tem Gregory in one of his hearings and then we talked and met with him afterwards. And it's just another way to kind of reach out there and meet the community and it was a great experience I think for everybody. Right. Financial independence, I think there's not a lot to this. We are not we don't do our program to make money whether or not we impose high fines, low fines, no fines, that's not the what our goal is.

We do generate income, but it's not part of our process that we at least that I think about when I'm sitting on the bench. I know Aaron and the other clerks are the same way. All right. Now we get into good questions. And the first one is the Criminal Rule 3.2.

And those are kind of Criminal Rules conditions of release. And every person there's a presumption of a release on their promise to come back and that's kind of the mandate on any non serious, non felony cases. And that's the way that we always start from is that an individual after they're arraigned are going to be released on their promise to come back. At times that may not they may not work and there's a couple of things we look at when we determine whether or not bail is going to be imposed. And initially what happens when we arraign people, I'll go through the arraignment rights initially and then the public defender may be with one of their people or the private defense attorney will be with their client and the prosecutor will make recommendations on what type of conditions of release they want to set and it could be something to make sure that if it's a driving offense they make sure they have a license and insurance if they drive, if they've been pulled over for a DUI or physical control that they abstain from alcohol and they are not going to refuse to submit to a blood or breath test if requested by law enforcement and they're not going to drive with a breath alcohol 0.08 or higher or THC concentration of five nanograms per milliliter of blood or higher.

And those are directly related to the offense. When it comes to bail though, the question is two questions. One, can we be assured they're going to come back? And for most of the people that's not going to be a big issue unless they have a history of a number of FTAs or they have a number of FTAs that are still active warrants in the state of Washington. So that's one of the things the prosecutor will look at and if in fact somebody has two or three active bench warrants out and they're asking to be released on their promise to appear, it's sometimes hard to come to the conclusion that that's a good gamble that the fact they have three courts that are waiting for them now doesn't bode well for them when they're going to tell me they're going to come back too.

But each side makes their argument and I'll make my decision based upon what I see. A lot of the times with these type of questions, I'll ask some follow ups and I want to know where they live. Are they living in the community? Who are they living with? Family, friends, parents?

Are they working? Where are they working at? How long have they been working? And so what I'm looking for in the first phase on their promise to come back is whether or not I feel they have enough in the community that's going to assure me that they're going to come back on that promise. The other prong that we look at too when we determine whether or not we're going to look at bail or deal with bail is if they present a threat to a witness or a victim, if they if we believe and there's evidence to show that they pose a threat to a victim that they may have just been in contact with or they are conditions of release if we set, we may not feel that they're going to follow those conditions and those conditions are going to jeopardize the safety of witnesses, victims and the community.

So a lot of if a person has a number of drug or alcohol related offenses and they have a history of violence, sometimes when I balance the scale I may not feel comfortable that based upon what I've seen they're going to not only come back when they say they are, but they're not going to pose a safety concern for the community. And every case is different. Facts may sound the same, but depending on how the individual presents themselves and the way they are presented by their attorneys will help me determine whether or not bail should be imposed or not imposed. And I'm trying to think in a typical arraignment calendar, I think we had one today, I think we took one person into custody, we set bail and this person had been involved in an assault of a I think it was a brother in July. In September, he violated a no contact order with that brother.

And then just two days ago, after he was released on his promise to come back for the second offense, he violated the no contact order again. So as I'm looking at this, I'm trying to determine is he going to follow my orders. And based upon his current history, I decided that I don't think I can trust him enough. So I set bail in amount that I think he and his father are able to pay and last I heard they were trying to arrange bail. But sometimes it just I want to put a little more emphasis on there so they realize how serious this is and they not only have their freedom in jeopardy, but if dad is posting $1,500 to get their son out of jail, it's a little more incentive for the son to not only follow the conditions that we set, but understand that if not then he's going to have to answer to his dad for the $1,500 that we're going to forfeit if he doesn't come back.

But like I said, every case is different. The facts of the case, facts of why they're not here or why we may want to talk about bail is always changing. I know some people are concerned with the fairness of bail and I agree with that 100%. I never want to impose bail on somebody that there's no way they're going to pay it because it's not fair for someone that's indigent to be to set bail on them when there's no way they're going to get out, but somebody that is more affluent it's not a problem with them to post high bail. So we try to come up with some other conditions that will still encourage them to follow the conditions that we set, but all and come back like we've asked them to do.

But every case is different and we look at a number of factors when we determine what type of release is going to be made and whether bail is going to be imposed. But bail is really that's the exception for the vast majority of our cases on arraignment or after arrest, they're released on their promise to come back. And the next page talks about some of the factors that the court looks at and the prosecutor and defense attorneys look at when we try to determine what types of conditions we're going to set and how are we going to encourage those people to come back when it's their time. All right. Next one is our bail schedule.

And when I came here in 1919, 1919, Yeah, I've been around a long

time. Wow. Been a

long time.

How about 2019? When I started here, the bail schedule that was in the criminal rules of limited jurisdiction 3.2, they are statewide. And they the bail schedule at that time was $500 bail for a misdemeanor and $1,500 for a gross misdemeanor. I was able to go around to a few individuals that had been kind of vandalized by some community members and learned quickly that the bail schedule didn't seem appropriate for the type of crimes we were seeing. We had one person who owned an auto dealership who it was a repair shop and they were broken into a couple of times.

Bail was set, I think, at $1,500 for these two guys that went into the shop, stole some equipment off of cars, started playing bumper cars with the ones that could get started, charged or cost about $40,000 to this individual. He had to try to make a decision, do I my insurance or tell my insurance company or do I pay it on my own? I think the first time he ended up paying the bill on his own, and the individuals were arrested, brought back to Kirkland, put in jail, bailed out within an hour and they were back at the dealership that evening and did the same thing again except it was to the car dealership, the Nissan dealership right next door to them. So clearly, there was no incentive to keep these people in jail and it was frustrating for him, frustrating for us. He ended up filing an insurance claim.

Second time, he lost his insurance as a result of filing that claim. And so I started thinking about what we can do to maybe help the community members who are really the ones that are going to be punished in these type of situations. So I talked to Pro Tem Gregory, talked to some other judges in the area and made a decision that, one, the bail schedule was not serving the needs at this time. Maybe fifteen, twenty years ago when they first set those numbers, were right. But I raised it to $1,500 and $2,500 I thought that was appropriate based upon the type of crimes, violent crimes or property damage crimes that we were seeing, gave a little bit more incentive for the people to come back if they posted a little bit more money.

And again, allowed us to look at some of these cases a little bit differently. I met with the police when we did this and working with the police they began to send me if they made an arrest over the weekend they'll send me a probable cause affidavit. So I can look at these cases, see what type of case it is, see what if anything needs to be changed or addressed. I have the ability on the weekends to release somebody if the charge is minor or there are some underlying factors that need to be looked at in determining whether these people should be released early. And I do on a fairly regular basis, on a weekend, we'll release somebody prior to Monday so they don't have to spend the full weekend in jail.

I added a couple some cases to this bail schedule. When I first started, there were two type of cases, domestic violence cases and DUI and physical control cases that were second or more cases in that person's history. Those two type of cases were not allowed to be released until they were seen by a judge in the next judicial court day. And so what I did is looked at some of the other cases that we saw, checked with some of our other jurisdictions and added Assault four to the list, harassment, stalking, communicating with a minor for moral purposes, indecent exposure and aiming or discharging a firearm. So these cases are all non bailable initially.

But again, I can still go in on the weekend, if these occur over the weekend, and make a determination that bail can be set so they can post and they can be released. And so again, every case is a little bit different, but these were cases that we were seeing more frequently. They are more of a serious nature. They do pose, I think, a safety risk to the community and felt that this was a better way to address them. We see a lot of some of the defense attorneys at times when we sentence people, they tell me these theft cases, they're nonviolent and nobody's really hurt.

But when I see people walking out of Ultra with $9,000 worth of perfume and the people have been not only Ultra here, but they hit them all. They go to Linwood, they're in Federal Way, they're in Des Moines, anywhere there's a store, they'll hit them all. And they always seem to be working in pairs. So we are sensitive to retail theft. And if I could see those, what I want to do is if I see those on the weekend, I will go in and I'll set bail probably higher, more likely $5,000 or $10,000 because for them, the people that are working in retail theft, this is just a cost of business bailing out.

And if they have to pay $150 because bail is typically if they're going to post bail, they go to a bail bondsman, they post 10% of the bail amount, the bondsman covers the rest and they get out. For $150 this is just one night in jail, I'm gone. I'm not coming back. So you're going to have to find me some other way. So at least it doesn't work all the time, but it gives us an opportunity to address some of the more serious offenders that are in our community. And I think it's been well received. The police have been great with contacting me if they have questions. And all these decisions are never black and white. There's always room for discretion. And the police are great.

We may have somebody I can think of a gentleman who had assaulted his younger son, the older gentleman, I think he was in his 60s or something, but he had dementia. He feels physically he was struggling. He had no one to take care of him but his younger son. And the younger son pleaded with the police to not put their dad in jail. The police will call me and ask if that's something that they can do is not book them.

And, you know, I'll defer to what the police ask and say. And if they tell me that this gentleman if we do this and put a no contact order on him, he has nowhere to go. He's 65, he has dementia and the last thing I want to do is turn him out on the street. So we have room to move and change with all the different type of cases that come in. And again, I think it works pretty well.

We have a good rapport with the police and I think they feel comfortable talking with me and the other pro tems we work with to make sure that the process is fair. We protect them. We protect the community. And we try to address them as soon as we can to if there is something that needs to be addressed that they need quick help with, we can do that, too. So that's kind of what's going on with the bail schedule.

The other question we talked about is Blazina and public defender screenings and those type of things. So we start with a public screening sheet that you see in front of you that it's the federal standards for indigency. And this is what our clerks use when they screen people that come to the court for public defenders. They look at the sheet and determine whether or not they are in that ballpark. They ask them a number of questions.

I can't and sometimes when I do arraignments, I try to determine a little bit, but I'm prohibited from asking specific questions about finances and what they make and what their income is and what other assets they have. But our screeners can ask those questions and make a determination whether or not that person a may qualifier for a public defender. We look at a broad range of things, not only how much income are they bringing in monthly, but how big is their family? How many kids do you Do you have any major bankruptcies? Do you have any health bills that you're paying on?

And so we work all those into the formula and if they are close to the line that we see, then we'll grant them a public defender. The majority of the time, if I take somebody into custody and I impose bail and I don't think they're going to get out right away, I'll always appoint a public defender to represent them initially. So at least they have an attorney working with them why they're in jail. I guess the other half of the Blazina question that kind of triggered a lot of these things is there were some court in, I think, Pierce County, maybe in don't know where the other count Cowlitz County, think, where the at the time of sentencing, the judge did not make an individual inquiry into how much money the individuals make or what their ability was to pay fees now or in the future. And so the Ballinas Court said that that's not appropriate.

You need to make this individual inquiry every time you sentence somebody to determine what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. When we when I sentence every person, especially if they're a public defender, the public defenders do a pretty good job saying that, Your Honor, based upon my conversations with this person, we believe he is indigent and should court should make that finding under RCW one zero point one one six zero. And I'll take them for what they tell me and either I'll work on the fines or sometimes during the arraignments I'll just appoint the public defender based upon that statement. But when I sentence people, there are a number of fees that can be imposed. I'm trying to think what they use.

So typically, if I sentence somebody for a driving under the influence, the first fine typically is about $250 So the fine the base fine is $5,000 but we suspend $47.5 We impose a fine of $250 on that. There is an assessment on that of 105%. It's another $262 There is a criminal traffic penalty of $103 a criminal conviction fee of $43 public defense fee, if there are public defenders there, of $2.50 a court monitoring fee of 300 and there is a BAC fee, which is the compensating for the breath test that is given. Those are the typical fines that we impose on somebody that is able to pay. And for driving under the influence usually somebody that's not represented by the public defender, it's about $1,400 that we impose on them.

I'll ask them the fines are $1,400 how long will it take you to pay that or do you want me to set up a payment plan? And so they have that option. Most of the people if they come in with private attorneys, they say, well, I can pay it in a week or a month and that's not a problem. The ones that are more delicate are the ones that don't make a lot of money. They may not be indigent, but they're not making a lot to get by.

One question I ask them is at the end of the month, how much money do you have left over for you time? And a lot of them will answer, I'm in the hole right now or I'm draining my savings or I'm working on my four zero one ks. So if they're homeless, if they have mental health issues, then I'm not going to impose any fees or assessments. The ones that are kind of in between, I try to set a monetary amount that lets them know that this is not easy. Everyone tells me I can't afford an attorney or I can't pay the fines.

Well, you can, but you're going to have to do a little bit more work to pay them. So I'll impose out of this $1,400 if it's somebody that is limited on their finances, I may cut that down to a public defender recoupment fee of $250 which is what we pay and maybe a partial fine of $100 so $350 Can you pay that within sixty days or a month? If they say no, I said, if I set you up on a payment plan, how much can you pay a month? And they will give me an estimate anywhere. Some of them, they don't understand the process as well as they should because they'll tell me, oh, I can pay $200 a month or I can pay $300 a month.

And I say, well, you know, let's maybe let's start a little bit further back. Why don't we say $50 a month? And if you can always pay more. If that doesn't work, you can let us know. And so we try to come up with something that I think they are capable of paying. It's not going to make them lose a payment for their heat or food or something like that. But it does let them know every month at the end of the month when they pay their court bill that this is why I'm a little bit low on funds is because I have these financial obligations that I have incurred. It seems to work okay. Let me see. This kind of ties into to court payments.

So we'll set these fines up or fees up. We give them a plan to pay it, and they agree to do that. But we have quite a few people that will either default on payments or, for whatever reason stop paying or forget about it or just want to forget about it and just ignore it. And they may come back to court. Eventually, it will catch up with them when they try to renew their license or apply for a job and these court fines and FTAs and bench warrants out for them will make it more difficult for them to survive.

So they if they are having a hard time with payments, they can always anybody can write to court or write me a letter and come to the court, fill out a piece of statement or send a statement in saying, this is my case number. I'd like you to look at my fines. I lost my job. I'm making maybe $1,000 a month and I have two kids. Can you help?

Can you take this out of collections? Can you reduce my fines or fees? And again, depending on what they tell me, I'm it's I frequently reduce the fines, sometimes as much as 50%, and set them up on a new payment plan. And it seems to have been working. And we kind of had an amnesty period when I first came.

Anybody that had delinquent fees and stuff could get their bench warrants quashed and get everything set up again. We do that full time now. If somebody wants to readdress their case if they have outstanding fines that they haven't paid or they want to look at addressing the fines in a different way, we will do that. And in the I guess the early 2000s, 2010s to 2020s some of these fines for crimes like driving while suspended they would get up to like $1,100 quickly. And a lot of these people that if they can't drive, they don't have a license, they have a hard time working.

