City Council - Regular Meeting

Clerk, will you please call a roll for both the City Council and the Park Board as we are participating in a joint meeting with them during our

study session.

Yes, we'll begin with the council. Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

Here.

Councilmember Arnold?

Here.

Councilmember Prem?

Here. Councilmember Falcone? Here. Councilmember Pascal?

Here.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Here.

Mayor Curtis? Here. Now on to the Park Board. Board Member Berenice Bartoni?

Here.

Board Member Denise Lindbergh? Here. Chair Giuliana Born? Here. Chair Jared Silvia?

Here.

Those are the members present. There is no quorum.

Thank you. Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have a joint meeting with the Park Board. Second, we will have a briefing on state mandated parking code amendments. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 07:30. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the council, and members of our board, Park Board, thank you so much for joining us today. So the purpose of tonight is to discuss the draft Park Board work program. Although, I might have you had it in your packet, we also made sure we gave a hard copy, so those of you who didn't have a chance to see that. And there's also a draft hard copy of the potential engagement policies and guidelines. So what I'm going do is turn it over to Lynn's Wagstrom, our Parks and Community Services Director, for a brief overview. And what we're looking for for Council tonight is feedback and input on the two plans.

Thank you. Welcome, Lynn.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor and Deputy Mayor. It's good to be here this evening. We always look forward to the joint Park Board session. It has been a

few years since we've had one. It's also been a few years since we've had an approved Park Board work plan,

and that's for a variety of reasons, with some high priority projects like the ballot measure and the PROs plan and whatnot, but it is time to move a little bit more forward. This is time that the Park Board gets the opportunity to convey to counsel some of their needs and interests well, community needs and interests, but they also enjoy hearing from counsel about what your priorities might be. And so they will I will be teeing them up in just a moment. I know that they have some discussion questions to lead some discussion and feedback this evening that you saw highlighted in the memo. But in particular, at this juncture with the work plan, Park Board is looking to have a little bit more structure with what they're focusing on and is very interested in engaging with the community to serve as that liaison role and obviously looking for your feedback on what you would find the most valuable.

The city manager mentioned that a couple folks had some questions on particular work plan item, that being the municipal code update. That one on the work plan is actually a department work plan item. It's been something we've been working on for several years now. It's taken quite a long negotiations, but what we've been working on as a department is to try and find a way to have a greater role in enforcing park rules in the parks without completely relying on the police department. And the city attorney's office actually found a way for us to be able to do that, but that does involve adding a new clause to the municipal code, kind of separating out the code into two different sections, and then we've also been interested in an update to the code.

It has been a long time since it's been updated, and there are some gaps in it, like e bikes and things like that. So just some updated language, closing some of the gaps, that type of thing. And so, like I mentioned, it's actually been a work in progress for about two years behind the scenes, and we are asking Park Board to weigh in on the draft code, specifically as it pertains to how might that code impact the community or be perceived by the community, and that would help inform us what our next steps might be before it comes to counsel. So that's what that item is.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

Yeah, and on that note I'll kick it over to Jared to tee up their discussion.

Thanks Lynn. Thank you counsel for having us. We're excited about having the opportunity to discuss some of the topics on our work plan and other issues the community we feel is really interested in. I also want to first thank the park staff for all their work in helping us draft this. We couldn't have done it without them and they've been very supportive helping us understand how we can better work with them to be constructive for the city.

Today our primary topics include our work plan, so we'll briefly touch upon that for a few minutes and get any feedback you might have on that. We then want transition to the Peter Kirk pool enclosure and share some of our thoughts there and have a discussion about that because I know it's very timely for the council. And then we want to talk a little bit about an engagement strategy we're trying to develop where we can be more proactive in the community and what our role really should be in communicating in both ways, between the community and the council and then back from the council down to the community. And so we'll talk a little bit about that and talk a little bit about how the Kraken project might be a case study for us and where we could have been more involved over the past year. Any comments on that set of topics?

No, think that looks good. We have about forty five minutes for this, so if you

can

help me.

Stay on time? Yeah. Will do. Sounds good. Alright, so the first thing, the work plan. We haven't had one for a few years, and so this is a major update from past work plans. We wanted to introduce this to really help us focus our activities as a board and be as effective as possible. We spent several sessions last summer developing it, so this has been a work of many months, both on Park Board members and the staff. And we formally adopted it in October. It's split up into three major sections, active projects with board actions.

These are major projects where we're trying to provide input back to the staff on some of the major projects, including the Kraken Iceplex, the Peter Kirk Pool, the North Kirkland Community Center and potential future redevelopment, the board engagement plan, and then the municipal code, as Lynn mentioned. There's then updates on long term projects, so just kind of being up to date on some of the ongoing projects across the city, K Tub, the PROs plan, ADA plan, similar things like that. And then finally administration and housekeeping topics. Does the council, based off of any reading you've done or that brief summary, have any new projects we should be considering or if not in this plan, in future work plans.

No slides?

So I'm trying to think of how this would be helpful for you. Instead of just opening it wide open, maybe we should go through each piece and provide you feedback on the individual items. One of my feedback is we didn't see a lot of so usually with a work plan, we get some staff input on how long a project will take or cost or time frame, and I didn't see that in here. So we may have questions about that as we go forward.

Okay. I think then we can focus just on the major active projects section. That's the one where there's the most focus for us. So that includes these projects shown here on the screens right now. So the Kraken Iceflex Community Center, and there our role as a board is to support that and provide feedback to maximize the benefit for the community through that.

The second item is the Peter Pool and redevelopment. Again, trying to support and provide input as decisions are made about the future development of Peter Kirk Pool and really for us maximizing access to swim lessons as being a major priority from the community standpoint. Board member engagement plan, as I mentioned, we want to be as engaged with the community as possible, sharing information, being able to take questions back to the staff, get answers and provide another conduit for reaching community members. We've been trying to engage through neighborhood associations. We're wondering what else we could be doing to be a little bit more proactive and work with staff to get more feedback.

And then finally, the North Kirkland Community Center feasibility assessment. This is a bit of a longer term project, but really just any updates that we can receive and provide feedback for the staff as they look to future improvements to that facility are areas we're going to be spending a lot of our time over the next year to two years.

Thank you, Jared. Lynn, can you remind me when are we doing the NKCC feasibility study?

Right. We have not scheduled that yet, and the reason we haven't is we're pretty focused on the Peter Kirk pool and getting direction on that and moving forward, and then the other one, of course, being the Kraken Iceplex Community Center. So that one has been pretty all encompassing. So really, we're looking for an opening in capacity before we schedule that one. Also, potential discussion with counsel on when that should go forward, given funding constraints with other high priority projects.

The IcePlex one I would mention is when it will come to Parkport, will be very focused on operations. Because the Kraken have designed the facility and we have had input that along the way, it's not a public design process. But what can be public is all the programming that's in the facility, some of the priorities for use of facility, equipment in the facility, and some general kind of pricing and policies and things like that. So bouncing off those operational items off the park board for feedback and input.

I'm feeling my way through here. This is just not a usual way that we do work plans. So, Jared, you said that you wanted to talk about the engagement plan and the pool separately?

Yep.

Okay.

Former Deputy Mayor, Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you, Mary. Are you ready for questions on this or any feedback?

Please.

Okay, very good. First, thank you for your work on this. The greatest value that boards and commissions provide for councils when you are able to spend more time on a particular topic than we are and get to the point where you're providing us options or recommendations before we have to take action on something. And this is where things like the North Garthman Community Center, the updates to the municipal codes and other things are helpful. I would make sure that the work is pretty tight on this.

The focus really should be on the community center part of the Kraken Iceplex. The Kraken side of it is basically done and basically a council prerogative anyway. But there is more work to do as Lynn has said on the inside. So I think in setting expectations with the community that would be one that I would retitle. The other thing in the category of big things that we need help with, you mentioned in the gold section on kind of updates is the Green Loop.

This is one where we have a good chunk of money, but not a money to complete the Green Loop. And frankly, this is one where you could provide a lot of analysis and look at community input on saying, how do we make the best progress fastest on this as far as planning and alignment and other things, priorities. And that's something I'd like to actually see elevated to the green section as an active project because for all the millions of dollars of funding that we have, it's only going go so far and having some recommendations as council decides how to make progress on this would be helpful. So that's something that I would elevate. The Spinney Homestead Park master plan also listed as an update is another example of something council is going to approve and would be more of a higher priority thing in my mind that might justify being elevated to the green section.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Some comments on these sections? Alright.

Okay, if there's nothing else let us know and we're open to ongoing feedback so if anything's missing or anything comes up please feel free to share and we'll make sure to incorporate that going forward. That, one other topic just with that, we want to acknowledge that over the past year or so it's become challenging to have some of the conversations around parks in terms of improving level of service, increase capacity from just the limited funds that are available, and I know the council is very aware of this. But we just wanted to basically say briefly that we're here to help in any way and support any way we can to find ways to increase funding for parks going forward. So keep us in the loop. We're here to provide a community sounding board.

Any sort of idea generation that might be helpful, we're here. But it's just become apparent over the last year how challenging it is to do improvements. Peter Kirk Pools will discuss as an example of one of those. But there's several others where we're just constantly running up against projects being traded off.

You do not understand what you're I talking actually don't.

No real discussion questions, we just wanted to know we're here, we want to be a partner in that, and so keep us in the loop.

We hear you, and we have the same concern. You know I'm former Park Board member, and when I was sitting in your seats I felt the exact same way.

Okay, so we'll keep moving. I'm going to pass it over to Denise who will talk about the Peter Kirk pool and some of the thoughts that the Park Board has had. So Denise, go ahead and take it away.

Thank you. So like Jared said, our first main area that we'd like to focus on is the redevelopment or potential redevelopment of the pool. And as Jared already mentioned, we're really focusing on access to swim lessons. We think that's an equity issue. We think that's a public safety issue, and the current need is not being met by our current capacity in any way.

So we do feel there's an urgency here, and that's been the lens that we've evaluated all of the options by, is can we increase capacity and how soon can we do it. I know that the council has spent a good deal of time discussing the various options, as have we. And while the enclosure options that were presented last summer would significantly increase swim lesson capacity, the reality is that our current capital fund is simply not enough to fund any of those enclosure options unless we separate all of our other park board projects or all of our other parks projects. So that would be deferred maintenance. That would be playground replacements.

That would be artificial turf installation, all of those projects that we know that our community wants and needs, we would basically have to zero those out in order to fund one of these options. So as much as we would love to see an enclosure right now, we are not recommending moving forward on one of the enclosure options unless we can identify further funding sources. What we are suggesting as an alternative is looking at either keeping the pool open year round and heated or extending the hours or the season into the spring and the fall. That would allow us to increase swim lesson capacity, and it wouldn't require a significant capital investment. There would be a couple of challenges, the first being that we would increase our utility costs because we'd have to heat the pool.

And the second is that most of our summer staff are high school and college students, so staffing might be an issue in those off season months. The other thing that we want to advise the council to consider is perhaps a phased redevelopment plan. So rather than doing everything all at once, maybe one year we're doing system upgrades, and the next year we're doing the bathhouse, and we're gradually increasing capacity. That has the advantage of allowing us to use the funds that are available to do some immediate upgrades. The challenge is that it probably will increase the overall cost, and realistically, you can't build half of an enclosure one year and half of an enclosure five years later.

So if an enclosure option is something we actually want to pursue, then at some point we're still going to need a big capital investment to make that happen. So that's kind of the background of where our discussion has gone. We'd love to hear input from you. And one of the questions that I have and that we've discussed as a board is along the lines of considering funding sources, would the council consider doing a survey of the community to see if there's interest in a ballot measure specifically to fund an enclosure for the Peter Kirk pool. We think this is distinct from the survey we did a couple of years ago that was just a smaller aquatics measure because it's very specific to an existing structure.

I think that's kind of our first question, is that a possibility that might open up some avenues for us?

Microphone please.

There's one in Bellevue at the Factoria Mall, and these facilities are in a lot of shopping malls. I don't know what the build out is, maybe it's 500,000, maybe it's 1,000,000, it's not 10,000,000. And I don't know what they're paying per month, maybe they're paying $10 a month. But, as opposed to having this massive project that's 10 to $30,000,000, if we look at shopping mall build outs, either pre existing or doing a shopping mall build out, that may be a fraction of the cost that we're talking about here, because I don't think that the residents of Kirkland are gonna approve a ballot measure for a pool enclosure, that's kind of my sense of just where we are, and it's not that I appreciate you raising the issue, but my sense is that, given everything that's

going

on in the state right now, that it may not be an opportune time. But it would be interesting, and I don't want to name individual businesses, but, you know, what's your business worth, what would you sell it for, and how much is the rent? Because if we can do a deal for 1,500,000.0, and then have a location in a shopping mall to teach kids to swim, that's not going to take years and years to do, and it's not going to cost $10,000,000. And that's what the private market is doing, and the private market has seen that there's an opportunity and a need, and so they've started these private businesses. And I assume that they're doing it in the most cost efficient way possible. Thank you.

Anyone else? Deputy Mayor?

Thank you. I was hoping the city manager could do you have thoughts on that? Because I know we've had this conversation about this idea I appreciate the idea. And we've had this conversation in the past. And you spent or at least Yeah. Well, I mean You spent some time thinking about it and looking into it? Yeah.

I mean, we certainly do have thoughts. And maybe it might be better to talk about that in the business section. However, insurance, we did talk, for example, to Kirkland Urban folks about the potential. And then they, as you all know, maybe made a big deal with their bottom floor, which we had hoped we might be able to squeeze a pool into. But they now have a new plan for that.

We have not approached people about buying an existing facility. Part of the challenge, I think, of the $10,000,000 is that about $7,000,000 of that is to invest in the current infrastructure. So just the pool itself, unfortunately, is old and needs a lot of care and investment. But I do think as we get to the business side of the council wants us to continue to explore additional options like that, we certainly can put that on the table. But there is a certain sunk cost we have to make in the pool just to keep it operating even if we don't expand it.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, do you have anything else?

Nope. That was it.

Just Councilor McCaskill?

Thank you. Yep. So this is obviously a big discussion item today. Just a couple things that I just wanna point out that I I very much agree with is one, kind of that phased approach that this has been an ongoing discussion item for many, many years. And so whatever way we can start kinda, you know, cracking that nut a little bit over time and and really thinking about how pragmatically we can start tackling this because there is a great need, but it's really hard to do all at once.

And so that's the challenge. And that we gotta celebrate. You know, I look at the there was the slide up on the average percent increase in capacity under the different options. And of course, your eye goes to the 255% increase and that's the one I want. But then you start looking at, you know, how do you actually get there and can is that achievable?

And can we celebrate something 45%? That would actually be pretty that a would pretty great achievement by itself. But when it's compared to these other options that are very expensive and could be difficult to achieve over time, you know, you kind of lose sight of that. But we shouldn't lose sight of that is my point, that incremental approach. But as we enter down this, and I'll probably share some of these comments later, is if we're going to spend $10,000,000 refurbishing and upgrading, I want to make sure that that's money that we're not gonna have to those are facilities that we're not gonna have to redo or upgrade or whatever if we want to put an open air enclosure later.

So I wanna make sure the design and the planning and everything is done upfront, and then the implementation is is really thought about down the road. As far as the ballot measure, personally, I'm having a hard time kind of even kind of talking about that, to be honest. I just right now is I think is a really challenging time, and I'd have to be convinced that that was something that is worth moving forward right now. Thank you.

I'm going to go to Councilmember Falcone. Go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you for being here. I really appreciate your all the thoughtful work that went into both the draft work plan and your feedback on the Peter Kirk pool. I share your passion for wanting to prioritize increasing swim lessons. Like to me, that is the most important part in addition to obviously making the needed upgrades to keep the pool safe and functional, all those things. But any enhancements that we make, share your focus on increasing. We just we know the need. We know the need is there, and we know that it helps keep our most vulnerable residents safe. So that's really important. So I appreciate that lens.

Thank you for bringing that forth. You'll when we talk about this later tonight, you know, that will be my lens on that discussion as well. I do agree with my colleagues that I think now is not the time for a ballot measure, but I do appreciate that this is tough financially. Right? This is a pretty I get sticker shock.

I think I mentioned to the city manager earlier, I get sticker shock every time I see these options and that we talk about it. It was but this is something that we know is a priority, that we hear from the community as a priority, and also that we know is an important safety issue for any like you said, also an equity issue. So I do support that. I appreciate that you're bringing this to us and that we're talking about this. Like you mentioned, Chair, it's very timely, right, tonight that we'll be talking about this later.

Also appreciate your right, and we're going be talking about the engagement process in a little bit, too. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in wanting to be a role, kind of both ways of communication, right, to provide input from the community and recommendations to counsel, but also to help communicate out some of the things that are going on with the public as well to keep folks informed. So along those lines too, tonight we're also going to be talking about our agreement with the Lake Washington School District for field usage and scheduling, and that's something that I know. I've received a lot of communication from various community members and leaders in different youth sports leagues about and so that is another potential example of how we could really use your help in helping communicate those types of things out to the community so folks know what the new scheduling procedures are and what's going on with that. Think that's a really good role and as well as I know you have it on here like the CIP projects, but, you know, I think about, like, the the infield turfing and things like that of just having great two way communication with folks in the community as they see that going.

So thank you again. You'll hear more from us later tonight, as you know, in our business meetings. So I hope you tune in for that, and we appreciate all that you're doing.

All right. I'm going to go to Councilmember Arnold, and then I'll go back to Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you for your thinking and creativity on this. This is a real hard problem to tackle, whether we're talking about a new facility that approaches $100,000,000 that the community has said, wow, that's not our top priority or even something that's a full enclosure that's in the 17,000,000 to $20,000,000 range. Very, very tough. And appreciate the ways to say, as you suggest, phase things, do things that would support increased capacity now and would help support an enclosure as we do this into the future.