So they're never going to be able to pay the bills that we assess them with. And so we try to again put a fine amount out there that they know is real that they can pay. And I guess we do the best we can to collect what we think is fair and reasonable for everybody. And let's see here. We extend payment plans, we adjust monthly payments.

I mean there's no amount, it's too little. I mean, I know Aaron's not maybe happy with me all the time. But if someone says I can only make $10 a month, well, it's $10 they're paying and it's something we're getting and at least they're making part of their obligation. I know I think I saw some other questions here. Where did I do those?

I think I'll just jump in and talk about our UP program real quick while he's looking. I just wanted to say that our UP program is with Encourt, and it sets people up for success. And basically, it's a unified payment program so that multiple King County courts have consolidated. A person can set up with the program. They can pay a set amount every month, say $25 and it's spread out among all courts that are part of the program so they can stay keep their licenses valid but not have to make payments to each individual court.

So basically, we receive sometimes $1.19 per case, but we've had, since 2020 to 2025, three seventy eight Kirkland cases assigned to the program, and we have collected over $37,000 This each one is a success story in that they've reduced their fine amounts, they don't have collection costs or interest bearing, and they're able to really just focus on the principal payments towards their accounts.

The last thing I wanted to touch on a question was about bail and what happens to it once it's posted. We hold it until the case is resolved. Once it's resolved, we exonerate or give it back. Frequently, when someone posts bail and they don't show up for their next court date, we forfeit the bail and person has to come back. Once they do come back, they're going to have to pay post new bail.

But if they come back within a year, we will always going to exonerate the bail even though we forfeited it. We keep it for a year within our court and after a year it has to go back it has to go to the state. But very rarely do we forfeit and not give it back. I mean it's not our money, but again it's just some more assurance that they're going to comply with the conditions that we said and hopefully take care of their case. So that's kind of in a nutshell what we're seeing with bail and fines and fees and I know we hear a lot of different stuff, but I think we do a good job with our people.

And I think it helps them get over the, I guess, humps that they're trying to deal with. I don't know if there's any questions about what we're I'm

sure there are. But thank you. And just like the community court presentation, it's very clear that you lead with empathy, and you care about the people that come before you and want them to get set on a good path forward. So thank you with that.

The council is the exact same way, and I tell the other people that I always make sure I don't screw up when I come here because I know how hard you guys work and the good job you're doing. So we try to kind of emulate that, too.

Thank you. We have a ton of respect for the work that you do. So, counsel, thank you for your patience. Who wants to go first? Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you. Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Aaron. One of the reasons why we kicked off this as being part of our work program is Public Defender caseload standards. And you touched on a little bit about eligibility. Can you give an idea of the percentage of cases or the number of cases a year that use a public defender in municipal court?

I think they said they were like 140 a month or something like that. Was that what they were saying, Tracy, yesterday at our meeting? Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.

Oh, I'm sorry, about 70% is the rough number.

And I know when the Washington Supreme Court came up with this new process for allocating defense attorneys, I've and been doing this since 1987. I've never seen a public defender agency that was in the situation where they needed help, couldn't handle their caseloads. It's all new to me, but I think there are some cities in Rural Washington that are really struggling and those are the ones that need some help. But I haven't seen it in Kirkland, in Bellevue, any Western Washington cities that I've worked in.

Thank you. Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Thank you. Yeah, Councilmember the Arnold's correct that the caseload standards kicked off this conversation. I was interested in Exhibit E, which is the screening form. And that form is interesting because it differs significantly, I think, from the Washington State form and the form used in other jurisdictions, which is a more complex form, multiple pages, also requires a signature block and has a penalty of perjury attestation. So I would at a later time, maybe that's something.

Yeah, we can discuss it. I know a lot of courts are concerned with a document that's going to be filled out, signed and then put in the case file becomes part of the court file and it is available for discovery. A lot of courts don't want to get in that position. So I think there is a there are some different ways to do this. We try to take people on what they tell us.

I have had people before that we have screened that have continued with their public defender. And after the defender, we had one gentleman who he was saying he was making way more money than he told us initially. And so I had him go through a formal screening again with one of our screeners and bring in his documentation and ended up saying that you're no longer eligible for the public defender. You make too much money. But I'm willing to look at other avenues.

The sheet that you have is just the one standard on income. The clerks have a I think it's a two page questionnaire that they fill out with the defendant when they come up to them. But it's not something we save as a court record.

You.

Councilor Mayor Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, you, Aaron and Judge Olson, for being here. And like has been said before, coming back and back again. We really appreciate the depth and quality of information that you bring to us. As someone who doesn't have a ton of experience with the court system, it's really I'm learning a lot, and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Glad to see the decrease in school zone camera infractions. I know we do get updates on that in our consent agenda. But just to see the numbers aggregated there over the past few years, that's good. It feels like, you know, that the program is working.

That's the intent, right? We want to see those numbers continue to decline. That's a good thing. But just generally speaking, I was really struck by just the sheer volume of work that you do. And, you know, for those watching at home, we did talk about this last time you were there. Think I asked a question about, like, capacity. Like, where are you? Because I know that we currently, as mentioned in the memo and today, take care of not only issues in Kirkland but other cities as well. And as that continues to grow and as our city continues to grow, just want to make sure that we have capacity. And it sounds like the answer last time was that we're doing okay with capacity for now.

I know there's some things I'm looking forward that we'll have discussions about perhaps down the road, but that's generally I'm seeing nods, I think that's generally the direction that's good. Like the mayor said, I really appreciate the human centered approach that you have with empathy, not just for the defendants, but I've also heard you share your empathy for those who are victimized by crime as well. And I think that's really important to have that balance, and I really appreciate that in the work that you presented here tonight, the mock trials, the Kirkland Initiative, all those things to educate folks. Being here tonight to educate counsel and the public on this, kind of demystifying the process, I think, is really important. So I particularly really appreciate that.

Thank you for answering all those questions about bail. I know I'm probably not the only one. Few of us maybe had some questions after reading the memo of just wanting to understand that more, so thank you for stepping through what that looks like. You know, it won't be a surprise to you that, you know, have the, you know, I have the perspective of, you know, hearing and seeing the discussions that have happened in recent years across the country around bail reform and around some places eliminating cash bail. I had questions around that, and you've really answered, I think, well the flexibility that you have in using it as a tool really just when needed.

Right? So I just want to emphasize that for the folks, you know, watching at home that are really interested in bail and interested in making sure that we are being empathetic and we're making sure that we're being appropriate and having an equity lens on that, and it sounds like we are. So thank you for that. I do we're running short on time tonight, but I do I would love to learn more sometime more about the bail system and more information on, you know, how common, how often do we set bail and kind of what just some data on that would be really good to see. Do we see it working?

Like, the folks that, you know, do they come back? How often do folks not come back, right, when the bail is set? And again, for those listening at home, my understanding is that the bail these bail amounts are set by you as a judge. This is not something that the City Council has authority over in any way, shape or form. This is solely your discretion. So I know there's been some discussion and some questions about that, so I just want to make sure that's clear. That's what I heard from you tonight, but I just want to emphasize that for her.

Any time I want to come down, I'd be glad to talk about bail.

Great. Thank you. So thank you for being here, and thank you for all the work that you do for her. Thank you.

All right, no more questions. Do have a wrap up slide for us? Is that the next presentation?

Next one is probation is the next presentation. I think you'll love that, too. We've got two great probation people that are coming, so.

This is our looking forward slide, just things that are happening in the next year or two, focusing on website design, and we have a new system rolling out, a statewide system, Enterprise Justice, that we will be learning. We have Woodinville Council deciding if they will be implementing school zone safety cameras, so we could be having some additional filings from them. They're thinking anywhere maybe from 6,500 to 13,000, so school zone tickets in the first year, so we'll see how that goes. And it's a completely different system than the one we're using, which creates another dynamic. Our community court continues our court continues to grow, but we're expanding out of our community court boutique, and we are going to be needing some additional space.

And succession planning is a big one that coming out with the courts right now. We're really focused on that. Lost a lot of court administrators in the last five years, a lot of just historical knowledge, and so we're really working on that. And the succession planning is really retention, training and mentoring our staff. So that's what we're focusing on. So thank you.

Thank you both. Thank you both.

Thank you very much.

And we will see you soon.

All

right. Going to

do a quick transition.

And a

little swap, yes. So our team here is going to move back to the benches, so we have enough space for our special guests from the Planning Transportation Commission.

David, you can sit next to Dylan. I know it feels like the power side of the table. All right. So I know Brian with us tonight. Patrick, you're okay.

All

right. We have some special guests. I think everybody is seated. We are now moving on to our second study session item, which is Transportation Commission joint meeting to discuss twenty twenty six-'twenty seven work plan. Before we get started, City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Thank you. Chairman Vu?

Present.

Vice Chair Goodman? Present. Commissioner Tan?

Present.

Commissioner Hansen?

Present.

Those are the only members present, there is no quorum.

Thank you. Chair Vu, welcome. We're so glad you're here. Is there anything you want to add before we kick this off?

No, was going turn it over to Stephen because I think we have one slide in the deck that will Caitlin and I will speak to and bring it up to David and Dylan as well.

All right. City managers, anything you want to add before?

Thank you very much. Yeah, we'll also turn it over to Steven. Transportation Steven,

you have

the floor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and Deputy Mayor, members of City Council. Tonight, we're going to talk about the Transportation Commission's work plan. Tonight, I'm joined by the commissioners. Kind of the purpose of tonight is to go over the work plan because it's actually required by a code to have a joint session with council and the Transportation commissioners to talk about their two year work plan. The process to develop the work plan for staff included looking at what was actually allocated in the city budget.

We also examined what was prioritized in the transportation strategic plan. And we also looked at the balance with staff capacity in terms of being able to implement a lot of what was budgeted, what was prioritized, but also what is the capacity to take on any additional work. So the commission met back in September with the initial review of the work plan. They continued the discussion in October and then approved the work plan and recommended it for council approval at their November meeting. In terms of highlights, or at least the big topics that we discussed with the commission, we talked about the development of a roles and responsibilities charter.

We also talked about the development of the transportation strategic plan metrics, just a follow-up from the TSP development, establishing new metrics for reporting and monitoring. We discussed with the commission putting together kind of priorities discussion about what to make a recommendation to counsel for the next budget discussions. We developed a list of items or future items that were requested by the commission that didn't exactly make it on the work plan, but more of tracking all those topics that the commission discussed as part of the work In the work plan, you'll also find an other items section that identifies mostly guest speakers, but a lot of transportation projects that are going on in the region. So having Washed Out or Metro or Sound Transit come present on major projects going on that impacts or impact services in the city. And then lastly, we also talked about revisiting the work plan to reset the timing.

So what this will look like is coming back in early twenty twenty seven so that our two year commission work plan actually aligns with the biennial budget. Right now, our work plan kind of half overlaps the budget, and we want to make sure that the work plan actually directly aligns with the budget. So now I'm gonna turn it off over to our chair and vice chair to talk through a lot of the priorities and highlights from the commissioners.

Excellent.

Alright. Mayor, deputy mayor, and council member. First and foremost, I just I would like to thank Steven coming in seven months ago, sang a new tone or sang a fresh tone, a different tone, from his predecessor. And that's kinda kinda precipitated this. Let's take a look at the work plan. I think it's a great idea. I think staff and the commission had spent a lot of time and and effort to rethink what needs to be done and what can be done given our constraints, right? We do live in a constraint in terms of staff support and so forth. So I do want to thank Stephen and his team having gone through that. So as we have on the chart here, Stephen asked me to provide some of our feedback from the Commission itself.

And one the highlights or one of the major items coming up for us, we went through a whole year with transportation strategic plan and the comprehensive plan and all that flowing in. And we took kind of pause in terms of what we were doing. And then we started discussing what should we work on and what can we work on now that we're we have those big milestones behind us. And it came up late last year in terms of this need for a charter. It came from staff saying, Hey, you know what, you're asking a lot from us and so we kind of want to see what is the responsibility of the commission and so forth.

And from our understanding, it's gonna be the first charter for any of the commissions. So we're kind of going down this path to we're excited. We're trying to what that means because for us, think a lot of us on the commission are brought on to talk about transportation. And it's not just passing the TSP, it's not just plans and so forth, but we were really genuinely interested in the whole life cycle, the whole process, the whole soup to nuts on transportation issues. And so one of the questions we had, and we had issues with talking through 85th construction and the CKC closures, right?

Where can we, as a commission, provide input? Where is it most valuable for the council and for us as commission to provide feedback and inputs into our transportation issues? And so we're looking forward to that. We want to hear more in terms of what should be our lanes of traffic using those terms, our guardrails as well. We understand.

To be not too corny, David, sorry. But really, we're looking for that feedback from you all as well as from the staff and so forth to understand. And I think that will be a good setting managing expectations on all sides. So we're looking forward to that aspect of it. Not to take up much more time, one of the other items we want to highlight is very much our wish as commission to also relook at our translation metrics.

We went through the TSP. We're looking back at how does the TSP align with metrics and how we're measuring success or implementation of what we have set forward. Do they line up? And I think for the commission itself, we're looking at some can we do better? Are there better metrics to figure out, for instance, pedestrian?

It's not just how much more sidewalks we have, but the quality of the sidewalks. Is there metrics we can use that's sustainable, not just onetime, one off times and so forth? So we're trying to engage and see if there is there a better way to monitor our progress or our progress forward and how we're doing in terms of our projects. Definitely there's TSP budget cycle and we're there to support on that front. I forgot to turn it over to Caitlin to talk about

the charter, but Caitlin I think you had a

couple of other. I'll turn it over to you.

Yes. Thank you, Patrick and Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, it's nice to be here with you all. I think just to elaborate on what Patrick was saying with the Charter development, I think as a Commission we've felt strongly that we want to be a proactive Commission as opposed to a reactive Commission, and so figuring out where we can plug in and have our voices be of value and also echo community input and community feedback and community engagement. I think that's something we really strive as a commission to bring, and so where does that make the most sense on the policy side and then also thinking about select capital projects. We can't have our hands in every capital project. We are not transportation planners.

Well, some

of us.

I am not a transportation planner by trade. But where can the diversity of our Commission come in at certain design stages, so again we can be proactive as opposed to reactive and then understand that within the lanes, I will use your joke, with the Charter. So I think we are excited to hear as this is developed how our feedback can then ladder up to you as a council and be of value to you as a council as well, so not just to staff but deepening our engagement with the council and identifying that within the charter. I think you nailed it on metrics and tying those metrics back to all the goals that the council has outlined, that the strategic plan has outlined. I know the e cycle policy is top of mind for the council.

We have talked about this a lot as a commission. Heard from the police department this year. I think as a community member that's what I hear the most about in the community. Obviously it's not just a Kirkland problem and so I know this is a priority for you all and it is for us, too, and so how can we be partners and support action that the Council is taking on e cycles? And then transit, that's probably the other area I think that we hear the most about from a community engagement perspective.