And as my colleagues have said more when we talk about this during the business meeting, You mentioned a survey about a ballot measure. There is a community group called Splash Forward that sent email to the council yesterday that had done a self selecting survey that provided some interesting input. I hope staff will share that with the full Park Board if Splash Forward hasn't shared it with you already. In looking at some of the freeform comments, it kind of foreshadows some of the debate of what would happen around a ballot measure where they're even just asking about this. People are saying, boy, I'm not sure if this is a tough priority.

It's tough, challenging economic times. This is not where the city should be focusing. And really, as we have seen successful investments in the community, it really starts from a point where there's much more support to begin with, where people are more enthusiastic. So I would encourage you to look at that at least as a starting point with all the caveats on that it's a self selected nonscientific survey. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I just want to thank you all for being here again, just adding my voice to the others and for all your work throughout the year. And appreciate keeping this conversation going, particularly about the pool, because this has been a three year conversation by our counsel leading up to the PFAC When we did PFEC, those are exactly the reasons why citizens of our or residents of our community, when they spend time thinking about this question, say, we need to invest in aquatic center and aquatic facilities. And so I appreciate that. I think to the survey, I did see the email that came across from Splashboard.

And I think it kind of highlights one of the things, which is if you're asked a question and you're not thinking about the resource constraints, then the answer is absolutely. We should do I'll have my sort of comments about sort of the fiscal considerations of this when we talk about this business item later tonight. What I was hoping to do is ask staff a question about since we're talking about this question of the ballot measure, tend to agree with a lot of my colleagues. We've sort of asked and answered, and in some ways asked and answered twice. And we've had to deal with the fallout of even asking the question twice, which I think was the right thing for the council to do and the city to do, is to ask the question, have PFEC, the resident group, analyze it for months and come up with a recommendation that we put on the ballot.

That question was asked and answered. And then we said, what about a smaller option? And we asked that again. So I'm a little sensitive to the fact that we've sort of asked and answered this twice, but I'm open to thinking about it. What I was going to ask was, what is staff's recollection you probably talked about this with the Park Board, but maybe not with us. The question we asked last time in the second, after the ballot measure failed, and we did a statistically significant survey, and we said, what about a smaller ballot measure? How would you characterize what we asked and the answer we got relative to maybe what we're contemplating and talking about here today?

Yes. Thank you for that question. The community feedback was that, obviously, they're very supportive of expanded swim lessons and increased aquatics opportunity, but the feedback was a little mixed. So it was about 52% in favor of pursuing a smaller ballot measure. However, when you parceled out the data by location, there were people who felt very strongly about the two different locations. And so what you ultimately end up doing is dropping a percentage of people who support it by the location, and that dropping essentially makes it significantly below 50% who then support it. So that's what made that decision very difficult. It was location specific.

Okay, well thank you. And again, you Park Board members for keeping this conversation going, for having this conversation. I do think it's important. Thank you, and we're going to talk about some more items, I think.

Council Member Prem, and then I have some comments.

I also just wanted to follow on with what my colleagues are saying. I mean, I think this is such an important initiative, so I really do want to thank you as well for pushing this. I one of my daughters actually almost drowned one time in a swimming pool because she didn't know how to swim. So this is quite personal for me. So again, thank you for pushing the urgency on this.

I do generally agree that if we've asked this question before, and we've asked it twice, I don't know if we're going to get the answer we want a third time around. But I do think, and we're going to discuss this later on today, the funding sources, really making sure that we're looking through whatever park impact fees we do have, that we're allocating those fees appropriately and in a place where we actually see a huge public benefit, which I think having an enclosed swimming pool would be one of those things. And so this is something I will be talking about later on, because there is a proposal on the table about spending $2,540,000 on a parking lot. And so I don't know if there's a way to actually put that funding into something like this for future use. So this is something that we'll discuss later on, but again, thank you so much for doing everything you do for us.

So I just want to echo what you're already hearing. I mean, we do appreciate that this is staying forefront in your mind, and please continue to have this conversation with us. It's been ten years for me, because I've lived through two ballot measures. And I do want to acknowledge that Juliana served on the PFAC and put a lot of time and effort into creating that ballot measure. So we all vehemently, passionately agree that we need year round aquatics, and we hope that we will find a way to pull this off.

Can I make one comment on that discussion point? I think it's been enlightening over the last two years serving on Park Board, getting clarity about the funding limitations that parks have. And I think it's a good segue into the engagement discussion because most community members do not understand the limits of the current budget. Like the fact that the CIP is so limited, when I tell people how it's only a few million dollars a year to upgrade parks, people are like, what are you talking about? I'm like, yeah, it's like 3 to 5,000,000.

That's all we have. And they're like, but we are such a rich city and we should be able to afford this. So I think there's a little bit of education that needs to really be done on how parks are funded that would go a long way to help people understand why things are the way they are, and then they could potentially with time reconsider the funding situation. So I do think that's a real priority for us is getting that message out there about where things stand from a funding standpoint.

Yeah, and you know we are going to have those budget conversations starting very soon, and we do our best to educate people on the different buckets and how they work, and we will probably continue to do that, and yeah it is helpful to have a conversation. It's the same conversation about property taxes, how much of your property tax actually goes to the city and then how much of that city tax actually goes to parks.

Alright, with that I'll hand it off to Juliana who will talk about our board engagement strategy.

Thank you, so another high priority item in the Park Board work plan is the development of the Kraken project and to be an advocate for those increased services through that and public recreation opportunities for the community. We know that the Kraken project has been discussed at council and there are updates on the city's website. There's been a survey about Houghton Park And Play asset reallocation and some actions have already been taken, but despite these efforts the feedback we've received from neighbors and community members is that there isn't a wide understanding about the state of negotiations or a division for the site. So on a related note, another goal of ours from the work plan is to develop board member engagement guidelines. We're trying to better define roles and specific actions that we as a Park Board can take to intentionally and proactively engage with our community so that we can be more effective as an advisory body, so like this Kraken project, and hope to work more closely with council in the future to help drive more community engagement on these parks and recreation topics.

As, like, we're also starting to think about and explore how the board can help cascade or amplify messages that the city council wants out there and also in the other direction where we can serve as another channel for people to share their thoughts and feedback to you guys. So with that, we'd like to discuss ways to improve our utility as an advisory board to you guys. So how can we most effectively communicate that feedback to council? And then how can Park Board, or how can the board more practically communicate project status updates to the community?

Thank you. Council, thoughts? Deputy Mayor?

Thank you. So thank you for this item. I guess what I want to say at the top is just how important it is for and this has kind of been a city council priority for a while, but just how important it is to make sure we have really good civic engagement with people. Many of our residents really engaged in the city and understanding some of the complexities that you guys understand, certainly in vertical, the much better than the average resident. And so your commitment to sort of being an educated educate is the wrong word, but sort of well informed, educated voice, really understanding a topic that we talk about a lot, that we struggle with a lot because we do have limited resources and there are opportunity costs, etcetera, etcetera.

Having you dedicated to using everything that you're learning from working with the park staff about what it means to actually run these facilities, these properties, and these programs. I think that's great. I do think it's probably a little fraught. Community engagement, especially I noticed there's reference to social media engagement. I'll just refer you to city attorney's office, to the parks board staff, to our communications staff that just have to be cautious with social media engagement.

And even the first response or the first comment on social media where you provide the disclaimer that you're on the park board, but you're speaking for yourself. That gets quickly lost in the social media conversation until no one who's commenting thinks you're anything other than representing the city and the city point of view. So we just have to be careful. It's something we all struggle with. Everyone involved in public service struggles with it.

So I would just make sure you're working in that, make sure you're just working closely with the staff, the city attorney, and things like that. We talked a little bit about a moment ago, if you ask questions about park investment of the public without a conversation about resource constraints, The answer is like, we're all in. We want it all. And of course, we do, right? Everyone loves Kirkland's parks.

It's kind of a crown jewel of Kirkland, and absolutely we want to invest in it. Just another area where I would sort of caution, I think a focused town hall where there are very there's an opportunity to really talk about initiatives that you're really wanting to get people's feedback. How would you have us prioritize these type of programs or these type of facilities? I think those are really good questions. And to the extent that's also an opportunity to sort of educate the public about some of the challenges and constraints with operating a park assets as large as ours, I think that's really valuable.

I'd just be cautious going in and just saying, without any discussion of resource constraints, what do you want from your parks? Because you'll get 10 different answers from 10 different perspectives, none of which we can easily do all at once. So that's just another area of caution. But I really appreciate your commitment to wanting to be residents who you're volunteering your time. You're working with staff. You're understanding these issues. And being out there sharing that knowledge and experience and understanding with our community, I think, is super important. I mean, we do that, but we're only seven people. And that doesn't scale sometimes. We see that all the time in our civic conversations.

Last thing I would just say is I know the chair and the vice chair, we have meetings set up with the mayor and deputy mayor. I just wanted to say this is probably the most appropriate time to say I'm looking forward to those conversations. We generally have those conversations between our chairs and vice chairs of our boards and commissions with the mayor and deputy mayor. I'm looking forward to our upcoming meeting there too. So this conversation doesn't have to stop with a joint meeting, right? We'll keep talking about that. Park Board members should certainly let Julianna and Jared know what you want them to share with the mayor and the deputy mayor.

You. Councilor Mayor Falcone?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you so much for the thoughtful ness that went into this plan. I think there are a lot of really great ideas that it's just going to elevate, you know, I think some of the expectations of the community engagement with our boards and commissions. And I think that's a good thing, right? I think as Councilmember Arnold mentioned earlier, looking to your not only your in-depth work on a particular issue, but also just your role in the community is really valuable and the lens that you bring, right?

And we, you know, when we interviewed you, we talked about, you know, some of the things that you're interested in related to parks and kind of what your engagement is in the parks. And you each bring, like, such valuable perspective just with yourself, your families, your neighbors, your social circle, so that is extremely important to bring to this work. But elevating it to, you know, have some more formal and informal ways of engaging with the public, I think, is really important. You know, I will say when see some of the more formal engagement, mean you mentioned earlier, Chair, about limited resources. One of the first things I think of is staff time and staff capacity for some of these things and just being really thoughtful about that because, as the mayor said earlier, we didn't really get a good sense of, like, the time and the resources needed for each of these things, including this public engagement, and so that's something that I do have in my mind with some of this as well, just again being mindful of that.

But I do think there's a lot of whether it be formal or informal things that you can do and that you probably already do to some extent that I can just tell from some of the ideas here, right? Like you mentioned earlier, Denise, you know, having an equity lens for the Peter Kirk Pool, but I'm sure you bring that same lens to all the work you do on the Park Board, right? So I think of having an equity lens with public engagement too and folks that you engage with and community members that you engage with. You mentioned, you know, for example, engaging with neighborhood associations. I think that's a great idea.

Also with PTAs, you mentioned attending council meetings, engaging in that way. I think identifying community based organizations, I think of like East Side Pathways and others you can engage with to get some input from community and perhaps some of our most vulnerable community members in the work that you do to help inform your recommendations. I think it'd be a really big value add to your public engagement and I see those values and I know that you share those values. I really appreciate that. I like your idea of event tabling.

I remember when I was in the Human Services Commission that we tabled at City Hall For All and it was a really valuable opportunity. People didn't know what the city did with Human Services very much, you know, or what we did with what the Human Services Commission did. And it was a really great opportunity to educate people but also to get input from people and for people just to be more aware. That's what part of the City Hall for All is, right, to kind of break down those barriers for people to know, hey, you're my neighbor and you're on the Park Board. Maybe I can apply for the Park Board sometime, right?

So I think there's a lot of value that we could have for something like tabling at events. So I really, really appreciate that. I also think of how we can engage some of our, you know, again, it doesn't need to be formal, but perhaps informally. The Mayor and Deputy the Deputy Mayor mentioned the meetings that you have set up. Any of you are welcome to contact any of us at any time.

Sit down, you know, we're very accessible. We'll be happy to have coffee or, you know, have a phone call, whatever is helpful to hear what's on your mind or hear that from things that you're thinking from the community so that door is always open to you as well. I also think of you know picking up the phone or having a conversation with our senior counsel and with our youth board as well in particular and getting some insight from them on the communities that they represent and the and the part of our community that they represent and what would be helpful to them so I really like the direction you're going in summary I appreciate the lens, and I am concerned about, yes, concerned about staff resources with some of it, but I think a lot of it you can do on your own, and I think you're already doing a lot of it, actually, and just formalizing it in a plan is great for people to know what what the great work that you're doing. Thank you.

Councilmember Pascal.

Thank you. Thank you for raising this question. And I always default to more communication when whenever possible, but we want that communication to be intentional. And in this case, you know, the thing that I think about with the park board and just our broader boards and commissions in general is when when you are communicating with the public, really what is it that you're asking and then what are what are those expectations then that the public has once you receive that input. And so I think a work plan in general and having a work plan regularly is going to help us identify those engagement opportunities where I think you are going to be most, I think the best body to to receive that input.

And I see those as being very specific engagement opportunities around specific projects and programs, whether it's a PROs plan update, park master plan updates, specific projects where we don't have the capacity to do that and we want the park board. So I think with the work plan adoption, having that more regularly and maybe if we're thinking of looking at the municipal code, maybe that goes in the municipal code as something that gets regularly updated like the transportation commission has. So that so that you you have a defined engagement plan that we have blessed, so to speak. I just wanna make sure that, you know, we're setting expectations with the public. So when you're going out and you're asking questions that the public has expectation of this is how my input is being used.

Right? That it's not going into a black hole. And that's by no means that I know that's not what your intentions are, but that that input is being used in some way. And so that's why you have to be very thoughtful about that. So those are a few things on my mind, but I think the work plan will really help. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you have a response, Jared? Councilor Tim Chisholm?

So, more of what I would like to see from the Park Board is ideas on projects that are 500,000 to $600,000 maybe under 1,000,000. You know, I think the playground at Everest Park, the baseball themed park that was 500 or $600,000 is an example of taxpayers really getting a good value for their money and a project that was a huge success. When you spend time on a border commission, you're gonna wanna see something materialize during your time on that border commission. And, you know, the $10.20, $30,000,000 projects are great to discuss, but if you communicate with the public, you might want to have three projects that are $500,000 and then ask the public what they would like to see, A, B or C, rather than asking them if they'd like an enclosed pool and a gym and a yoga center or whatever. You know?

So I've seen success at that price point, you know, $500, maybe less, maybe a little more. But those are projects that can materialize within a reasonable length of time, we can cut the ribbon, and the public can enjoy it. You.

Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you. As I look at the work plan, there's a number of updates and trainings that were in there and I thought that was great because we want you to be informed champions for Parks and Kirkland out in the community. As you're looking at outreach, though, I agree with what I'm hearing from a lot of the colleagues that general outreach becomes really hard to do and really hard to show results from. And I would encourage you to be more focused around the things that really are the key things we're working on right now is in saying how to get information on the Green Loop and the North Kirkland Community Center and specific things where people can give you feedback, you can look at those, incorporate those in the recommendations and we can see results versus anything like a general town hall to talk about parks. That just doesn't seem like the right use of your role in the most effective way to make use of your time as volunteers.

As you're going and doing outreach, I concur with what Councilmember Falcone is talking about. Look for ways to go beyond the neighborhood associations. Not all of our neighborhoods have an active neighborhood association. And especially for your role, there are a number of sports and recreation and community and school groups that would be much more valuable to engage with. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Riprop?

Yeah, just want to I totally agree with what Council Member Arnold is saying regarding focusing your attention on the actual projects that are active, especially around, you know, like, for an example, the community's recreational center. When we're going through that process, getting real time feedback on what people would want in terms of programming or hours of operation or what facilities they would want within the community center, having that real time feedback so that we can quickly incorporate that into actionable feedback that we can actually do, I think, is going to be super helpful with, like, eyes on the ground. And then making sure that whatever community feedback we're getting are actually actionable, right? It's something we can specifically take care of, and that way the public also feels like their voices are being heard and being translated to real things. So 100% agree with what Councilmember Arnold just said.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm trying to think of what I can say. So I think the strategic tabling is a great idea, and I agree with the comments you heard of suggestions of other outreach. When I was on the Park Board, I also met with other boards and commissions, because they are also residents of our city and what they like. I think that attending the upcoming health fair, tabling at that would be really beneficial, because again, you're reaching out to people that we don't usually hear from.

I worry about creating new channels of communication. And when you say, people tell us that we didn't know about the Kraken, we feel you. We hear the exact same thing. We have a Kirklander that goes to every household. We have a podcast.

We have a newsletter. And there are still people that we're missing. I don't think the answer is creating new avenues of communication or social media because it's fraught with misinformation, and it digresses into a conversation that has nothing to do with your original post. I do think it's super helpful if you encourage people to go to the communication tools that we already have. And there's a handout on the desk over there that I think is super helpful on these are all the ways to sign up for email lists.

This is how you get on the podcast. And just encourage people to reach out that way. But what I am hearing is, how do we drive more people to you to give you feedback? And we heard the same thing from the Transportation Commission the other day. They said, no one comes to our meetings.

I think it would be super helpful if you had residents come to your meetings, and it's part of the public forum, it's part of the public record, to provide you feedback. One of the things I think would be helpful is we send out in our newsletter, these are the topics that are coming up at City Council. We do have parks and communications staff that could also say, here's what's coming up on the park board on their agenda. Please come to the meeting and give them I think that that will help bring people to you and see you as a resource to provide feedback. And I also agree with what you've heard.

You've already said it. If you have a town hall that's just open ended, then what did I hear? Cricket and ultimate Frisbee. And so people are going come to you with every wish list that we can't possibly fulfill. We do have a PROs plan, and we are following what has been outlined in the PROs plan. So if there is some sort of public event, again, it needs to be specific about a topic rather than just general. All right, Jared, back to you.

Okay, thank you for that feedback. That's very helpful. And I think in general, I think we're largely aligned with you. Think the Kraken Iceplex is an example. I feel like we felt really under informed and underutilized over the past year. And I know there's a lot of sensitivity about that particular project. But I don't think we could even answer any of the basic questions about it. And that was really kind of unnerving for us, being seen as the park board. And the GreenLoop was one where I'm getting questions from the Juanita Neighborhood Association quite a bit about it, because they're very passionate about it. I don't have a lot of great resources to readily hand them and be able to direct them.