We don't have a ton of folks coming to give public comment, but when they do, very often it's around transit and understanding that we don't hold all the cards there and we have to work with our partners at Sound Transit, but looking at the declining services, the K Line is a popular topic of conversation, so again, how can we be responsive to public comment, to community input, bring that as a commission up to you all as the council. We're excited about the work plan, excited to be here, and happy to answer any questions, too.

Thank you. I just want to say before we move on that we're so lucky. I mean, honestly, you're bringing your expertise, your engagement with the community for free and giving back to the city. And I love this level of engagement you're bringing, so we're very grateful for it.

Thank you. So going on to our last slide, for next steps, we're going to be meeting with each of the council members that's on your calendars for talking about charter development. Be working staff will be working closely with the commission to implement the work plan starting this year and then late or early in 2027 we'll return to revisit the work plan to align that timing with the work plan with the biennial budget. Now open for any questions or discussion.

Council, questions for the commissioners? Councilor Mayor Timches.

We don't get a chance to meet with you very often, so I just wanted to know if there's any barriers or challenges that you've met in the last twelve or twenty four months that you wanted to identify as challenges or barriers to you as a commission?

That's an excellent question. Thank you. I thought it was No. I think, you know, last year, for instance, I Mayor Mayor Curtis and previously with deputy mayor Arnold, we did Brian and I, my former chair, we did meet once at least. And I I think that was great access to talk frankly about frankly, coming from the from the council's view and and how we can connect on the commission on this side.

So I think that was a very fruitful, I think, kind of direct connection, dialogue I would say. And perhaps extending that to more council members and whatnot. But having that direct engagement I think helps us. We do follow the council meetings and so forth, but having that direct engagement at times.

Well, feel free to reach out to me if you want to grab coffee.

Councillor Feuchel. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I also really appreciate this opportunity to connect and talk about these issues, and like the Mayor said, just hear your passion. So thank you, Steven. Thank you, chair Vu, vice chair Goodman, and commissioners Tanenhanson. Really appreciate you being here tonight and and your colleagues as well that couldn't be here tonight. Vice chair Goodman, I really appreciated you talking about, you know, asking, like, how can we partner on some of these things. And you mentioned the e bikes and e motorcycles. I'm really glad you raised that. I noticed that's one of the issues that's kind of at the bottom of the work plan, not quite a task, but one that the Commission is interested in exploring.

I would really love to see, as you know, there's there's current state legislation being considered on this. Right? And one of the things that could potentially come out of that if that passes is having a work group that would convene and provide recommendations to the legislature. And I think it'd be really helpful to hear from the Transportation Commission on evaluating that, making sure you guys are briefed on that, and also providing recommendations to the council and to the legislative work group on our advocacy efforts next year and in following years based on, again, assuming that the bill passes, the work group does convene, and they provide recommendations on where our advocacy would be best suited on this since this is currently on our legislative agenda. So that would be really helpful and something an area that I think we could partner on and really, you know, have more power in the connection that you have even deeper with community on these specific issues that you bring and just your passion and expertise on that.

So that would be really a helpful partnership. Also want to mention, I think it's F3 on the draft work plan around parking lot safety. And first of all, thank you. I've been a little bit of a squeaky wheel about this issue because in a briefing on Vision Zero a couple years back that council received, the message that we got and the data showed that the fatalities that we were seeing in our city for pedestrians were in parking lots. This is a really big issue and one that I really want to see highlighted.

I think this actually warrants being a task on your work plan. I think it's so important because we care about, you know, the goals of Vision Zero. If we're seeing the fatalities in parking lots, we need to do something about that. And I understand that a lot of parking lots already exist and a lot of parking lots are private property. That doesn't mean that we can't do things, right?

We can lead by example with our own parking lots, right? We can also set stricter guidelines and have other best practices for new parking lots that are developed. And we can also partner with private existing parking lot owners on, you know, recommendations for improvements for, you know, best practices to keep pedestrians safe in parking lots and also explore ideas. Maybe there's like a grant program that we can partner and do matching funds or something with private parking lot owners. So I would love to see recommendations related to parking lot safety elevated on the work plan since it's something that we're seeing, you know, that folks unfortunately, there's been fatalities in our community, so including children.

So thank you so much for that. I'm really glad that's on that. Hope to see that elevated to an actual work plan task. The last thing I want to mention is Task 11, Curb Space Management. I was really glad to see this on here. I have thoughts about it, but I have a question maybe for City Manager about this. This is also a task on the Planning Work Program. And so is this something that's being collaborated on between the Planning Commission and the Transportation Commission or is it more in one or the other? I don't want to see that be a hurdle or a barrier to this work being done, and I don't want it to be overly complicated, right? So if there's I'm seeing it on both, and I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.

That is an excellent question. I don't have thoughts at this particular moment, but it's definitely something we can follow-up at the directors meeting tomorrow about how we ensure that coordination. It usually is coordinated through both.

Great. Thank you. You. Because it's prioritized higher on one than the other that we wait even longer. This is something, in my opinion, with curb space management that we're honestly long overdue. I feel like we're kind of a decade behind. We know some other cities are working on it, have already worked on it. This is currently a priority two. I'd like to see this bumped up to priority one. This is something that we're hearing from business owners, from community members, from everyone's thinking about management and it's something that I think, you know, maybe this is an opportunity we could pilot something somewhere in the city, right?

I don't know if this is a great place or not, but I think of 120th And Totem Lake and the issues there with metro buses not being able to go through because of the parking situation. I've also heard from residents that live there that there's a need for curb space management there for drop off and pickup as well as, you know, folks going to the movies, folks picking up dinner, folks, you know, maybe having a few drinks and needing to get a ride home and needing to be picked up from Uber. So there's, I think, a variety of things that that could potentially, if Totem Lake management folks want to partner on something like that, I can see that as a potential pilot, but maybe there's somewhere else in the city that would be a good pilot. But I'd like to see us move along and make some progress on this because I do think bumping that up to Priority one is warranted just given the amount of community input that we've had for quite a number of years and wanting to see this happen. But thank you again.

Like, I love the enthusiasm. I really appreciate each of your perspectives on this. You each bring something unique, and it's fun to see you guys excited about it. So thank you.

City Manager?

Yes, just wanted to elaborate a little bit or respond a little bit to your comments, Councilmember Falcone. When we were developing the budget, when you saw in the presentation a sort of budget staff capacity than policy, I think we all agree that current management is absolutely a priority. In our budget development process, we sort of looked at three potential really big items that cost several $100,000. And in talking with the team, what I put you we had to evaluate the studies. One was the transit needs study, and one was a curb management plan. We made the decision to put forward in the budget process the transit needs study because of all the other things that were going on and to sort of move this one to 2027. So that's the only reason you're seeing it is like two versus one is not because it wasn't important. It was just trying to find the right amount of money and the right amount of staff capacity.

Thank you. That actually is helpful. I just want to make sure we get to 2027. I think it's okay to have it there but still have Priority one. That way, doesn't get bumped again. I don't know if there's a or and or piloting something, right, might be a way to address that. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Pascal?

Right. Thank you. So thank you for serving on the commission, and I really appreciate you all being here. I similar to council member Falcone, I have some specific comments on some of the work plan items. First off, I think it's a good work plan. I mean, there's a lot there, and you'll be very busy. I'd like the fact that you're looking at the charter. I think it's time to to reevaluate that. I look forward to providing input on that. I don't have any ideas at all at this point, but I'm sure there'll be questions at some point.

So there's a couple of things. One, kind of going back to the transit study. I think that, like the city manager said, that was a big priority of council. And I guess the only thing I'd wanna convey at this point is to make sure that that we also have an opportunity to get some check ins from you on that. So you do your work, and then it'd be great to get some kind of in process check ins. At least that's kinda what I would like to see rather than get to the very end and go, here's our our final recommendations. What do you think about them? Be nice to have a little bit more interaction on that. And I don't know if that's planned, but that's something I'd like to see. On the greenways guidelines, I'm I think it is a good time to look at those.

We have two greenways that now exist. We just finished our second one. And so I we all hear of of input from residents over time about a range of subjects. One of them is e bikes. Another another one of them is is greenways.

And we've heard input from the greenways the greenway through North Rose Hill over time. And then now I'm hearing some feedback about some concerns from Highlands residents of the Greenway that was just finished along, like, 1 12th Avenue. And so I think it's a really good time to not just look at the guidelines, but to look back and go, okay, how are these working? What lessons do we learn from that? Are there specific components of the designs that work well?

Are there ones that don't? Are we balancing all the competing interests for that roadway space? For example, 1 12th, I I met with some residents out there a few weeks ago, some some of the neighborhood folks. A number I've I'm assuming my colleagues have too, but received a number of emails from actual residents, different residents along that corridor, and just having concerns about how that was designed. There's some odd channelization.

There's some bike lanes that don't look like bike lanes. They look like parking. There's lane lines that are nine feet wide below our standard of 10 feet. There's speed humps that cars will go around by going into the bike lane. So so I guess the question is is just like, is is are those good standards to continue to apply? What should we do to retrofit that? Is that a good design? Should we look at different things? Are we seeing the bicycle use that we that this was intended to serve? I think Greenways and I'll talk I might talk about this later on our we have a business item on the strategic plan.

But sometimes they look really good on paper and on a map, but are people using them? Ultimately, that's what we want. They're connecting two things, but are people using them? And that's what I'd like to see now that we have two. Sorry. That was big tangent. Didn't mean to go into that level of detail. But there it is. And then finally, just a couple, like, kinda little things just to just to con convey. The Juanita connection study, I saw that on there.

I don't think you're gonna find anyone disagrees that there needs to be a connection between Juanita High School and Northeast 1 24th Street. And I think what we heard and what we talked about was, like, let's not spend a whole lot of time and energy on there if there isn't property in which a public right of way or private easement that we can actually make that happen. Otherwise, we're just going to continue studying that with actually no tangible results. So I hope that we do that, and if we find that there isn't a pathway forward, that we turn our attention elsewhere. And then finally, I saw a number of corridor studies on there.

I don't have the context. I don't have the background. It'd be great to get some background on why those corridors I think there was, like, 7th it 7th Avenue? I and 1 32nd Avenue. I don't I don't necessarily disagree, but we have lots of corridors across the city probably with a range of different needs. I'm just curious how how did those come to be? Why not others? Was there and I don't know if you can answer that now or yeah.

No, that's actually a great question, customer. For the 7th Avenue corridor study, what's proposed for that is actually to look at where it's one of the future Greenway routes that has been looked at for several years. But because of the nature of the different areas of 7th Avenue it doesn't really match up with the guidelines what we want to update. So the corridor study is actually going to look at how do we meet the goals of a greenway on that corridor with the different areas because you have the industrial area close to the CKC and more of the residential area and then you have that part of the corridor where right of way actually narrower. And so you're not one design actually fits the whole thing, which is why we were potentially looking at an inter corridor study to figure out how would that work.

For the 132nd Avenue corridor, it's because that's actually looking at what do we need to do for that corridor to be able to address a lot of community concerns we've heard about traffic and access and being able to find a better design or accessibility components to make that corridor a little more usable for the neighborhood and for the city as well.

Are you talking about the Kingsgate segment or the North Rose Hill segment or the North Rose Hill

The what? The North Rose Hill.

North Rose Hill. Okay.

The section we're talking about. Yeah. Alright. And then in response to you had a question earlier about the Greenways guidelines. So everything that you had actually highlighted was everything we want to revisit in terms of what designs do we want to use for the Greenways. But also looking at our process for engagement and working with the community on coming up with the design. There's a lot of lessons learned. And our team has actually been collecting a lot of data on our two greenways in terms of use, but also safety data related to collisions. And so if that's something that we wanna bring back to council for review, that's something we can work with the city manager and get on the calendar.

I I personally would like to to see that when the time is right just because I do feel like of all the transportation issues, I do hear a lot about greenways. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mayor Arnold.

Thank you. First, Stephen, just as because you were talking about onethirty two, what's given that's on the Redmond border, what's the division with Redmond on that? And is there an opportunity to coordinate with them as we look at that particular study?

Yes, absolutely. Councilmember Arnold, we would definitely want to coordinate with the city of Redmond just because split communities with that quarter. We want to work with them on what if there's different design requirements they would need to look at or is there something different in terms of accessibility for their residents that we would need to take into account as we're kind of looking at the entire corridor.

And how do we fund that particular corridor between the two cities?

That's something for I think discussion of figuring out what's the full scope of the project and talking with Redmond and what the partnership looks like.

Okay, thank you. Okay, first, building on discussion that Councilmember Falcone started on e bikes and e motorcycles. It sounds like you all are aware of the legislation where today, for the benefit of the public, we have e bikes, we have motorcycles, e motors are in between and in kind of a gray area and then seeking to find legislation 100 to deal with this. One thing, it's very dynamic right now in the legislature and as the legislative work group chair,

I will note House Bill 2,084

has a definition of e motorcycles to say here are these things and we should treat them as motorcycles in addition to the study group that Councilmember Falcone mentioned. I would encourage you as individuals to send email to counsel if you have any feedback on that particular definition because given the dynamic nature of the legislature, I worry that if you wait for a commission meeting to do this, I'd rather have your input now as things are being amended. So, think we will see something coming out of the legislature this year that will help guide things. But again, there's going to be a work group that looks at this further that so we'll get out maybe a partial fix of our interest in promoting safety, especially among youth. The area that I had feedback was in first, you for the work in the charter.

Thank you for the work in the work plan. Support everything you have in 2026, and 2027. Staff has foreshadowed that this will be a challenging budget year. So this will be an upcoming discussion. My feedback on the work plan and item F4 thinking about technology and connected vehicles.

That's one piece that's going be very important. But I also think we need to look at the city side of this. Our ITS strategy plan was last updated in 2020, well before AI has really taken over. It included a clause to say we should update the ITS plan every five years. I don't know what the schedule is, but when you start looking at technology for work plan for F4, it should be the technology that's happening in the vehicle space, but also the technology that could happen within the city space as well. That would be my feedback. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Black or Deputy Mayor Black. Sorry, I thought you were done.

Sounds like Stephen might have some questions.

Yeah, Mayor Curtis, if I may. Just had one quick response to Councilmember Arnold's comment about implementation of the ITS plan. And we've recently assigned it to one of our signal engineers to actually look at the status of how much has been implemented and what's left and what items of the ITS plan are probably irrelevant at this point just because that plan developed for several years for a very long time. And so we're going to once that assessment is done, we'll determine if the plan actually needs to get updated.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Again, just adding my thanks for being here tonight and for all your work. Really, really appreciate it. Just to add a couple things to things my colleagues already said, I think I was going to talk about eMotos or eDirt bikes. It's been well covered.

I'm encouraged by what the state is working on and the likely outcome of the study. And again, just adding my interest in having your thoughts on that legislation. I also wanted to, on the transit needs study, I appreciate Councilmember Pascal bringing up sort of our schedule. I was going to ask that for the transit first of all, thank you, all staff and commission, for the transit needs study is really important. I appreciate this is multiyear, if not it's multiyear work that we've undertaken.