So I think that's what we're looking for, is guidelines on how we can engage, what we can engage on the priority projects of our work plan as that being the most important things and not open ended, come to the park board for all of your park issues. Like no, no, no, that's not, I don't want to start that. I don't want to start that at all. I don't think any of us do. So I think that's good.

Okay.

Are there any other topics? We appreciate the time you've taken so far, and I know you have other things on your agenda for this study session.

I think Deputy Mayor has a question.

Yeah, I just wanted to actually amplify, Jared, what you were just saying. I think it's little incumbent upon us as a city, our park staff and everything, to make sure you are informed about something like the community center at the Kraken Ice Plex. And I would just make you know, I guess what I would say is, let's make sure if you if the if you're getting those kind of questions, that we're making sure we've got a really seamless feedback loop with staff. Hey, Park Board members, we're getting or we, as Park Board members, are getting a lot of questions about this one thing. Can we get a briefing And on certainly, I think somebody one of my colleagues said it earlier.

I think it was Council Member Falcone, like any of us are available. So if you're getting those kind of questions, especially if you're getting inundated and you just don't have the information, never hesitate to reach out to any one of the seven of us with email or phone call. And I think we'll we'll make sure we're yeah. Well, I I mean, I think it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we're doing a good job of making sure that you're informed about the type of questions you're likely to get as a Park Board member. And the only thing I would add is just I just want to echo what the mayor said a second ago.

On the community engagement, the Park Board's community engagement program, I'd really like to see that line item on there that's like, what can we do to get more folks showing up to what are some specific strategies to get more folks coming to your meetings? Because that's where they're going to hear about all the topics that you're discussing and getting reports briefings on and weighing in on.

Ahead. Madam Mary, would you like to see us do a little work on the work plan where we might fill out some kind of timelines and specific engagement methods for the different projects that we might work with Parkboard on?

That would make me so happy.

Got it.

I do. I think you can take the feedback you received tonight and tweak it, and it would be nice to see when these deliverables happen and the cost of doing some of this, too. Because even when you're tabling, it takes staff time to support you to table. So we went over, but it's worth it.

Okay. Sorry.

No, it is. This is a great conversation. And I really we all sincerely appreciate your dedication to this, your passion, your free labor. So thank you so much for being here. I hope that you listened to the later conversation about the pool. And we will see some of you at the ribbon cutting at the dog park on Friday, right?

On Friday. All right.

Thanks so much.

Thank you so much and thank you to the staff for everything they did to support us on this They as were great.

We're swapping out. Want me to just introduce this next topic?

Okay, we are now moving on to our second study session item, which is briefing on state mandated parking code amendments, city manager.

All right, just wanna we Councilmember Pascal has stepped away. Do you wanna wait a second or should go ahead and start?

Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So while we're while we're switching out, so the purpose of tonight's discussion on parking was really coming to you from staff as an economic development focus. Council in our city work plan item of last year has a big focus on making sure that the 85th Street stationary act is catalyzed.

We also got a lot of feedback during the budget process last year that really 2026, we wanted to be about economic development, affiliate vacancies, tourism, you know, a lot of really positive things. And so that sort of drove us to say, what kind of actions could we put in front of the council that might be a piece of that? And early implementation of 5184, parking requirements was one, and then there's some related topics to that about other options council might select. So that was the impetus for bringing this to you. We are gonna turn over to Adam Weinstein, who's our director of planning and building, and then the presentation itself will be made by our senior planner Martha Rubart.

You, city manager. Go ahead.

Yeah, actually good evening mayor and deputy mayor and council. I'll just hand it over to Martha to start the presentation. You have a lot to talk about tonight and not as much time, let Martha take it away.

Thank you. Good evening council and mayor and deputy mayor. I'll be presenting tonight on the Senate Bill five thousand one eighty four parking implementation project that the city is required to comply with. I have a total of 17 slides I'll try to go through it really quickly but this is what I'll be going over tonight. So I'll start off with the Senate bill itself.

It was passed in 2025 and it limits the on-site parking spaces that cities may require for commercial and residential uses, and so this is the first set of requirements it says that cities may not require more than one space per single family dwelling unit and a half a space per multi family unit and then no more than two spaces per a thousand square feet of commercial space and these are the uses that cities may not require any minimum parking for and something to make clear is that this bill does not set limitations on the number of parking spaces it just limits the number of parking spaces that cities may require for a use and the deadline to comply with this is in January 2027. So our current parking regulations set minimum parking based on the zone the land use the square footage or the number of bedrooms in a unit and for some uses also requirements for residential and for commercial uses and then the land uses that require a parking study include day cares, schools, recreational facilities, etc. There are several. And over the last six months or so Council decided to adopt 5,184 parking requirements for middle housing, for co living housing and for the Juanita community initiated amendment request locations so those uses and locations already comply with 5,184 and the rest of the regulations do not so they will have to be amended We also currently have a parking modification process that gets used pretty regularly by applicants but it can add a lot of time and cost to what could otherwise be a pretty straightforward project.

The process requires the applicant to submit a thorough parking study prepared by a transportation engineer and the application goes through a public noticing process to notify residents and owners within 300 feet of the subject property and the approval could also be appealed to the hearing examiner and so this process can add a lot of uncertainty and cost for the applicant and the property owner for whether like a lease agreement can work out for a business that's trying to move in and there's a table in the packet that shows some examples of these modifications and it also shows that the 5,184 parking levels would negate the need for the modification for all of those projects. So here's a table that shows some example projects, some pretty recent projects and it compares the minimum parking required under existing regulations and what would be required under 5,184. It also shows the number of spaces that were proposed and provided on-site and this really shows the stark difference between our current regulations and what would be required under 5,184 and a lot of the difference is because of the many of these projects being mixed use and under 5,184 the requirements for ground floor commercial space in a mixed use project would be zero parking spaces and then also for residential units under 1,200 square feet would be zero as well so there would be a big change for those mixed use projects but this table also shows that projects are generally providing more spaces than required under current code regardless, specifically the low density residential projects and then the larger projects such as the Village At Totem Lake, the Google campus, and the Jade residences example.

Staff has identified three project scope options for your consideration and I will go through each of them. The first one is early minimum compliance with 5,184. This would implement the bill as soon as possible before the January deadline and would involve amending the zoning code and replacing all of the uses that are called out in the bill and implementing those parking rates instead and then it would retain the existing parking regulations for the remaining uses and some of those uses there aren't very many based on our initial research but it would include at least schools and faith based facilities that would be untouched. The second project scope option is early minimum compliance so option one plus eliminating parking requirements within the station area boundaries. This is included as an option because catalyzing the station area is included in the city work program and removing all parking related barriers to development in that area could help catalyze development there.

This is a map that shows all of the surface parking within that area which we thought was interesting and then also shows the ten minute walk shed to the new BRT station so has good access to transit. The third project scope option is to add an allowance to either option one or two for existing commercial spaces to be allowed to expand without providing parking for that expansion and this was added because there has been some issues for businesses that are trying to relocate or start up and they aren't able to expand their new space especially in the Central Business District and so we are proposing that there could be an allowed expansion potentially up to 30% or something around there without being required to provide parking. And for any of these project scope options one through three staff would plan for the next council meeting on the project to be for adoption unless directed otherwise. And here's a list of continued research topics that we have identified as needing to look into a little bit more with the 5184 implementation I'm not going to go into them but I can if you have questions one of the additional research topics is bicycle parking that I want to touch on because we do have a staff recommendation on it.

We currently require one bicycle parking space for every 12 vehicle parking spaces that are required so it is tied to the vehicle parking space requirements and the staff recommendation would be to adopt the station area bicycle parking requirements for the rest of the city so we developed these requirements and they're based on square footage or a number of units rather than number of vehicle parking spaces. The public outreach plan is proposed to be pretty limited because these parking changes are required by the state and they're also supported by the comprehensive plan so staff recommends a limited outreach plan including a webpage and email updates sent out to the stakeholders. For the project timeline there are two options for council to consider the first is the typical zoning code amendment which would include staff continuing to do research and then amending the drafting code amendments to bring back to council for adoption and that would be around summer time or if council wants to act quickly on this we could do an early action ordinance which would include adopting the 5,184 requirements as soon as possible with the caveat that the cleanup for the zoning code would occur after adoption And the adoption would be in April 2026 this year and then the cleanup after.

Go ahead. Councilor Pascal?

Just a question about that. So really, the only difference is a cleanup with the code. If it's just kind of a cleanup exercise, then why would we wait? Like I'm, I guess I'm just not following that. So the only reason we would wait is because we wanna clean up the code, it wouldn't really result in any material differences. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. I can respond. Council member Pascal. I think there's a lot of cleanup in the code. Know, parking is all over the code. We don't want

it, yeah.

We have

to sort of go painstakingly through it and clean it up. So it does take a little bit of time, so yeah, the early adoption would just allow us to get it in. If applications are coming in, right, they would be vested in those new regulations. It would be, right, wouldn't have to provide as much parking as before, and then we would just have more time to do the cleanup, which is a little bit time consuming. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, does. I'm just trying to understand what the impacts would be to the public, which really wouldn't be anything.

Just early, yeah. It would give applicants a little more time with more lenient parking regulations.

Okay, thank you.

And I can just, so part of this that wasn't as clear is that this also applies to existing buildings if you do the early implementation, right? So a lot of it we think about as a new project or a new proposal, but this is what else would be helpful to people who wanna move around. So we actually do think there's value even in a few months because we don't know what project might move from here to there or a person who wants to expand. So that's the reason we had the early action option.

Martha, Council Member Prem has a question.

Then just another question. So the first option, the staff continues research and drafts zoning code amendments. Would those zoning code amendments be would they pertain to SB 5,184 or are these different ones?

They would just be to implement 5,184. We would be removing a lot of our parking regulations and then adding in the five thousand one eighty four.

So it's just a slower process basically?

Yeah it's pretty much just all of the cleanup work. Okay got it.

Okay thanks. Yeah.

So the next steps will really depend on council's feedback but we do have a Planning Commission briefing scheduled for next week February 26 and that's my last slide so I have some questions for council and I'll hand it back to you, Mayor. Thanks.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, did I just see you?

I did. Oh, you did. I have a question, and then I'm just going to sort of share my overarching thought and try to keep it short. First of all, Martha, you highlighted something I hadn't really focused on before, and I just want to make sure I understand it. So we have small business owners wanting to open up a physical therapy or a childcare center or a coffee shop right now wanting to rent space where we have space available in Kirkland at any number of our neighborhood centers. And the potential four to what was the four to sixteen week process? What was it?

Yeah, the parking modification process?

The parking like, if the building they're looking to lease, the space they're looking to lease, that building doesn't have the parking necessary to sort of meet this new need of, let's say, a physical therapist clinic. Before they can sign a lease, they're talking a several potentially a several week process.

That's correct. Yeah.

And that right there has me really thinking about that together with actually some of our existing small businesses who have committed and invested in Kirkland, who are wanting to invest a little bit more by expanding, it's those people I'm really thinking about when we're thinking about early implementation. And we're only talking about less than a year. But even as between the early action ordinance and the zoning code amendment, I'm thinking about those folks. And so that really kind of leads me to where I think I'm going to land, which is and I know we're not making a decision tonight, we're just providing guidance. But I think where I want to land is we got to do this by January 2027.

There are business owners in Kirkland today or people who want to invest in Kirkland today that this is impacting. That makes me want to act more quickly. And then the only thing I would add is the word consistency. At the end of the day, with the options that we have in front of us, particularly the idea of something slightly different for the station area, right now I'm really focused on how we can have sort of consistent regulation like this and other sort of development right related well, development rights that are sort of consistent through our neighborhood center. That's something I really would like through our neighborhood centers.

That's something I would really like to focus on. So for this, I would really like us to focus on this is my vote, not an actual vote. My direction is 5,184 implementation consistent through our neighborhood centers, probably with the early action of the ordinance given that we have actual businesses affected today. And then I think that's it. And I'll thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Barry Thackall.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I agree with a lot of what the deputy mayor said. I agree that that doing the early action ordinance, I think, makes sense given what we've heard tonight, not only for our for our small businesses, like the deputy mayor really well articulated really well that that need that, but also for I think of you know, I was at the 85th Station Area Breakfast, And this was a recurring theme, not just from the large group discussion, but from a lot of the smaller group discussions that happened after the event, that doing this both early and going a little bit above and beyond especially in the station area will help attract developers because there's limited what I heard that day and since from some developers is that there's limited funding right now. It's a challenging, as we know, economy right now, and so they have to choose which city they're going to choose to develop in. And if we signal to them that we are a city that wants to do business with folks, that we want to help catalyze development in the 85th Station area, then that could be the difference between them building something in Redmond versus Kirkland or, you know, Woodinville or wherever, any other of the cities and I think it was really I really appreciated having the comparison table in the memo about what some other cities have done.

So I do have some questions though. Went through you went through thank you so much, Martha a lot of different uses and what the different requirements will be for that for parking. What would it be for hotels? Does this impact hotels as well? You said schools and faith based will be untouched.

Yeah, I believe hotels would just fall under the commercial category. Okay. Yeah, under the state bill, the commercial definition is very broad.

Okay. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And as far as the timeline for if we did Option one versus Option two or if we also added on Option three, would it be the same amount of time, like the April, you know, early action ordinance? Would that apply regardless of which options we chose to move forward with

like whether or not to add on the option three

add on option three or to add on the additional part that's an option two

Yeah, I

can chime in. Thanks for the question Councilmember Falcone. I think that if we were doing an early action ordinance I think we could hit that April timeline whether we added in option two and or three.

Okay thank you that's really helpful because I do share that lens with the deputy mayor of the timeliness here that we're hearing time and time again I appreciated you tying it back to our city work program and catalyzing the station area that's something that is really important as as we know to the city and to city council. And like I said, hearing from developers, this is something we can do to go above and beyond. So I do support options two, and I also support options three for the reasons that were really well articulated already about supporting our business community. The reason I bring up the hotel obviously is we also just met with the Park Board and we're talking about the Kraken facility and we know from the economic analysis report that we need more hotels and we know this is something we've discussed before in station area and so that's a particular interest is making sure that we are doing what we can to attract the right type of hotel that will meet the need for the new Kraken facility and that's timely as well right given the pretty ambitious timeline that the Kraken have.

I want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to get lined up so that we're getting the benefit that our residents, our community members are getting the benefit of that investment that we've made and that the economic development dollars are happening here in our city. And so I do look to this as a potential tool to help us with that. I appreciate you mentioning that the market provides, you know, many times above the minimum parking requirements, and so I do think that's something that we're going to just see what the market needs. The eighty fifth stationery is intentionally, obviously, built around transit, right, and is very active transportation focused, and so I feel like it's appropriate for us to have to reduce the parking minimums even further there. This is also something that's come up in TDC in the work that we do with the hotels and hotel development with the Kraken facility.

So it is something that folks are paying attention to in different groups in our community are looking to what we're working on here. So thank you.

Right, Councillor Maprim and then Councillor Maprasco.

Yeah, so I think I support option one as I think it's a pretty straightforward approach to achieving early citywide compliance to state law. So I think doing that and doing it quickly is the best approach, in my opinion. I also support Option three to add an allowance to Option one for existing commercial spaces to be able to without being required to provide additional on-site parking. I think strapping small businesses for parking requirements to be able to expand is not good. And I even heard an example of a small business wanting to add some height, and just from a height addition, they were required to add more parking spaces, which is ridiculous, so I'm glad that we're going to hopefully take that out.

I think in terms of option hesitant with that just because I think consistency amongst different neighborhoods in a city really makes things just more predictable, workable, easily administrable. So especially when, you know, if you have different areas with different parking requirements, but they're used but they're but they're actually functioning with similar uses, I think that also adds a lot of confusion in administering and enforcing these requirements. And of course, you know, if a developer wants to come in and create more parking spaces, then let the market do its job. So that's my opinions in a nutshell.

Thank you. Kasper Pascal.

Thank you. I don't know that I'm gonna have a ton new to add here. I guess I'm I would be pretty aggressive here and goes to option three using option two as a basis. You know, a couple reasons for that and it's kinda something that that some of my colleagues said is, you know, developers are just basically waiting around for s b fifty one eighty four to be implemented. So why not just implement it so so so projects can get moving?

I mean, otherwise, the holding costs are are pretty high and I don't know what we're doing in the meantime because we have to implement it. And I don't really And I think And my reason for the question earlier is what benefits do we gain from from waiting and what I heard is there's no benefits being gained from waiting. There's only impacts. So so very much support option one. Option two, I think with the stationary, I think we've talked about this for the last many months is that we need to catalyze development there and I understand the consistency concerns that that others have mentioned, but this is an area that we should at least try something different to get things moving.

And and we're investing in that in that area, so that's that's let's do this for the 85th Street. And as far as option option three with that with the commercials with greater allowance, I mean, that's something we've heard for a long time, I believe. And so I think this would be that that's just a great kind of common sense addition in in my mind. So I don't think I said really anything new there. But the new things I do wanna add is about the research items that you'd identified.

One is I would like us to track the parking that is built under these new under these new regulations, just the spaces built and and and utilization where we where we do have or get have that information and or tracking kind of complaints or issues. Just so we have

that

information so we can respond and change tactics. It's not that we change regulations but, you know, there is an operations and a management side to this. So it'd be nice to track that. And that's just gonna be an ongoing thing. The I guess the the second piece that I'd ask, and I don't know when the appropriate time for this would be, is I do really think we need to get ahead of the curve and kinda really think about what that management program is, parking management program.

That's going to be necessary and I don't want to be reacting to that when we kind of all of a sudden see all these issues that happen and go, okay, what do we do? And it's gonna take a year or two years or three years to kinda get that going. I'd like to have an understanding of what that would entail and how we would get that started. And what I mean by a parking management plan is as soon as you eliminate minimum parking requirements, for the most part, developers are going to build to the demand. There are going to be situations where that doesn't happen and then there's gonna be spillover effects and those impacts most I'm most concerned of our safety impacts.