What is the schedule between now and I think the '6, where there's we're forecasting council action? What is the schedule? Do you know far as check ins with the council?

Yes. So we just got a a consulted under contract for that project. And so we're getting started with the initial data collection and assessment. We're working towards kind of policy discussions, which we have on the council or commission schedule to talk about what type of approaches we want to take with the TNS. And then towards the end of the year following up with council on some of those discussions and kind of have those back and forth between the commission and counsel. But it sounds like there might be interest in having kind of a joint discussion on transit policies as well. So we'll take a look at the schedule and see

what I we can work definitely I know that we've talked about transit needs study, and I know that a big part of that is understanding the needs of our community when it comes to public transit and mobility. Does that also include sort of an honest objective assessment as to where we stand with our transit partners, Metro and Sun Transit, on the hours and in the city today in 2026? I'm curious. Is that going to be part of what we're what is going to be presented to counsel as well? And the community, because I think the community really wants to understand where we stand right now, not just anecdotal evidence about where we stand with transit service, but where we truly stand with our transit partners.

Is that going to be part of this too?

Yes it is. So we've already started discussions with Metro staff on partnering with this project, taking a look at what questions need to be answered and where are those gaps and how what are those options to fill those gaps.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. So I also want to iterate, this is a great work plan. And it hurts us all, the things that are on the bottom down here, because we talked about parking lot safety. We talked about e bikes. We didn't talk about autonomous vehicles or shared vehicles, so to be determined when we can fit those in. But all of these are really important topics. I support everything you've heard so far. The things that I wanted to flag was the CKC action plan. And I know that the CKC is designated as a transportation corridor, but for me, it's also a linear park. So I see that as a I don't want to silo that project too much.

It also is a parks and recreation and park board project, so there might be opportunities along as we study that for improvements for recreation. The other thing that I thought was interesting is you mentioned that you don't have a lot of engagement at your meetings, and we might think about how we can improve that. When Councilmember Pascal is talking about hearing back on greenways, you know, it would be super helpful to your work if you're hearing directly from residents on what they're experiencing, what they're they're seeing, what they would like to be improved. So, Steven and city manager, mean, we we may wanna talk about how we can advertise topics that are coming up at the Transportation Commission to get more engagement around that. But again, sincerely, we do appreciate the work you're doing.

It's very valuable to the city, to our residents, and to us. So thank you.

Okay. That concludes our discussion. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank

you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, guys.

I'm just walking away. So thank you. All right. That concludes our study session for the evening. We will be back at 07:30.

Welcome, everyone. We are back in session following a study session on an overview of the municipal court standards, financial obligations, release and bail, and a joint meeting with the Transportation Commission. There's been a lot of discussion in our community about immigration enforcement actions, so I'm going to read a short statement. Before we move into tonight's agenda, I need to take a moment to address a crucial issue. The events unfolding throughout our country related to federal immigration officers is unprecedented in our nation's history.

We know there are concerns in our community about immigration officers in Kirkland. The Kirkland City Council is committed to serving everyone who calls Kirkland home no matter where you were born. Kirkland is learning from the experiences of other cities. The city manager has directed his executive team and emergency manager to prepare as much as possible with the goal that interactions with immigration officers remain legal and as safe as possible for all for all parties. He will be providing the council with continual updates on these efforts.

The city has published a website that describes what the city of Kirkland can and does do regarding federal immigration enforcement, including information on your rights as immigrants and observers. We will update the website as often as possible with new information. We wanna remind everyone that the Kirkland Police Department is not involved in civil immigration enforcement. The Kirkland Police Department's job is to uphold Washington state laws and Kirkland's local ordinances. Under state law, the Kirkland Police Department cannot use our resources, facilities, or personnel to enforce federal civil immigration laws.

The Kirkland Police Department is here to protect and serve everyone in Kirkland. If someone sees an interaction with ICE or other federal agencies unfolding in Kirkland that they believe is not safe, they can call 911. Call 911 with will calling 911 will connect with NORCOM, which is our regional dispatch center, not immigration authorities. Kirkland police officers will always respond to calls and will assess the situation to ensure safety for all. Kirkland officers cannot obstruct any lawful federal enforcement, but they can verify that they are federal officers.

We know these are challenging times, and we will get through them together. Alright. Now we're gonna move into tonight's meeting with our honors and proclamations. Councilmember Pascal will be reading the proclamation. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, madam mayor, deputy mayor, members of the council. So we'll be declaring February 2026 as Black History Month in Kirkland. And for those of you watching or in the audience, in the memo on the web page, there are resources, the memo where folks can learn more. We're very excited that receiving our proclamation tonight is Emily Santi, who is a sophomore at Lake Washington High School, who is an active student leader in the Black Student Union and the host of the Doctor. Martin Luther King Jr. School Assembly. And she'll be reading a poem that she has written herself. Welcome. Now, of her friends and family are welcome to join

her. Oh

wow, you brought a crowd,

this is awesome.

Please, come on up. Everybody is welcome, everybody is welcome.

Come on over here

too. Well,

yeah, come on up up to the front. Well, showing. This is awesome. Yeah, thank you. Black History Month, February 2026.

Whereas Black History Month is an annual observance to celebrate the contributions that generations of black Americans have made to American history, society, and culture. And whereas in 1926, Doctor. Carter G. Woodson, a noted American historian, author, journalist, founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and son of formerly enslaved parents of African descent, founded Negro History Week to encourage the study of black history. And whereas in 2026, marks a hundred years since the founding of Black History Month, celebrating the extraordinary achievements and contributions made by black people to the social, artistic, cultural, political, economic, spiritual and national advancement in The United States and beyond.

Whereas the city encourages community members to learn and celebrate through resources such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle, King County Library Systems Black History Month Reading List, and the Seattle Black Film Festival. And whereas the observance reflects Kirkland's continued commitment to equity, inclusion, belonging, and community safety as outlined in legislation passed by the city council while affirming the city's stance to improve the safety and respect of black people, And whereas the city of Kirkland reaffirms its dedication to fostering a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment where the cultural heritage of all communities is honored and celebrated. Now therefore, mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the Kirkland City Council, proclaims February 2026 as Black History Month in Kirkland, Washington and encourages the community to uplift black voices and reaffirm its shared commitment to building a welcoming community for all. So I'm gonna ask Emily to say a few words, but first I just want to wish you a belated, I mean, a happy birthday. I hear it's your birthday tomorrow, so awesome that you could be here.

Thank you for coming.

So I would like to thank the mayor and the council for having this once in a lifetime opportunity, and I would love to give the biggest thanks to literally everybody here because some of my kindergarten, elementary school teachers were here, and you got me here. This wording is not correct,

so you probably like me

for that, but you got me here, and all of you guys helped me along the way because I'm an introvert, and you powered me through every day. And then I would like to share a poem that I wrote on the struggles of how I feel of being someone who's mixed and living in a world and how it feels to grow up in a world today. Okay. The sun climbs up another day to play the part, a practice rhythm beating in my heavy heart. I check my reflection, smoothing down my edges, walking lines as thin as narrow window ledges.

I wander through the aisle where the bright lights glare, searching for a deal in the sterile air. My fingers edge to rest, but they stay in sight, guiding open palms to show the things that are right. There's a weight in the silence, a focus on my pace, mapping out the exits in this polished place. The traffic slows down when a shadow painted blue glides along the asphalt watching what I do. A sudden coldness crawls tightening in the chest, holding wheel at ten and two, a silent static test.

It's a ghost that follows, an echo in the blood, a fear that washes over like a rising flood. Then I step into the room where the color fades, a single drop of ink in a portion cascade, the only one who carries the story of the skin, a lonely kind of quiet where the stairs begin. I'm the focal point, the bridge, the separate sea, wondering if they see the man or just the history. But there's a deeper tangle on knot, I can't, and tie, a truth that lives in the mirror, a who instead of a why. I'm the middle ground, the shade between the lines, a puzzle piece that shifts whenever light inclines.

Two worlds pull my sleeve, yet neither claims the soul. Half of every story, but never quite the whole. We all know deep down we are the same, but everyone thinks it's just a simple game. We feel we aren't seen, but that was how the world was just meant to be.

Yeah, we're gonna try to do it. Yeah,

do have one more thing. I wanted to share one more quote from Barack Obama that really inspired me. Change will not come if we wait for some other people or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

It's so sad when everybody leaves. All right. We are now moving on to items from the audience. This is time in our meeting when we normally hear from the public on matters that are not quasi judicial or otherwise scheduled for a public hearing. We do have one public hearing this evening.

It is on item 6A on minor zoning code amendments related to adoption of the Houghton Village development plan and proposed ordinance 40 nine-twenty four, which is the same topic on item 9a of our business agenda. Could we make this more complicated? Comments relating to this topic must wait until the public hearing. However, please note that comments related to item 9b authorizing the city manager to sell the Houghton Village property must be provided during items from the audience. So to be clear, if you want to talk about Houghton Village selling the property, you do that during items for audience.

If you want to talk about the code amendments for Houghton Village, please do that during the public hearing, which is after items from the audience. On all other matters, please limit your remarks to three minutes. We provide up to a total of forty five minutes for our items from the audience with no more than six speakers on a subject regardless of their position on the subject. To address the counsel during these items from the audience period, please sign up using the online public comment instruction link or the posted QR code in chambers. Those participating by phone, please dial 9 to be recognized to speak.

Items from the audience is an important part of our business meeting, and we ask that everyone be treated with kindness and respect. Please do not clap or applaud or otherwise openly express your agreement or disagreement with a speaker. When that happens, even when supporting a speaker, it can be disruptive of the meeting and discourage others from sharing a different viewpoint. We discourage people from using obscenities and making personal attacks against others, and we ask that you direct your comments to counsel, not to staff or audience members. In addition, because they can be disruptive, signs and placards are not allowed in counsel chambers during our meetings regardless of their content.

Kirkland prides itself on being a welcoming, respectful community. We want everyone to feel welcome feel like they belong in council chambers expressing their viewpoints. City Clerk, who do we have lined up to speak?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We have one guest wishing to speak, Ms. Liz Hunt. Please approach the podium.

Welcome, Liz.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council members and staff. My name is Liz Hunt. I am a Kirkland resident. I would like to speak to Item 9C, which is the Transportation Strategic Plan Implementation Update. Thank you to staff for the clear and informative memo for that item.

One thing I noticed is a focus on ensuring that our transportation projects make a real difference. That sounds obvious, but it doesn't always happen, so I do appreciate that. I'd like to highlight one program, which is the Neighborhood Safety Program. Some of you are well familiar with that others, maybe not so much. As part of this program, neighbors identify safety issues that we see on our streets and our sidewalks.

We travel these neighborhoods every day. We know where these issues are. Neighbors work together to recommend solutions particular issues maybe a new sidewalk piece, a new crosswalk, a traffic calming circle, something that would make a difference. We submit projects from the neighborhoods all over the city, and the neighbors work together to figure out which projects to submit. Then representatives from all the neighborhoods get together and discuss all of the projects across the city and prioritize them and work with city staff to prioritize them and then eventually pick a set of projects a few projects that will be put forward for funding and completion.

The neighborhood safety projects make a very noticeable and impactful difference around our city. The number of projects implemented each year is limited by the budget, which is often the case with projects. The program is very well run. Daniel Lazo in the City Manager's Office has this is now going to be his second year running this program. And let me tell you, he's got it together.

We know what we're supposed to be doing, by when, who's doing it, how it's all going to get orchestrated. He coordinates the neighborhoods, the city staff. It's a very well run program. So the budget has been the same for this program since it started, which is over ten years ago, I think. And I would put in a vote, which I've heard other people say as well, to please increase the budget for that program, if at all possible. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Liz. City Clerk, is that it?

Yes. All

right. We are now going to move on to the public hearing on minor zoning code amendments related to adoption of the Houghton Village development plan. I will now open the public hearing. City Clerk, do we have oh, no, we have a presentation first. Welcome, Allison. Thank you.

You'll give me a moment. I'm a six instead of a nine tonight. Thank you, Madame Mayor, for explaining the difference between the items. You've made half of my presentation for me.

Oh, good.

All right. Here we are. Good evening, Mayor Curtis, Deputy Mayor Black, and council members. Thanks for having me tonight. We're here for a quick public hearing on minor zoning code amendments related to Council's adoption of the Houghton Village development plan in December.

So I have three slides for you from here. Staff presentation will be followed by an opportunity for any questions that Council might have prior to receiving public testimony. Public testimony will be part of the public hearing and then staff is recommending council consider adoption of ordinance 4,924 on your business agenda tonight. So, just a little bit about these Kirkland zoning code amendments. These are really minor amendments and they're simply being inserted into the zoning code to reference allowed height and parking minimums that were approved by Council with the development plan.

So, are slightly different than the underlying zoning standards in the Houghton Everest Neighborhood Center one zoning. The amendments do not enable the five stories of height or the lower minimum parking standards in and of themselves. That was already approved by Council in the development plan in December, but we recommend, for purposes of transparency and ease of use, adding this reference into the Hank 1 zone. A couple more items about this. As I mentioned, council adopted the development plan in December with ordinance 4,915.

In that ordinance, council also voted to hold the public hearing for the zoning code amendments yourself rather than typical process of Planning Commission holding them and that was due to the minor nature of these amendments to just kind of put a bow on the Houghton Village development plan and implement it. As I mentioned, you've already decided the allowed height and minimum parking for the development plan in that area and, as noted previously by Mayor Curtis, these amendments are not related to your decision on your business agenda tonight about possible sale of the property. So, just a quick review for purposes of perhaps the community members just joining us now or for Council, a little bit about what Council did adopt in December with the development plan. So, what we did adopt with the development plan was really a long term strategy for the Houghton Everest Neighborhood Center, that northern portion of it. The development plan includes an outline of what properties or parcels are covered by the development plan and also includes a process for either of the neighboring parcels to opt into the plan in the future if they provide additional information.

And then it lists, really, a set of criteria for developers to be able to use that development plan. So, it provides, like, a consistency checklist for people to use the development plan. What isn't included in that development plan was your decision to retain or sell the property. It doesn't require someone to build up to the full five stories enabled if they don't choose to, and it also doesn't require someone to use the adopted plan. Someone could come along and propose an alternative development plan to counsel in the future, which would need to follow the same public process we used for the currently adopted development plan.

To date, staff has not seen any comments submitted, any public comments submitted that specifically relate to the zoning code amendments. And with that, I'll hand it over to Madam Mayor for any questions.

Thank you, Allison. Council, any questions for Allison? All right. Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Thank you. The current site plan would require two separate buildings with a courtyard in the middle, correct?

That's correct.

And would require ground floor retail. Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone else? All right. We thank you, Allison. I am now going to call upon members of the public who have signed up to address counsel. Please limit your remarks to three minutes. During that time, you will be limited speaking only about the topic of this public hearing. I think we've made that point many, many times so far, which is the minor zoning code amendments related to the adoption of the Houghton Village development plan. During the public hearing, we are not accepting comments on the decision to authorize a city manager to sell the Houghton Village property. Those were provided during items from the audience. City Clerk, do we have anyone available to address the council?