And and so then that behooves the city and our government to get involved to make sure that they address the safety impacts. Right? And that becomes parking permits, more parking officers to patrol. That's more costs on the taxpayers and how do we pay for that. What does that look like? How would we get a program going over time? I'm not saying to do it. I'm just saying let's explore kind of what that entails so that we're prepared if the time comes that we can move forward on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mayor Arnold and Councilor Maretenshuisi.

Thank you, Mayor. Briefly, I support Option two with the Option three add on and early action. My feedback is that as you're looking at the stationary and eliminating parking requirements, perhaps look at differences within the station area given the mixed use area versus the urban flex district or maybe there's another way to cut it, but not sure that throughout the entire station area having parking requirements eliminated is the right thing, but certainly within some parts of it. Thank you.

Did Thank

we do this in the two CARs at Michael's and

No.

Okay. So it's not just the stationary. I mean, we've got the stationary, then we've got these two out. And, you know, if we're going to start carving out this spot and this spot and this spot and this spot Maybe I'm leaning towards option three or two. I could be convinced either way, but it seems like, yeah, that we're kind of we would have so many different spots within the city where we've done this that we might as well just kind of go all in. Thanks.

Thank you. I just want to clarify. So when we say we did what? Did we do option one for those cars, or did we do option two?

Just option one.

Option one. Just option one, which is consistent with SB 05/1984. Okay. I

am option three. I am also an option two because the more I think about we designed the stationary to be a transit oriented city with walkable neighborhoods. So I think that option two is the way we should go. I strongly, strongly support what Councilmember Pascal said about we need to be proactive and move forward our downtown parking study and our curb management plan, which will affect the work plan both for the Transportation Commission and the Planning Commission. But we should not be passive about this.

We should start thinking about how we manage our roadways. Thank you. Anything else? Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to emphasize one point. It's a little bit nuanced, but it's reinforcing what the mayor and council member Pascualar said. The I wanna emphasize that the results of the parking study or what we come up with the parking study may actually impact the question about what we can expect from the market with respect to parking. In other words, if parking costs $2 an hour for overspill, that is going to change the calculus that a developer might make with respect to the number of parking.

So I just want to emphasize the point, like, not only do we need to have this in place for when 5,184 implementation goes, but we should actually be thinking about if there's any examples out there of examples of where there is no parking management and what developers decide. And we've seen that a little bit. We don't have parking management in Kirkland, really, other than hourly limits. And we see developers put more parking in, in a lot of the examples that we've looked at. How does that change in cities and neighborhoods where they do have paid parking and only paid parking?

I'd like to understand that more. I think we should be thinking about that when thinking about the parking management bit. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate your time. Thank you. That concludes our study session for this evening. We will be back at 07:30 for our regular meeting.

Hello. Hi. Okay. Day of remembrance of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, 02/19/2026. Whereas on 02/19/1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed executive order nine zero six six, which authorized the force evacuation and incarceration of thousands of loyal United States citizens because of their Japanese ancestry.

And whereas on 05/20/1942, approximately 60 Japanese American families from Bellevue boarded a train in Kirkland bound for a relocation center in Tooele Lake in Northern California. And whereas over two and a half years from 1942 to 1945, the US government removed Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast from states of California, Washington, Oregon, and the Alaskan territory without due process and many unable to inform their families, forcing them into internment camps in unfamiliar lands in the states of Montana, New Mexico, and North Dakota. And whereas approximately 7,390 Americans of Japanese descent from Western Washington and Alaska and approximately 120,000 from West Coast were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps, enduring miserable conditions and treated by military guards. Whereas, despite these experiences, thousands of young Japanese Americans men enlisted in the US Armed Forces bravely fighting to defend their nation that was abridging their own freedoms at home. And whereas president Gerald Ford terminated the order on 02/19/1976 and the US government in 1988 admitted that the forced evacuation and incarceration of Japanese American families was based on racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

And whereas, this stain on our history should remind us that we should always stand up for our fellow Americans and that acknowledgment of past injustices can help bring people together around a recommitment to shared values in our country of civil rights and civil liberties. Now, therefore, mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the city council, does hereby proclaim 02/19/2026 as the day of remembrance of Japanese incarceration during World War two in Kirkland and calls upon the Kirkland community to join in solemn remembrance of the issuance of executive order nine zero six six in 1942 and to commemorate the rescission of that same order on 02/19/1976.

Hello. My name is Claire Krumkevich. Fred Krumantu was an inspiring activist who fought against the Japanese internment camps during World War two. I am grateful that that my teacher, Ms. Latoura taught me about Fred and him. Thank you to the city of Kirkland for recognizing this great man.

Well, let's will you receive the proclamation or who should receive the proclamation? This is for you, my friend.

Nice job. Great job. What a wonderful moment to do it once.

Alright. That was very special. And the room is now clearing. My oldest is turning 30 this year, so I miss those days. Alright. This is the time in our meeting when you normally hear from the public. Please limit your remarks to three minutes. We will 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 a subject. To address the council during these items from the audience period, please sign up using the online public comment instruction link or the posted QR code in chambers. For 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 the speaker. When that happens, even when supporting the speaker, it can be disruptive of the meeting and discourage others from sharing a different point of view. 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 council chambers during our meeting regardless of their content. Kirkland prides itself on being a respectful, welcoming community. We want everyone to feel like they belong in council chambers expressing their viewpoints. City Clerk, who do we have signed up?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. At this point, we have seven guests wishing to speak. They all are on-site. We'll start with the first three in this order: Susan Popalardo, Michael Foy, Louita Hawkinson. Please approach the podium.

Susan, welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Curtis and Deputy Mayor Black and council members. My name is Susan Papillardo, I'm a thirty three year Kirkland resident and the cofounder and president of the nonprofit Splash Forward, whose mission is to support new public aquatic facilities and programs that expand access to aquatics, building essential life skills, community connection and healthy lifestyles. Yesterday, I sent an e mail to you sharing the results of a public Peter Kirk pool winterization survey that we've been running since August. As of last night, the survey had two eighty four responses, of which 82% were from Kirkland. There is a great interest in a covered year round Peter Kirk pool.

The questions and comments that were shared echo many of the same voices you've heard in support of a year round aquatic facility that would support swim lessons, lap swimming, water aerobics, family fun, water safety training and high school aquatic team usage. Last March, you received a splash forward in aquatic an Isaac Sports Group analysis report. We explored options for a right sized indoor 40,000 square foot community aquatic center shared our vision for to develop an every second grader learns to swim program and shared our input on the winterization of Peter Kerr Pool we worked closely with Lake Washington School District the city wave aquatics to develop that analysis and provide an informed and ready launchpad for Kirkland's next steps. Given the high cost to the enclosure options for Peter Kirk Pool and the lack of available funding, city staff have prepared options to advance expansion of Kirkland's swim lesson programming and the necessary maintenance and baseline investments in Peter Kirk Pool. These include an extended swim lesson schedule in May and September, upgrading the waiting pool to an activity pool and an expanded bathhouse in addition to extending the life of Peter Kerr Pool.

Tonight, we encourage you to ask the following questions: What, besides swim lessons, can occur during the May and September when you heat the lap pool and provide staffing? What rentals, lap lane hours, fitness classes, water safety training or pool passes could be offered to expand community access, increase revenue and improve cost recovery? We also ask, can a third party operator with experience and capacity reduce the city's cost to operate and staff the pool and run programming during the shoulder months? In addition to swim lessons, what other community programming would be possible in both the activity and lap pool in the summer as well as the extended months, and there are opportunities in that lap pool once you expand programming in the activity pool. Are there opportunities for Lake Washington School District and Club Aquatic Team usage May and September, and how does this benefit Juanita High School pool community programming?

The options you direct should fit within what the city can afford as well as long term planning for a new year round aquatic community center. I'm happy to share that we will be running our Every Second Grader Learns to Swim pilot with John Muir Elementary this spring at Juanita High School serving just over 52 students. Flash Forward is capable and skilled at providing programming and use analysis, and we're committed to working with stakeholders and partners like the school district, the city, and community to understand needs and opportunities for Kirkland. Thank you for your commitment to serving Kirkland's aquatic

needs. Susan, thank you.

Michael.

Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Curtis, Deputy Mayor Black, council members, city manager Triplett, and Chief St. Jean. This is the first time I've done anything like this, and it's an auspicious day. I'd like to remember my uncle, Richard Nischio, who was put in one of those camps during World War II and his family, his mother, father and his grandmother, or his bachon, as he would say.

So I think it's an auspicious day that I rise to say this. I'm a twenty year resident of Kirkland, and I'm here because of the safety of our community. It requires the courage of local government to resist tyranny at every level. Federal entities are currently attempting to bypass the Fourth Amendment through use of what they call forms I-two 100 and I-two zero five. This is the DHS.