No one wishing to provide testimony.

All right. Anyone here want to provide testimony on this issue? All right. I am now closing the public hearing. The Council will consider all comments we received on this issue, which have been none, including those submitted in writing. All right. We are now moving on to the consent calendar. But we have before we have a motion, I would like to ask Deputy Mayor Black to present the audit of accounts.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We had payroll in the amount of $9,801,297.34 and bills in the amount of $5,528,094.72

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

It's been moved by Councilmember Arnold, seconded by Councilmember Falcon to approve the consent calendar. Is there any questions, comments, corrections on the consent calendar? All right. Because there is an ordinance in the consent calendar, we will do a roll call. City Clerk?

On the motion to approve the consent calendar, Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

Yes.

Councilmember Arnold? Yes. Councilmember Prem? Yes. Councilmember Falcone? Yes. Councilmember Pascal?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Yes.

Mayor Curtis? Yes. The consent calendar is approved, seven-zero. We are now moving on to our first business item, adoption of the Minor Zoning Code amendments related to the Houghton Village development plan. City Manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So as this topic follows the public hearing, your presenter is the same. So our Planning and Building Deputy Director Alison Sike will make the presentation. And we are looking for action tonight.

You. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be here.

Hello again. No further information from staff available for questions and asking that council consider adoption of ordinance 4924.

Thank you. Anyone would like to make a motion? Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to move adoption of Ordinance O4924.

I'd to second.

Thank you. It has been moved by Councilmember Arnold, second by Councilmember Prim to move forward Ordinance O4924. Is there any discussion? City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

On the item to approve ordinance O-four 924, Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Yes.

Council member Arnold

yes

council member Prem yes council member Falcone yes council member Pascal yes deputy mayor black

yes mayor Curtis yes ordinance 4,924 is approved seven zero Our next item is authorizing the city manager to sell the Houghton Village property. City manager.

Alright. Thank you, madam mayor. So this presentation is going be made by our deputy city manager, Jim Lopez. He and his team have been working on the Houghton Village property for quite some time, and he's here to give you a brief presentation, and we're again looking for council consideration and possible action tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. All adjustment. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Counsel. It's my pleasure to be here with you tonight. You could have Alison for a third time.

I thought we were going to.

But I thought I would jump in and talk a little bit about the Houghton Village and your potential authorizing of the City Manager to sell the property. So this is just four slides and what I hope to do here is there is a very comprehensive summary, actually more than a summary detailed information about the entire timeline for the Houghton Village project really begins back in 2022, January 2022 where the council authorized the purchase of the Houghton Village Shopping Center. What is especially relevant for tonight's decision takes us to 2025 Because in March, we essentially issued an RFP based on the draft development plan to kind of feel out from the marketplace what feedback we could get to develop the property according to the principles in the authorization back in 2022. And what we discovered in early twenty twenty five was that there would be need essentially they would we would need essentially a subsidy in order to live up to all of the conditions of that original RFP. So I think we actually did have the two respondents of the RFP come in and make presentations in the 2025 as well.

So in that space, we returned to the council knowing that information in December 2025 and we did two important things. The council actually adopted that development plan in December 2025 that reflects all of the objectives and Alison presented tonight and the potential future framework of the property. The council also approved Resolution 5,709 expressing the intent to fully repay the loan in 2026 to avoid any appearance of permanent diversion of funds. So I am here tonight to discuss that and my memorandum does go over that summary and the details which leads us to this proposition with two very key points. First, staff recommends that the city council approve this resolution fifty seven nineteen authorizing the city manager to to sell the Houghton Village property in 2026 and this is consistent with council's intent.

The resolution allows offers from public, private and non profit entities and we just spelled that out so that the public could see it is as broad as we can make it and does not limit the type of proposals considered. All offers received or viable offers received will be brought back to the council for review and final decision and I think that's an important caveat. The action supports repayment of the interfund loan used to acquire the property and preserves council's discretion over final disposition because the second important point is we have to come back to the council for final disposition. So in that space I turn it to you Madam Mayor and the council for questions.

Thank you. Council any questions for Deputy City Manager?

Councilmember Falcone? Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is more just a highlighting of something you mentioned for the public watching because we've got very mixed input on this decision tonight. I just want to underscore on your previous slide that the resolution allows offers from public, private and nonprofit entities. I know you have mentioned that, but I just want to highlight that for those watching.

Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Pascal?

Madam Mayor, I'd like to move Resolution five thousand seven and nineteen. Second.

It's been moved by Councilmember Pascal, second by Deputy Mayor Black to move forward Resolution 50 seven-nineteen. Any discussion?

Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you. So it's time. It's time to sell the Houghton Village property and pay back our outstanding taxpayer loan. I personally believe that authorizing a sale simply means the city is recognizing its responsibility as a regulator and not a developer. Wanna see more housing. I wanna see more retail stores. However, the city is not a homebuilder. That is a duty for our housing providers. We're also not an entity that should own and lease commercial properties.

Our our authority is to identify the proper zoning, permitting, and development agreements where more housing and commercial spaces can be built, and that's what we've done. I support staff's recommendation in selling the property, ending the ongoing carrying costs, reducing the need for additional taxpayer subsidies, and recouping taxpayer dollars. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Prem.

Yeah. I just wanted to make a comment. You know, it is it's definitely unfortunate that we have not been able to move the needle on developing this area to provide more affordable housing and retail space, which are deeply important to me since that was the initial cause of purchasing the property. I do think the lack of development is due to the unfortunate reality of existing high interest rates. Having said that, though, I do think putting up the Houghton Village for sale is the right thing to do at this time to ensure we're paying back our interfund loan because these loans are meant to be temporary, not something that lingers for a long time.

So repaying the loan sooner protects the fund that made the loan and keeps us on solid ground from an audit and accountability standpoint. You know, the Washington State Auditor's Office reviews these loans, and if they remain outstanding for too long, they can be flagged as improper or treated as a de facto transfer, which can result in audit findings and require corrective action. I really don't want us to be in that kind of a scenario. And for that reason, I support the decision to put the property up for sale. However, I do remain hopeful that whomever decides to develop the area does so in accordance to our well vetted development plan. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilmember Falcone?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I agree with Councilmember Prehn's comments, so thank you very much, Councilmember, for those comments. I also just want to share that there's a lot of precedent both within Washington State and across the country for local jurisdictions holding land for exactly the purpose that we held this for. So I do agree that current interest rates, current economic conditions forced us to be more flexible here in selling the property and moving forward, and I'm still hopeful that there may be some good use of this land that really meets the growing need for affordable housing in our communities. I'm still hopeful for that.

And I also want to share that it is my hope that if other future opportunities come up, that we would obviously assess the economic conditions, but that we'd still be open to that given the successes. And, you know, I recently toured some in Arizona where local jurisdictions hold a lot of land for these purposes and have had really successful projects as well as other places even, closer to home in Washington State. So I just wanna share those comments with staff and my colleagues as well as folks listening at home. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just real quickly, supporting this motion, that much is clear since I seconded it. And I do think it's time I appreciate the time that we've spent. I appreciate the time we've spent with the community to understand what their vision is for that space. And it includes a lot of the same shared goals that the council had in seizing the opportunity when it presented itself for workforce housing, for space, for arts and culture and kids and neighborhood serving retail.

But given the nature of an interfund loan and I do appreciate Councilmember Prem's description of that because it is an interfund loan. It's a it's we're loaning the money to ourselves. So we do, as a matter of good governance and auditing, need to repay that loan to ourselves in the time frame. But we have received comments from the public that, you know, have misunderstood the nature an interfund loan. So I do think that's important, I appreciate those comments. But, yes, it is time, and so I'll be supporting the motion. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Arnold?

Thank you. When looking at how to realize the visions and the ideas and the public benefit that came from community discussions, public plaza, transportation improvements, neighborhood serving retail, community space, The most certain way to get these benefits is through a partnership between a developer and the city. Unfortunately, the proposals we received won't allow us to achieve those goals, especially with affordable housing without a multimillion dollar subsidy. And so we're at the next best solution. The next best solution is to provide a pre approved development plan that outlines those required improvements, community space and other investments that our market rate developer could take advantage of with no further process.

So that's where we are today. I know this decision will disappoint some that see a missed opportunity for affordable housing and for whom housing is should be the city's top priority. But, as my colleagues have outlined, this is a $7 plus million investment that we do not have to make for affordable housing. With the sale of this property, I'm hoping future that the proceeds from this sale will allow future decisions by council to put a big part of that proceeds into affordable housing. Again, next best solution.

And I really appreciate the chance to look at this opportunity and seek partnerships. Really, we have learned a lot in this process And even though we have not been able to come to an agreement, I think we're in a space that, through these actions, we're have the best chance of getting the kind of development, when we turn things back to the market, that the community wants. Thank you.

You. Councilor Timchison?

Thank you. I will be supporting this motion. I've heard a lot of discussion, especially from the community that is around this building, in concern about the height of the building and massing. I supported the development plan because I think the development plan does do a good job of breaking up the massing at this site because it separates the building into two separate buildings with a courtyard available. And I realized that supporting a three story solution would ultimately likely make development of this site unfeasible.

The current development plan, I hope, will break up the massing with the courtyard and the two separate buildings. And if somebody buys that land and seeks to change that plan, they'll have to come back to the City Council for us to approve a different plan. So I have heard the concerns of people that live around this area and have supported this development plan with their concerns in mind. When we sell this and go to market it, I hope we partner with a professional commercial development, commercial real estate agency that markets this effectively and assists the city in selling this. So I will be supporting this motion.

Thank you.

Thank you. Questions on the motion to approve Resolution 50 seven-nineteen. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, seven zero.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madame Mayor.

All right. Next on our agenda is an update on the transportation strategic plan, programs implementation. City Manager.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. So as we're swatching out, our transportation manager, Steven Petu, is going to make this presentation. Council had requested this because in the transportation strategic plan, we added several new categories of programmatic funding. And that programmatic funding was also adopted in our six year CIP, and council wanted to understand how that programmatic funding would actually be invested and how the council could see that it's delivering what had been promised. So that's the purpose of today's presentation, and we're looking for council feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. Thank you, Madam Mayor and Deputy Mayor, members of City Council. Glad to be back to talk to you more about transportation, my favorite topic. Just as a quick reminder, the city has a vision for a safe connected multimodal transportation system, which is supported by multiple goals and policies identified in the transportation strategic plan and also supported by our complete streets ordinance identified in the KMC. And this provides a little context for our transportation program specifically because they influence a lot of how staff design the programs and implement the programs, some of the things that we'll talk about tonight.

So the purpose as the City Manager pointed out is a follow-up discussion from the TSP development process where council asked for a follow-up discussion on the TSP programs that were proposed and approved as part of the latest CIP update. Due to staff shortage and staff focusing on high priority projects such as the Traste strategic plan, we weren't able to follow-up until now but I think this conversation is a little bit timely as we're thinking about the development of the biennial budget. And so as staff are thinking about the preparations for those discussions with the City Manager and with council it's important and helpful to have these conversations on what these programs may look like. So just a reminder at the 05/21/2024 council had done its initial review of those proposed programs which was ultimately adopted as part of the TSP at the 2024 And then those programs were incorporated in the latest CIP update at the 2025. Just to give an idea of the lifecycle of our projects and programs, it first starts with our long range planning documents incorporating a lot of those ideas into the transportation strategic plan and the comprehensive plan but also in our twenty year capital facilities plan.

This ultimately will go through a process of prioritization for what those projects and programs will become and then ultimately prioritized again into the biannual budget for implementation. Now when you are looking at the TIP or the budget you see projects and programs and the biggest difference between the two is actually the scale of scope of the projects and programs. So for individual projects that are called out, they are larger in scope. So a good example of that is actually our 1 Hundredth Avenue Corridor improvement project where it was an entire large quarter that incorporated hundreds of different improvements along that quarter on 1 Hundredth Avenue. And then our programs are multiple smaller projects.

So a good example is Market Street and 19th Avenue curb ramp replacement. That was part of the implementation with the TBD program and implementation of similar improvements throughout the city. So for today's discussion, I actually put our transportation programs into three different categories. The category on the left, asset condition. These programs are actually driven by asset condition and so staff conduct an assessment of our infrastructure to determine what condition they are in and based on that condition they are prioritized for improvements each year as part of these programs.

For the policy driven programs, these staff follow some policy guidance out of a planning document or standards adopted by the city to determine how those investments are made for each of those individual programs. And then for the community driven programs, a lot of the projects are actually driven by community feedback to determine what projects need to be considered and prioritized for investment in those programs. And then the green font is indicating a lot of the newer programs that were proposed in the TSB and adopted in the latest CIP update. So a good example of the implementation of one of these programs, so I may use the Crosswalk Upgrades program as an example. The ideas for the program are actually coming from the transportation strategic plan is what we're proposing for this program to draw on where we want to have crosswalk enhancements at certain locations that are evaluated by staff that either are prioritized through the safety action plan or they are identified from a plan CIP project.

So transportation supports our capital programs and design and development of the design of our capital projects and sometimes we identify improvements that aren't in the original scope of those capital projects. And so this program would actually support those opportunities to be able to make those enhancements when it wasn't in the original scope. And then with ongoing staff evaluations sometimes from community feedback on or concerns that we hear or from when staff are out in the field and they notice some issues. They're doing evaluations of safety concerns throughout the city and that could actually help identify crossing enhancements through this program as well. And running that filter of prioritizing where there is safety concern, we are identifying the full scope of those projects and then working with coordinating with either planned capital projects or programs to see if there is any efficiency opportunities to be made.

And then once we go through that coordination with other staff and divisions, the project will either become combined with an existing plan CIP project or it will be bundled as part of one of the programs or it will be implemented as its own individual project in the CIP or contracted from the transportation staff. That concludes my presentation. I'm open for questions and discussion.

Thank you, Stephen. And I that was a great presentation. That last visual is going to be so helpful for the community. Questions for Stephen? Councilmember Pascal?

Well, maybe I'll start us off. So thanks, Steven. This would I think this was an outcome of some comments that I made when we were adopting transportation strategic plan, just recognizing this was a departure or a change from how we were prioritizing and allocating funding for transportation improvements. So this is helpful. Do you think you could go back to slide seven?

It's a couple of slides back. Yeah. The one with the program processes. And so I want to center my comments around the policy items because that's where we see a number of new new programs that have been created from the transportation strategic plan. And the thing that's on my mind is that I, you know, I I can't fault any of these programs.

But the concern that I that comes up in my mind is that I wanna I wanna make sure that this doesn't result in less implementation and more process. You know, more process or more evaluation or more peanut buttering of our limited dollars across multiple programs to where we don't get it's harder to achieve, like, really tangible results for high priority needs that might cost more in certain situations because we're held to specific budgetary limitations under each program. So I just wanna make sure that you know, I I think what would help me with that is, one, just understanding that there could be some flexibility in how we we budget. So when there is a a big need for multiple crosswalks or something like that that we're and and there and the needs for some of these other programs might be lesser, that we can we can make decisions to kind of move money around. And I guess the other thing would be, you know, I I I look at a program like the Neighborhood Safety Program under the community, and that program has a lot of, like, transparency and visibility.

We we we get reports on that each year. We know what projects are being funded, how those projects came to be. But but some of these other programs don't have that that same that same transparency. Not because we're trying to hide anything. It's just we just haven't done that necessarily in the past, like the neighborhood traffic control program.

I mean, honestly, I I don't know how many projects have actually been implemented through that that program. I think it's just a a few. I think there has been a lot of speed studies and and communication with residents on why traffic calming can't be implemented. So I just wanna make sure that these programs actually result in something, not just more study, more evaluation and more sorry, that doesn't work. Let's then reevaluate the program and actually make sure we achieve the things that we want.

So that's what's on my mind. And then I I I promised I'd follow-up on some of my comments earlier in the study session about greenways. I guess I'm I guess I would just like to offer, like, an alternative thought process at Greenway Network. The Greenway Network is really about providing bicycle connectivity and safety and connections across the city. So to me I mean, for me, I would want that to be more expansive.

I would want it to be a program about implementing bicycle facilities, not just limiting it to greenways. Because I ultimately want to make sure that we're building those key bicycle gaps or those key bicycle safety addressing those key bicycle safety issues and not just limit it to greenways. That's my kind of perspective on it. Just after five or six years of kind of seeing the greenways being implemented, I also wanna see I wanna make sure that we're addressing key bicycle gaps as well. And so what program really addresses that?

I don't see it on here. So I'm wondering if that program could be expanded to also address key bicycle gaps would be a comment on there. So just some comments to think about. Thank you.

Thank you. You don't let head nods on that last one. I have Councilmember Prym and then Councilmember Falcone.

Yeah. Just a super quick question from me. How are we ensuring that when we're evaluating which areas to improve roads or sidewalks that we're doing so in, like, an equitable way throughout the city. So certain areas of the city are not getting more additional benefits or additional improvements while other areas are not. I don't know if there's a map or something at the end of like, midway to kind of let us know, midstream, on where the work is being conducted throughout city. I don't know if that's already on your radar to conduct or if you had any ideas around that?

It is on our radar. Within the CIP itself, it identifies kind of an equity scoring or evaluation with our CIP projects to show a level of impact the projects do. But oftentimes when we're prioritizing or scheduling projects it's based on funding opportunities. So when we have certain grant funds for certain projects that's going to push them up into the priority list in terms of where projects go. When we are also looking at particularly for programming, we're also looking at the different areas.

Greenway is an example, there is a certain network that we're trying to implement. We are trying to meet certain goals of creating a network connection because when you're building individual Greenway sections that go to nowhere, it leads to less usability and so that kind of factors into the decision making not just for Greenways but several of our programs to make sure that they're enhancing the usability for the users for those areas. And so we while we are looking at different areas on where we are implementing oftentimes it's based on the opportunities so that we can get some of those project efficiencies with existing capital projects or programs going on in the areas as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you, Stephen. Good to see you again tonight. I really appreciated when you showed, you know, our vision of being safe, connected and multimodal and the Complete Streets approach. I have a couple of comments and a couple of questions. On the sidewalk's completion program, in the memo, it mentioned something about a sidewalk rebate program. Is that something you're prepared to speak to tonight or is that a best left for future conversation perhaps during the budget discussion?

I think that's probably best left as part of the budget discussion because there's a lot of different directions you can go on based direction from counsel. So if you dedicate more funds to kind of a rebate program, then it takes away from other aspects of the program that we might want to prioritize to fill a lot of those gaps.

Great. Thank you. I'd be interested in maybe chatting offline about that before the budget discussion to get a better grasp of that, so thank you. It piqued my interest based on conversations I've had with community members over the years about something like that. I'm also really happy to see the buckets of programs, in particular, the community driven program. NSP, as we've heard comments from the public tonight thank you for that is such a valuable program. It was one that I was fortunate to be able to serve on for a few years before I was on City Council. And just getting to understand there's so much value to it, right? Empowering neighbors to really be able to advocate for their needs, hyper local needs in their community is really valuable in engaging folks. Also, they're the experts.

Right? Folks are who are the experts on their community immediately around where they live and and where they go to school and work and those types of things, so there's so much value there in learning from your neighbors about other things happening in other parts of the city and their needs. So I really appreciate that program. I appreciate Ms. Hunt's comments on budget in particular as project costs are rising, so I hope that we have a discussion around that during budget time.

In addition to the budget, I know we've talked about this before, but I'd really like to see this program broaden a little bit to allow and, in fact, encourage folks from all around the city in various capacities, from different organizations and individuals be able to represent their neighborhood, either in suggesting projects or helping select projects that are proposed for different neighborhoods and also serving on the NSP. So I'd like to see us be a little bit more inclusive and a little bit broader in how we define that. You know, I think of like PTAs, for example, right, may want to participate in something like this. I really appreciated both Counselor Mapasco's and Counselor Maprem's comments. You know, on Counselor Maprem's comments about equity, I think it's really important for us to look not just at where we're investing but where the greatest needs are, right?

There may be parts of the city that are less served than other parts of the city, so and that therefore need greater investments, right, with an equity lens. So I do really appreciate that. I also agree with Counselor Pascal's comments about improving bike infrastructure. You know, I was really hoping to see, and this was something that, you know, that I wish I had brought forth in 2024 when we adopted the plan with these programs in it, but I did also think that there was a gap in not having specifically a bike lanes program. And I would like for us to have a discussion, whether it be a separate one or, as Councillor Empasco mentioned, part of the Greenway Network.

I'd really think it's important to highlight the importance of bike safety improvements. We have in our Safe Routes to School action plans, for example, we want to encourage kids to bike to and from school, right? And my understanding in speaking with staff is that a lot of the way that bike lanes are implemented now without being a separate program is through other things such as restriping, right? And that leads to paint, right? And we know that, you know, perhaps our most experienced and confident cyclists might be okay biking in a bike lane that's just paint.

But for our school kids and for, you know, middle aged moms and others, we would be more comfortable and more apt to ride around the city if there were protected bike lanes. So we know that that's what we need, And so I think it and there are a lot of gaps and a lot of underserved areas that we've talked about over the years. So I think it's really important for us to elevate a bike lane program to the program level and not just part of, you know, restriping and other programs. And we hear a lot from community members on this, too, right, that we need protected, not just paint for bike lanes. Also, when we had discussions about the Safer Roots to School action plan, counsel was really clear that we wanted the cyclist community of varying abilities, right, and confidence levels to really participate in discussions on the design of those to make sure that they're really meeting those needs.

So we hope that that would be a part of such a program like this. Anyway, I would like to see that during the budget discussion process, it sounds like we're hearing that from multiple council members that we would like to see that. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Councilmember Arnold?

Thank you, and thank you, Stephen. Looking at the things in policy, arterial traffic calming and the Crosswalk upgrade, Council just did some recent discussions with neighborhood speed limits and Crosswalk enhancements and want to understand how those decisions impact those policy programs. I could see there being areas where we want to make more budget investments given the higher standards that we wanted and the lower speed limits that we wanted. For the street lighting design program, we often get feedback when new lights happen from nearby neighbors, and I'd like to understand how we have learned from some of that feedback that we've gotten from constituents and how that program goes forward to make sure that the lighting is making the road safer, but also complying with our night sky goals and not disturbing neighbors. On the neighborhood safety program, I appreciate the comments from the audience.

This is a program that for low cost has high impact, but I agree with Councilmember Falcone's point of view. Today, this program is aligned around neighborhood associations. We have neighborhoods that do not have neighborhood associations. And I agree with her comments to say, how do we broaden this program so it serves the entire city? And then, finally, as we look at these in our budget discussions, the trade offs versus the asset condition things around street preservation are going to be difficult.

We know PCI is declining in the city and I want to make sure that we are balancing any additional investments we're making in maintaining what we have in addition to some of the new things that my colleagues and I have wanted to invest in here, too. Thank you.

You. Council Thank Member Tim Chisholm?

Thank you. I did want to reiterate Council Member Falcone's interest in protected bike lanes. They may prove to be really financially challenging, but especially around schools, I guess I'd just like some more information as to whether the feasibility of that. And question, in terms of our overall infrastructure, has there been any studies or any information specifically related to how our annexation neighborhoods are doing compared to the rest specifically in Fin Hill and Kingsgate?

Are you talking about in terms of individual infrastructure like this or overall, I mean? This. Not exactly, although we do have lots of maps that get provided in terms of our annual reports and things that do show where everything has been. And in the PCI evaluations, for example, we can say what the PCI is in the new neighborhoods versus the former neighborhoods, But

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Pascal?

Yeah, thanks. Listening to some of my colleagues talk through some things, just one request that I have related to these programs is, you know, we do a really good job going back to kind of transparency and visibility of of how projects get pushed out and and prioritized. We do a really good job with neighborhood safety program, the street levy, the annual street preservation, the annual striping because we get those annual reports on kind of, you know, what we're actually doing. TBD implementation is another one. It would be nice if we could just make sure that all these programs provide that same level of visibility.

For example, I I don't know what we've done under the Vision Zero program, like what projects have gotten funded or, you know, the sidewalks that have been improved under the maintenance program. I'm not aware of how we how we summarize those and track those. So I think that's something to kind of think about as we move forward with these programs is just to provide an an annual update on how on what we actually did. So thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Mancha.

So I guess building on Council Member Pascal and Council Member Prem's comments on that, you heard in the study session that the Transportation Commission is looking at these TSP program metrics as well, so maybe they can also help us figure out what the annual report would be. But as I think you all know, we do an annual report for the street levy, and we've actually added things like in it. There's also a big map of where all the flashing beacons have gone. So I think I mean, I like this concept of begin to build out something where you get sort of a big transportation report that says what's happened every year in each of these categories. That's something that we could figure out how to do so Council can see what actually gets into the ground.

I like that idea. Right, Stephen, I think you got good feedback, and I appreciate your presentation and meeting with the Transportation Commission Thank earlier

you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. All right. We are moving on to our next item, which is a discussion on vacation and management leave for nonrepresentative staff. City Manager.

Okay. Thank you, madam mayor. So as you know, you always charge us to have excellent employees to serve you and our community. You want us to attract and retain the best. And that takes a lot of different things. We have union contracts, then we have our groups we call management and confidentials, which are the folks who are not in a union. So from time to time, we come to you with requests for things that might make those types of positions more competitive, both to get folks and to keep folks. And so this is the first of a two part discussion. I wanted to highlight something that has started to come up a little bit as we posted some senior positions, I wanted to bring it to your attention for discussion. And then following your direction, we'd come back for action.

So here to give you that presentation is our employee relations manager, Lauren Knox. So welcome Lauren. Welcome.

Good evening Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the council. And yes, as Kurt stated, I'm here today to talk with you about vacation and management leave for our non represented staff. I have about eight slides for you this evening.

Okay

and our purpose this evening is to receive counsel direction on whether to proceed in a second conversation with some potential code changes. And just to give the council some background about our non represented staff group. So again, this is about 112 employees overall out of approximately seven seventy employees citywide. It's our directors, deputy directors, managers, supervisors and some confidential staff. So that's like our staff in the city attorney's office, staff in the HR office and so on.

And again as background for these positions, know on average over the past five years we recruit for about 13 non represented positions each year and I've just given kind of a sampling of some of our more recent vacancies and hires just to give the council a sense of what types of positions we're talking about here. And so turning to vacation leave. So vacation leave for non represented staff is in our Kirkland Municipal Code 3.80.090 and really the issue that we've identified here is narrow. It's not kind of the overall accumulation of vacation leave but what a potential new hire might get coming into the city. And one of the things that we've noticed is that the accrual rate is not negotiable for our non represented staff and so what that means is that when we have an experienced lateral candidate who's coming from another jurisdiction with maybe fifteen, twenty years of experience, they start at the city at sort of year one.

So for a lot of those candidates that means they're leaving behind a substantial amount of vacation leave when they come to the city. And that's been a recruitment challenge that the city has run into with in some real examples where we've had some candidates turn us down. We've had other candidates kind of hesitate before accepting an offer. And it did seem that leave was a motivating factor for some of those decisions. So our staff recommendation here again sort of focusing on that you know lateral candidate who has some prior government experience is to count that prior government experience when setting vacation accrual rates particularly for our new hires and to just recognize that so that we can remain competitive.

Next topic is management leave. So again we have a Kirkland municipal code that sets management leave for our non represented staff and who is eligible for management leave. This is a relatively standard benefit in local government and is intended to recognize those ways in which our non represented staff in particular are asked to work above and beyond a forty hour schedule coming to night evening meetings, emergency response and so on. This is an area where we identified that Kirkland does currently lag our comparable jurisdictions in terms of our management leave offering, specifically in sort of the amount of hours that we offer towards the higher tiers for our directors for example, and in the fact that not all of our non represented staff currently receive management leave. So our staff recommendation here is to increase management leave hours and also to expand the availability of management leave to all non represented exempt staff and expanding in that manner just includes an additional approximately 12 employees.

So it's not a large group of people that we're talking about. That again would be you know kind of our HR analysts, senior financial analysts, some of those folks who are not currently receiving any management leave. And so now I just have our staff recommendations up here for the council and again we're just sort of seeking your direction as to whether to move forward with potential code amendments in these areas and invite any questions or discussion on this topic.

Thank you. Councillor Tim Chuzen?

Thank you. Your recommendation seems fine. The question I have is what are the pros and cons of having all of this within the Kirkland Municipal Code as opposed to directing the city manager to have a employee handbook or set of employee rules that would be maintained by the, and if that's possible, on how to not have to change the Kirkland Municipal Code to make what I view as administrative changes to employee procedures?

I think the short answer, and Lauren can give more comparisons, most cities don't have this in their code this way. They'll do something like the code will say the city manager shall establish these things or something like that. It has always been thus since I've been here, and I haven't wanted to change it because you'd have to take a lot out of the code and give it. But I think as a standard management practice, that's generally what cities do. Obviously, that's not what we're proposing here today.

I have a motion. Okay.

I don't know, Lauren, if you want to add anything to that.

Yeah, that's Many of our sort of surrounding jurisdictions do not have these items in their code. They do sort of pass more of like a non represented employee benefits package by a resolution a lot of the time. So there are different mechanisms by which we could do this.

Well, okay. At a later date, if the city manager's interested and council's interested, I would be interested in a short presentation on I guess, the lift that it would take to change the benefits versus the cost versus benefits of making that change. It seems burdensome to change municipal code to make adjustments that are like this. But I'll stop disrupting your meeting, and you can just go ahead. Thank you.

Appreciate your you.

Councillor Ruth, welcome. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm intrigued by Councillor Murchenshyssen's comments there. Have kind of a comment and then a question, I guess, related to it. Under vacation leave, the recommendation is that you're recommending counting previous government experience when setting vacation accrual rates.

Just given, like, the mass layoffs that are happening in the private sector right now, I can imagine that we have a larger potential pool of applicants that are coming from the private sector. Have we considered just counting previous experience and not specifically being government experience? I can imagine someone worked for a tech company for twenty five years and might have something valuable to bring to the city that we would want to be competitive in a situation like that as well. So is there a reason that we shouldn't do that? Yeah, I

think it's a great point. I think we were kind of focused on those like real live examples that we had which really were traditionally in that space of government employees in part because there's that side by side of benefits packages and you can really see we have very similar except that now your vacation leave is much less sort of thing. But that is something that we can consider. I know we've talked a little bit about there are different positions where we're hiring folks from the private sector consistently, for example, engineers, IT, etcetera. And so I'll defer to the city manager on that, but we could think about that further.

I think we were trying to always keep it narrow and focused, so it's certainly something we could look into. And also that usually when something comes from the private sector, it's such a big change overall, it's sort of like, they're going from apples to oranges. And this doesn't tend to be the issue that comes up, know, the overall salary tends to be the issue that comes up, right? And I think just to figure out how to translate that experience. But I think it's certainly something that we could think through.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, think just the lens of thinking of hires from private sector is something that might benefit the city in our hiring practices as well and thinking conversation for another day, but just around the vacation accrual that happens at management senior management type of the private sector, for example, is structured much differently, and it's just something that would be attractive there. For example, I know some companies at a certain level, there's unlimited leave, right? And it's kind of a double edged sword with that, right? There's pros and cons to that. But anyway, just thinking of competitiveness in the long term, I would love for us to consider potential hires from the private sector as well and what might attract them.

Thank you. You. Councilor Mayor Arnold?

Yes. I support what I'm hearing from my colleagues. We're looking at the private sector. It may be apples and oranges, but we want to make sure it's the same size apple and the same size orange that we're looking at. And given some hiring that is upcoming within these categories, I think it is important to move quickly to change the code, but Councilmember Tim Chisholm's got a valid point of is this really a council level decision.

So, would like to at some point whether it's this is appropriate budget discussion or appropriate for a revision at some point in the future next year to say, okay, how do we streamline this process? Because in the end, the check on this is going to be the budget where the city manager is already responsible for managing that those expectations versus counsel deciding whether the accrual rate of vacation time for a Deputy Director. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Black or Deputy Mayor Black.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So appreciate the comments. Appreciate you bringing this idea forward and goals of it. Appreciate the comments from my colleagues and those from Councilmember Tim Chisholm and Arnold. I always do want to honor, though, the councils that have come before us.

So, this analysis that we're going to do, when we're going to do it, I do want to understand the original thinking. There was a reason why some prior counsel decided the best way to do this was to codify it and code, and if there so if we can go back to the legislative record as it were just understand if it was a matter of some good governance at the time, I just want to make sure that's part of the analysis, as well as sort of a, you know, a brand new comparison of benefits and costs. Thank you. Thanks.

Councilor Pascal?

Thank you. You know, one of the things that I think about when looking and evaluating, you know, a range of different benefits for employees as a as a business owner is trying to keep in perspective the entire compensation package and understanding how all of these, you know, whether it's leave, vacation, sick time, holidays, benefits, salary, all those together are combined into kind of a total compensation, making sure that we're competitive with our peers. And in some cases, some entities might prefer higher salaries compared to, you know, greater vacation time or vice versa. So I just wanna make sure that we're not just looking at this in isolation, that we're kinda keeping the big picture in mind as well. And, you know, and and I'm glad that we're comparing ourselves to peers and not necessarily the private industry because, you know, that is apples to oranges in some cases, but it's good to understand how how you're differ different and and and and, you know, make kind of informed choices.

So that's I think that's the only comment that I would provide is is, you know, once you start breaking these down to individual things and making decisions just based upon that, you might lose the bigger picture of kinda what that compensation package is. And I don't know what that is. I don't have insight to all of this, but that would be something that I'd be thinking about. Thank you.

Thank you. I support the staff recommendations. I appreciate the comments that you've received from counsel. My question would be, if we move forward with this, when you had the list of sample titles, these were new hires that we did recently. So if we were to particularly if we were to pass this vacation leave, have we thought about making it retroactive to the recent hires? Because I'd be kind of upset if I was hired at

twenty

five rather than '26. So you don't need to answer that today, but

I'm trying to answer it, yes. And there's a variety of ways to look at that. So those are some of the things that will follow from a decision like this.

Yes. Great. Thank you, Lauren. All right. We are going we are it's not even nine yet. Look at us. We are moving on to 9E. What's that? Oh, I did. We're moving on to 9E, authorizing the fire department to receive compliance report fees. City manager.

Alright. Thank you, madam mayor. So we are looking for action tonight if the council's ready, but also, this is a fairly technical topic. So if you have if you need more time or have questions, that we're happy to answer those too. So our deputy chief, fire chief Pat Ladue is gonna make this presentation and looking for authorization to collect some fees on inspections from third party vendors. Say that 10 times fast.

Hello. Thank you, madam mayor, deputy mayor Black, and council members. We're here to, present to you tonight, a request for authorizing fee sharing for compliance reporting. Our ask tonight is the fire department's requesting modifications related to the fees collected of the submission required fire life safety system compliance reports. The compliant reports are required by the International Fire Code.

Our ASR is because these fees are already being collected by a third party vendor. The vendor actually manages the submission and tracking of the required fire safety systems compliance reports, and this does not create a new fee for property owners. This is something that's already being accounted for. The goal is for insurance of the city to recover the staff costs associated with reviewing, tracking, and enforcing these required compliance reports. Our proposal is to amend or ask is to amend KMC21.74.025 ms to explicitly include the fire code related compliance activities.

The amendment clarifies the development surface fees applies to fire code plan review, inspections and reinspections, testing and maintenance verification, occupancy and ongoing compliance This change formalizes existing practices rather than creating new ones. Our staff is recommending expanding the definition of development services to clarify include fee based activities for fire code required activities. Thank you. Go back to that last slide. You saw our detail.

You want to

go back to that last slide? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

So I want to make sure you saw the part about the fire chief and the negotiations.

So in addition, it be authorized to fire chief to negotiate the fee sharing agreement with a third party vendor.

Thank you. Any questions? Counsel?

Just had a first, I just want to commend you for looking at what other jurisdictions are doing and making sure that we're kind of getting our fair share, just like all other cities are. So whoever decided to look at the other cities and look at their agreements, like, great job on that. My main question here is, it looks like Bricer revenue Bricer is the company, the primary compliance reporting company that all jurisdictions are using. Do we know if there are others as well, like other companies? Like if they decide to suddenly increase the price for everyone, like is there another option?

Several other companies. There

Rice has actually purchased two of those here recently that we had been in communication with. So they kind of came in with the best product and everybody's jumped on board. So we have looked. They just seem to not be offering this great a product.

I would just add that we negotiate the fee with them so they don't set the fee to the customer by themselves. So if you saw in the memo, our fee is significantly lower than some of the other jurisdictions because we have deliberately set that at a very low level. Great, thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone? Deputy Mayor?

Would you entertain a motion?

I would.

I'll move for adoption of Ordinance O49.25.

Second. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Primm to move forward ordinance 4,925. Any further discussion? City Clerk, will you call the roll?

On the motion to adopt ordinance O 4,925, Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

Yes.

Councilmember Arnold? Yes. Councilmember Prem? Yes. Councilmember Falcone? Yes. Councilmember Pascal?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Yes.

Mayor Curtis? Yes. Ordinance 4,925 is approved, seven zero. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, counsel, for your support.

Thank you.

All right. We are now to our last business item, which is 9F twenty twenty six legislative session update number two.

Just want to do a time check. Do you want to take the break before this topic? There might be some conversation, or do you want to wait till after?

I think we should keep going. Counsel, are you okay with that? Yeah. Just you say that when Andriana comes up. Well, just want to make sure

you I'm flexible.

And yes, to introduce the topic, this is your legislative session update number two, and it will be presented by our interim government affairs manager, Andreanna Keppel. So welcome, Andreanna.

Thank you, city manager. Okay. I'm going to sit at the table. If I sit on this side of the podium, I think I can see all of you a little better. So thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. Excited to be here tonight to give the second update during our twenty twenty six state legislative session. Whoops, wrong keyboard. Okay, so this is our brief agenda. I have four active slides, and I'm going to spend most of my time on the legislative actions, although I do have one ask of counsel when we get to the smee smaw lert.

Okay, session so far. Believe it or not, we're almost halfway through. I know. We're in week four, a lot of committee hearings, a lot of action on the floor of each chamber to try and get bills out before the cutoffs, which tomorrow is the first cutoff for the policy committee, and then the fiscal committee cutoff is on the ninth, so Monday. It is moving fast.

And then briefly, I want to mention, five council members went down to Olympia for the Association of Washington Cities City Action Days, and in groups of no more than three council members, we separately met with all nine of Kirkland's legislative delegation members, had very successful conversations on our adopted priorities. Overall, I think a great hill climb. Okay, so this is where we are seeking counsel confirmation on the name change of the group of staff that provide analysis and review on bills that are being proposed in Olympia. So right now, the group is referred to as subject matter advisers, previously subject matter experts. Both of those indicate a level of expertise that may be misleading to the public or to counsel.

Really, staff are reviewing bills for operational impacts to Kirkland. They are not state policy experts, so the legislative workgroup is recommending a name change to legislative review team. So I want to pause there and seek some feedback or approval from counsel.

I love it. And it is a team, honestly, so Absolutely. And LERT, it's fun to say. So there's my feedback.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you for making that easy for me. Okay, so as I mentioned, this is where I want to focus most of my time tonight. These are legislative actions the workgroup has taken since the January 20 council meeting. I'm going to focus on the underlying items last because I have more to say about those.

Those are bills that not only did the workgroup sign in on but also provided testimony. So starting at the top, the workgroup signed in pro on House Bill 2,420, which increases the small works roster contract limits over the next five years from the current $350,000 limit to 6 and $50,000 signed in pro for Senate Bill 6,262, increasing the maximum vehicle weight that would be subject to TBD fees going from 6,000 pounds to 9,000 pounds Signed in pro on Senate Bill 6,294 and late breaking also the companion House Bill 2,442, which expands the current REIT revenue uses on affordable housing. And then signed in pro on twenty threetwenty prohibiting the manufacturing and sale of three d printed guns, which we were given clearance by the full council to do so at the last meeting. Okay, so moving to the underlined.

Ondrejana, hang on.

Oh, yes. I do, and I wanted to mention I am going to leave a moment at the end for the Chair of our work group, Councilmember Arnold, to please weigh in as he may have additional information for counsel.

Is that all right, Councilmember? Okay. All right. Go ahead.

Okay. Starting with Senator Shoemake's eMoto bill, that's SB 6,110, the work group signed in support, provided testimony, and proposed an amendment on the House version, which is not a companion. It's a little misleading. But the amendment would direct the workgroup to have the workgroup that's recognized in the bill, not the legislative workgroup, to explore establishing civil infractions that courts have limited jurisdictions, such as Kirkland Municipal Court, to impose on juveniles ages 12 to 16 and civil penalties for adults who provide e motorcycles individuals under the age of 16. So that amendment was well received by the House sponsor representative Zahn, but that bill is not receiving a lot of traction right now, and the Senate bill is.

So with that in mind, the workgroup also shared the amendment with Senate leadership try and have the amendment proposed and approved on the floor. So we'll see how that goes here very soon. Okay, now moving on to maybe the biggest bill this session. The workgroup signed in testified in person in opposition of House Bill 2,480. This is the House companion to Senate Bill 6,026, due to the bill prohibiting mixed use and ground floor commercial requirements.

The Senate substitute introduced a handful of amendments, some of which have made the bill more palatable but still remains a major concern for the workgroup. Staff, workgroup, Kirkland's contract lobbyists are all actively raising awareness of the city's concerns by sending letters proposing amendments to bill sponsors, committee chairs, other members of the legislature. It's scheduled for a public hearing in Ways and Means on Thursday, and the workgroup does plan to testify on the fiscal impacts the bill would have on cities. So I'll pause here and see if Chair of the Workgroup, Councilmember Arnold, would like to add any additional information.

Yes, please. And one of the things that we have with our legislative review team is great support to help us focus on the most important items, perhaps the red alert issues. And what we're seeing with this bill HB2480 and the companion 6,026 is perhaps lowering to yellow alert on this as the amendments go through. A lot of dynamic things happening, but we're seeing some progress on here where we might be able to support this bill. And so, what I would like to do is suggest to counsel that we change our position from oppose on this bill and the Companion Senate Bill 6,026 to support with mods if we could get support with modifications.

If we could get changes that the legislative review team is comfortable that would allow us allow cities allow Kirkland to require ground floor retail in our regional neighborhood centers, protect our grocery stores and protect our car dealerships. Those are the things that we've been talking about in our testimony. Those are the things that we've been talking about in meetings with some of the proponents. And those are the things where we're starting to see some progress with some amendments that have language that we think that we could live with. So I wanted to get counsel support for a change given that criteria.

Thank you, councilmember. Is this the rest of us haven't seen the amendments yet. So is this time sensitive? Is that why you're asking for us to make a change at this point?

Yes. And the language that we're seeing is not final yet. So we can't say we can't circulate some language that says, here's what we think it is. That's why I'm trying to identify some criteria that would say, if the team is comfortable with that these criteria are met, that we could support the bill.

And if we change our position to support with mods, that gives you a greater ability to negotiate those amendments moving forward?

Correct.

All

right. So Councilmember Falcone? Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just a point of clarification on this. Are we are you proposing Councilmember Arnold, to support with modifications or to support only with modifications? Good question.

Only with modifications.

Thank you. Good clarification. Deputy Mayor, anything you want to add? All right. So, Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

If your modifications were adopted, what would this bill do? Because, I mean, it seems like the modifications would swallow the whole bill.

There are, if I may.

Yes, please.

There are two parts of the bill, council member. One is a requirement that cities allow housing anywhere they allow commercial. Kirkland doesn't have an objection to that provision. We do that in most of our city. For the requirement for ground floor retail, there are a number of mechanisms being discussed. There is an amendment right now that has been it's not quite there, it's been published that allows the city to require ground floor retail in a certain percentage of commercial zones. So we think with that and some other changes, we can get to where we need.

Go ahead, Councillor Berman.

Sorry, I'll defer to your expertise. Two things concern me about this bill. One is just the general overreach from Olympia in micromanaging municipalities. The second thing that concerns me is within our station area plan, we proposed and will be evaluating a prohibition against townhomes in order to hopefully get higher density uses within the stationary. And it concerns me that somebody could interpret that as saying we are prohibiting housing within a commercial zone. And that is just an issue I would flag for you. Thank you

for the flag. We do we are aware of the station area and it's been part of our discussions and we'll make sure that that is covered. To your overall point around this being another example of the legislature really coming in heavy handed with cities, this is something that the Association of Washington Cities has been very strong about. This is something where, in addition to Councilmember Black, Deputy Mayor Black testifying on this bill, a number of our neighboring cities testified against this bill very powerfully. This is governor request legislation with a lot of momentum behind it.

As we hear at council reports later this evening, I'm sure Deputy Mayor Black or Mayor Curtis will talk about their conversations at the Housing Development Consortium and others where there is some momentum around this bill and we are working with our lobbyists to determine the right strategy of can we stop this bill or do we need to make it something we can live with.

Thank you for your advocacy, Analipia.

And that was what I was going to say. The legislative workgroup team has been working very hard on massaging this bill to being something that we support, along with our lobbyists and our peers and staff. And I know that, that work, you will continue to do. So I will support this recommendation. Would you like to make a motion, Chair?

Thank you. I'd like to move that we change Kirkland's position on House Bill 2,480 and Senate Bill 6,026 to support only with modifications.

It's been moved by Councilmember Arnold, second by Councilmember Falcone to change our position on twenty foureighty-sixty-twenty six from Kahn to support only with modifications. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, seven-zero. Good luck, guys.

Thank you. Last, always, of my timeline. I just want to point out that we are right on the cusp of the first cutoff, so we're going to have a lot more information as we go into the rest of this week and early next week with the fiscal committee cutoff. Thank Thank you.

Is that it?

That is it.

Okay. I have one question for the committee and for you. We do I have to put my glasses on and dig it out. I brought the wrong thing. Okay. We did add a general principle on our agenda that says support state legislation that protects our residents and businesses from loss of critical assistance programs. Are civil liberties due to federal actions? And I know and I'm not an expert on them, but I know there have been a number of bills coming forward about protecting constitutional rights of residents. Are we tracking those bills? Are those bills that we're going to start looking at on the alert?

Yes. There's a lot of energy right now in Olympia for bills, especially pertaining to ICE and interaction with Federal agents. Yes, they are on our radar. They will be on the alert sheet. The legislative work group is reviewing those as they come to us.

Okay. We'll probably see those next time? Yes. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Counsel, we are All right. We are back after a short break. We have finished our business items. We are now moving on to council reports, and I will start with Deputy Mayor.

I'm still not used to being

I know that.

Here we go. Don't have a lot to report on. I am trying really hard to streamline my reporting for some of the regional committees and commissions to get reports out to my colleagues as quickly as possible after the meetings in email form. So you'll be looking for those related particularly to ETP, the Eastside Transportation Partnership, and now also Rye A. And some of those will come directly from staff who do a great job of supporting some of that work and reporting out.

I did Deputy Mayor or sorry, I guess that's me. Council Member Arnold did mention in his remarks on the last business item that I attended the Housing Development Consortium last week. It is true that there was a lot of conversation about Senate Bill 6,026 and its companion, House Bill 2,048. So just a lot of robust discussion, a lot of shared concerns about the legislation from our peer cities, and that was evident. But, as also mentioned, there is also a great deal of momentum from a coalition of housing developers, both market rate and affordable housing developers, and some in the business community and those who represent the business community behind the bill.

So, we don't need to dwell on that because we talked earlier in the last business item about the hard work that's being done to make sure that's something that either doesn't get adopted this session or gets modified to be acceptable to cities so that we can continue to foster, you know, complete communities where we have neighborhood centers that are walkable, where people can walk to their shops and services and whatnot. So that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Pascal?

Yeah, thank you. So a lot of activities. Started off at the beginning of the year. Had a meeting of Cooper Jones Active Transportation Safety Council a couple weeks ago. And that council is really focused.

I mean, lot of the time is is being spent on the state legislation because we have a number of bills that we are have been promoting and so therefore are trying to support. Related traffic safety, I signed on to I wrote a letter on behalf of the council for one of the bills to kind of expand authority for fatal case review for fatalities that occur on roadways throughout the state. And so it's good that we're taking more of a focus on the legislative because that's ultimately our mandate as a council. The TIB, Transportation Improvement Board, we met last week or the other week in Olympia. And again, that also focused on what's happening in the state legislature, primarily around funding and ensuring that we continue to get the same level or similar level of funding for all the capital projects that we fund through the grant programs.

And then finally, I had my first Cascade Water Alliance meeting as board. And it's going to be a big couple of years, so probably longer, on Cascade Water Alliance starting up its largest infrastructure program ever as an entity, expanding the pipeline down to Tacoma. So there's a lot of things to talk about. We'll be having a retreat coming up in the March. And I'm thankful that Mayor Curtis can attend and be the alternate. So there's a lot there that we're going to need to be on top of. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mayor Falcone?

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Also, lots of great things happening. I'll keep it relatively brief and just mention some highlights. Got to attend the Kirkland Women's Club meeting, and they hosted the Kirkland Heritage Society, which was really interesting. It's a shame I think she may have left, I want to say thank you to Louita Hawkinson for a really great presentation on the history of women in Kirkland.

It was really fascinating to hear and it was really both informative and inspiring to hear about, you know, like one hundred years ago, like these really incredible amazing women leaders throughout Kirkland's history. So that was really fun. We also got to view and handle artifacts from the Kirkland Women's Club over the last one hundred years of its history. There were a lot of photos. Some of them are so old that they could have been, you know, daguerreotype photos. Know, they were, like, super old. But it was really quite special, just the, like, amount of history and information, both with the Kirkland Heritage Society and the Kirkland Women's Club and the overlap of their missions there. So I just wanted to say thank you. That was really I got to try on some really cool, like, old school, like, women's fashion hats, too, which was really fun. Anyway, so thank you to them.

We already discussed the City Action Days. That was a great work on behalf of Team Kirkland. Had a I'll let the mayor speak perhaps more to this, but had a really beautiful retirement ceremony for former mayor and councilmember Penny Sweet. It was really beautiful and a fantastic turnout. So congratulations to DePenny on her retirement and to everyone who helped put that on. Thank you. We had an amazing kickoff to conversations with counsel. Thank you to Luana. Thank you to the entire team for helping put that on. Luana sent out a great recap of the discussions that we had, but thank you to everybody who came out.

We had a really good mix of both people who saw the communication about it, knew that it was happening and came, but also people just walking by that saw us, which was really great because those are folks who may not have engaged with the city previously and had that opportunity. So I had great conversations. Looking forward to more of those in the future. I hope for those listening at home that you'll come out and also thank you for the great conversation that day. Looking forward to Thursday having the first of the year Tourism Development Committee meeting with our new Vice Chair, Tim Chisholm.

So looking forward to welcoming him to TDC and having a great meeting on Thursday. Finally, I'll just say thank you to those who helped organize the Seahawks rally on Sunday. That was a lot of fun. I know my kid Vinny had a fantastic time and so did all the hundreds of folks who came out. Thank you to the organizers and everyone who volunteered and participated in city staff for helping make that happen on such short notice. That was really fun and go Hawks. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Matt Pruehl.

Yes. So I will be attending tomorrow the South City Association Board and Committee orientation. And so to kick off my involvement on that committee at the orientation, I'll hear from regional partners and leaders on their experiences on serving on the SCA committee. They'll share their perspectives on committee service and what to expect on the role. So really looking forward to that. Next week, I will be at the ribbon cutting for SZNS, which is a small boutique that is opening up in Kirkland. So I'm very excited to attend my first ribbon cutting.

And you have pick next week. Yes, I do. Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you. I have one item that I need some council support on and a couple of other things for report. At the East Trail Regional Advisory Council, we're looking at a revision to our memorandum of understanding to retire a seat that the East Side Greenway Alliance previously held. This was a group of nonprofits that advised the RAC cascade had been their cascade bicycle club had been their member. They are now not seeing the need of the seat and Cascade is wanting to not spend the time going.

The consensus of the RAC is to change the MOU to remove that seat. There's a process to do this involving us sending a letter that we support that change and then the formal MOU that would come before council at some point in the future. So I'm looking for head nods on supporting streamlining EGA and I am seeing that for the record. The City of Windmill is also pursuing a federal grant for their development of their segment of the East Trail. This is the second raise grant that they're pursuing previously or then this is also something that East Trail Rock has sent in a letter of support.

Previously for Woodenville's raise grant, they also asked individual cities for support. Kirkland had supported their previous successful RAISE grant. They're asking for sign on to that letter now and I'd like to get approval of the city to sign on for that. I don't have a letter for that, but it's pretty it's consistent with what we've done in the past. I'm also seeing head nods on that.

Two other things to update. On the State Building Code Council, We met in on January 23 and updated our schedule for the year. We're working on the 2024 code adoption for the international model codes. Public comment period for this will be May 6 through June 12 with final action in August, final adoption in September. Because building codes have to sit through a legislative session, these codes would take effect in May 2027.

Couple of things of note for folks interested in public comment. There will be proposals for new codes for a single exit for six story buildings to improve affordability, codes for building multiplex housing using the international resident, the international residential code instead of the building code which simplifies things and an optional appendix that cities could adopt to regulate embodied carbon, that's the carbon footprint of the materials used in buildings. And there are different aspects of that that the SBCC is seeking public comment on. So, stay tuned for that. There'll be those will be finalized and opportunities in May to be involved there.

Finally, from the legislative work group, Andriana had mentioned City Action Days. I sent around some email about this on some of the initial feedback the work group had and some potential changes for next year. If you have any feedback, please send out Andriana and we will continue that discussion after session. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

I have nothing to report.

Thank you. Mine's pretty quick. I had the honor to attend the seventy seventh Republic Day celebration hosted by the India council general. It was quite festive, and my scarf is in council study. I also attended the firefighter recruit graduation in Kent, which is always a moving ceremony. It was really nice to be there, and congratulations to our four new recruits. I also want to echo thank you to everyone. I see some of you in the room that planned and organized and cleaned up Penny's celebration. It was a wonderful event. She was really touched.

I think it was a very special night for her. So thank you, everyone, that worked on that. I also want to thank everyone who attended the council conversations. You heard from Councilmember Falcone. It was a great event. It was so nice to see residents connecting with each other and exchanging phone numbers and so forth. And just so everybody knows, put it on your calendar. The next event is February 21 on a Saturday in the morning, so it will be accessible to people who couldn't make it during the daytime. City manager, I was going to do my LRM now, but I see we have our next presentation up front. So do you want me to wait?

Typically, do them under city manager reports, but obviously Okay. It's whatever you

And I will do that. So I'm handing it back to you for city manager report.

Great. Thank you very much. So what I'll do is take the first legislative request memo that was on the agenda and then take yours up second, Madam Mayor, that's okay.

Sounds good.

All right. So I'm going introduce this topic. We have our capital division manager, Rob English, and our transportation manager, Steven Padua, here to make the presentation. A brief reminder, as we have a new council member, that a legislative request memo is a sort of a pre action. So when you pass them, you ask us, what do we think it might take to do the work, and what are some options for consideration? So it's not a decision. Then we'll come to you and ask, so you can pick any of the options we give you, or if you have a suggestion for an additional option, you can do that as well. We do look for action by motion to take action, otherwise the legislative request was considered dead. So, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to the two of them to make the presentation, and we look for council discussion and direction. Thank you.

Thank you, city manager, and good evening. Rob English, capital division manager. And with me tonight is Steven Padua, transportation manager here at the city. And we are presenting on the legislative request memo for traffic control policies for partial and full closures within the city right away. This is council member Pascal's request that he made in the fall, and the request was to explore options to review and update the city's policies for partial and full closures of streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, and options to establish closure policies for the Cross Kirkland corridor.

And again, the closure relates to construction projects. So typically sources of construction projects would be private development projects, city capital improvement projects, projects by public utility districts. Two examples would be North Shore Utility District or Puget Sound Energy. And then communication companies, they have a lot of work that they perform in the city. For example, Comcast or Zipline, those type of facility companies.

So the existing city policies that we have related to traffic control, there's two in our preapproved plans, policy R27, which is the long term street improvement closure policy. And the purpose of that is an outline for street improvements and when they can be closed for construction and maintenance. And in the definition of long term, it's any closure longer than two weeks, and that's when that policy would apply. The second policy, R29, is the Temporary Traffic Control Plan Preparation. And again, this is to provide guidelines for preparing traffic control plans that are submitted to the city, which the city reviews and approves before work can be done.

And so again, typically contractors use these guidelines. They follow the format and information that needs to be provided, and that helps streamlines the review and approval process. So the options that we've outlined, these are summary level, but obviously if no changes are made, then we maintain our current policies and processes. The second option is if we want to update policies R27 and R29 with counsel input. And within that update of those two policies, we could provide clarity on CKC requirements.

And then the third option would be to update policies R27 and R29 similar to option two with council input, but then introduce a new policy specific to the CKC requirements. And with that, staff's here to available to answer questions and receive input and direction from the council.

Thank you. Councillor Pascal, since this was your LRM, would you like to go first?

Sure. Happy to. Thank you. Rob and Stephen, thank you for pulling this LRM memo together. Appreciate it. Maybe you could go back to the previous slide that has the options listed just to get things going. There you go. I I'll tell you that for me, I'm I'm I'm kind of focused on option three, and I'll I'll tell you why. I'm not opposed to option two. I just don't know, like, how a CKC policy would fit into that into either one of those two.

So I'm not, like, opposed to it. I just I just wanna make sure that we have policy that makes sense for the CKC. That's that's my that's my objective. The other objective is so I really kinda look at this in two different issues. One, to take a look at our our current street closure policies and make sure that they're doing the things that we are expecting out there, and they're consistent with kind of changing direction that I see from our community.

And so let me give you an example of the street closure policy that I'm thinking of. You know, you'll see we'll see construction activities across the city and particularly, like, let's just look at vehicle lanes. You'll see those closed particularly during the the midday hours when construction activities occurred, but but on arterials, they're typically open during the the commute hours to allow vehicles to move. You know, when it comes to sidewalks and bike lanes, that's not necessarily the case. Those types of facilities could be closed for weeks, months on provided.

I'd like us to just be thinking about, you know, whether or not we should be treating, you know, high priority sidewalk and and bicycle connections similar to how we treat vehicle lanes that those those facilities could open up on weekends or when construction activity isn't taking place. What options are there for for for doing that? What are some impacts? I know that that's not an easy thing. Otherwise, we would require it.

But just consider that is something that I'd like us to look at. That's why I'd like us to make sure we're not just looking at the CKC closure policy, but also the street. And then when it comes to the CKC, that is a little bit different animal because that's a facility that's meant to also provide safe connections for all ages and abilities. And when you close that, is there really a viable option for kids on bikes or folks that don't want to be walking or biking in the street and or some other facility that doesn't provide that same level of protection or comfort. And so I just want us to think about that a little bit differently because it is a different type of facility.

And and then, you know, I know that we're going through a long term closure right now with with the with the construction of the 85th Street Pathway. And so it kinda just got me thinking. I know, staff, you you looked at all options to avoid the closure. There was probably some options to to avoid it. It just would've cost a whole lot more.