Let us be technically clear, these are not judicial warrants. They call them administrative warrants. They are internal agency documents signed by a bureaucrat, not neutral judges, supported by probable cause. No warrant is valid without a judicial finding of this probable cause. These are God given rights, and we will not allow the rule of the clipboard to replace the rule of law in our own driveways.

The city of Kirkland has a moral and legal obligation to act. We must layer local protections over the baseline of the Keep Washington Working Act and other, activities at the state level. I am formally requesting that the council implement these specific protocols, and there are three. First, mandatory identity and transparency. Currently, Washington Senate Bill 5,855 is being debated and will be, in the House tomorrow.

I encourage everyone to look at it. And it prohibits or will prohibit law enforcement, including ICE, from wearing masks. Anonymity is the enemy of accountability, but it's the handmaiden of abuse. I demand that the Kirkland Police Department be freed to intercept and log IDs of any federal agents operating in our neighborhoods. If they are on our streets, we must see their faces, we must know their identities. Secondly, there's a strict warrant classification, right? We must recognize that those forms are civil notices only. They do not grant the right of entry into private property, and any attempt to use these forms to breach a home must be treated as a criminal trespass. Third, active police mediation. We ask that Chief St.

Jean be able to verify and step in and at least escort these folks out of our your their jurisdiction if they will not provide such, such information. Council members, if an elected an unelected bureaucrat can strip a resident of their rights with piece of paper that they themselves printed. Why should any one citizen feel obligated to obey the law? I've laid out the legal path to sovereignty, and now I await your courage to walk it. I expect a response the record at some point, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Loida?

Loida Hawkinson, followed by Eva Spainhauer and Liz Hunt.

I'm Louina Hockinson, fifty year resident of Kirkland and a member of Kirkland Heritage Society, and I'm here to address the proclamation tonight. I was so pleased to see all those kids. There's a paver stone, a large paver stone in front of Heritage Hall. And it says, in solemn recognition of the four forty three persons of Japanese ancestry residing on the East Side who were, by executive order ninety sixty six evacuated at the Kirkland Railroad Depot on 05/20/1942. This was installed in a long time ago.

I would like to acknowledge I would like to have the city acknowledge that of the that that was 443. It wasn't about over 400. It was those were 443 citizens, from babies to elderly people. They all had the stigma. Even if they were babies, they were ripped away from their homes.

So they all felt the stigma of it. They largely came from Bellevue, but one family, the Yabuki family, came from Kirkland. It was a family of eight, mother and a father, and six kids. The oldest one had graduated and was at university, graduated from Kirkland High School. The two girls had graduated in 1941.

The next year, they were at camp, but they graduated from Kirkland High School. Just saw second graders. Third grader was taken from central school. And then there was one in diapers, and there was one in also at central school, a little boy, a boy 14 was at Central School or at junior high. That's these grounds right here.

That's Heritage Hall. That's Heritage Park, those areas. Central School was on this property. And I just want to acknowledge all six of them were born in Houghton. And when they left, the six kids and the parents, they left a newborn baby that had been born in 1920 and is buried in the Kirkland Cemetery and has a very nice marker that his parents put there a hundred years ago.

So I'd just like to acknowledge Kirkland had and they they left from Kirkland only because Kirkland had the railroad station where they had sit down. It was covered, protected area. They got their orders in Kirkland as well because it was centrally located. And so I just want to acknowledge the Yubuki family. Thank you.

Thank you, Lolita, for sharing that history. Eva?

Hello. Good evening, all of you. I am Eva Marie Spainhauer. I'm a sophomore at Nikola Tesla STEM High School, and I am here today upon request of one of your council members to tell you about Rand Marine Technology and my organization, Clean the Waves, which I am founding this year. So my plan for these two organizations is to work with the city of Kirkland, hopefully, if you agree, to help clean up the waterways starting with Juanita Bay, which I feel has been undertreated.

We get toxic algae blooms every year, and this new technology is supposed to neutralize that. It's called the CyanoShark, and I would like to introduce that into the Kirkland waters to hopefully keep our kids safer while they swim and keep our environment healthier to protect the habitats that are all around us. And I wanted to talk about just the organization in general, the Rand Marine Technology. I have been in contact with the head of global sales, and I have actually reached out to all of you, and I've had correspondence with a few of you. And I am really interested in working with you guys to make the Kirkland Waterways safer for everybody, not just people, but also all the organisms that live there.

And I believe that this is the way we can do it. So there are two models that I'm currently looking at called the waste shark plus and the cyanoshark. So this is an algae neutralizing model, as I said before, as well as a trash collection model, and I think this would be a really good way to help clean up the Kirkland waters. And I just wanted to give you my introduction. I have more to say if anyone would like to meet outside of this.

I know I have a meeting with the head of the surface water division, and I'm just really excited to share this with you all. I hope this is promising. I didn't really prepare anything other than my presentations, but I'm really passionate about this. This is something I love. I'm in AP Environmental Science right now, and we just did our water unit, and this is something I really care about.

And so I hope all of you will take it into consideration to maybe partner with me in the future or even just allow me to run this organization in our waters because I think it really is one of the go green things that everyone is talking about. It's promising. They've worked with city councils before, and I think that this could be revolutionary for Kirkland and would really help us in the long run. So thank you.

Thank you, Eva. I appreciate you being here tonight. Liz Hunt.

Liz Hunt, followed by Nicole McKenzie, Amy Johnson and Alex Timmerman.

Welcome.

Good evening, counsel and staff. My name is Liz Hunt, and I want to speak to business item 9D, which is the legislative session update. Specifically, House Bill 2,266, which is intended to encourage the creation of housing for people in need in our county. Permanent supportive housing, like is opening up at the La Quinta, which is now Sheila Stanton Place, and also shelters and the like. Parts of this bill are reasonable.

One part, however, I think needs to be amended. This bill is encouraging these special types of housing, and it says that supportive housing and shelters must be treated just like other housing, can be built anywhere that you can build a regular house or a hotel. And this bill would outlaw special agreements, such as the Good Neighbor Agreement that is in place at the La Quinta. But a Good Neighbor Agreement is not a burdensome roadblock to creating this kind of housing. These are actually agreements that help these facilities succeed, and I would say we really want these facilities to succeed.

They provide policies for safety, security, on-site staff, and those kinds of matters. Those are good for the neighborhood, but they're also good for the people living in these facilities. So are these kinds of housing really just like any other housing in the area? I think that having special requirements on these facilities is actually relevant because there special requirements to get into those facilities. To be at La Quinta, you have to have documented problems and have a need for the facilities and the 20 fourseven care that's provided at that facility.

That's specifically what that facility is for, to help you get back on your feet, and you need some help with that. So I would say that folks in favor of this bill would probably say, Well, of course there's going to be rules at facilities like this. But it says right in this bill that you cannot have special requirements on these facilities and special agreements, And I think that's a failing of that bill. So this isn't only for the La Quinta because the city in our comprehensive plan has committed to the county that we can accommodate 24 more La Quinta's in the next eighteen years. And so these rules that we're putting in place now are going to affect more than just one facility.

So I encourage you to encourage the folks in Olympia to address that one piece of that 22 page bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Liz. And we will be talking about that bill later this evening. Nicole?

Thank you, good evening, counsel. I'm here to talk tonight about Peter Kirkpole. You guys might find this surprising coming from me, but I strongly encourage you to find a way to cover Peter Kirkpole. I appreciate that you're trying to be cost conscious, And that's something that my husband and I have both said repeatedly in prior measures to build a brand new facility, hey, you're going over the top. You're doing more than is necessary and asking the citizens to provide and spend a lot more money than we really need to do.

So I appreciate that you're looking at the cost and how to be cost effective. And I would say the way that we have found money to spend on things that citizens of Kirkland have not asked for far more than what we're asking or what we're projecting would be needed to repair and cover Peter Kirkpool. I think for something that the citizens of Kirkland have been asking for decades now, we need to find a way to do it. And it can be done, and I encourage you to do it. The citizens of Kirkland will support this. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Amy next.

Hi, my name is Amy Johnson. I've been a resident of Kirkland for thirty one years. I went to Rose Hill Elementary, Stella Scola in Rose Hill Junior High, Lake Washington. And after going to college in California, I gladly came back. I've actually been in contact with deputy mayor Black regarding the transfer of the charging stations at the South Kirkland Park And Ride.

They were vandalized quite a while ago and I've been in contact and Black Councilmember Black as well has been in contact with both the King County Department of Transit as well as the ChargePoint manufacturers as well. We've had kind of some contact, but not as much progress as we would like. I am an endurance cyclist, so they have their work cut up for them. So I'll always keep following up with them and I'll keep Deputy Mayor Black informed. But I just wanted to kind of come here and use this opportunity as a resident and say I'm actually very proud of living in Kirkland, fortuitous byproduct of having the charging cables cut is I rely more on public transit and just walking into Kirkland and using the buses too.

So from going to using the greater Seattle area to really in my community. It's been extremely rewarding and enlightening. I've taken all my yoga classes at SolarU, I've taken candle making classes at the Remedant, I've done cooking classes at Sur La Table, I've done a poetry reading at the bookstore on Market, I go to library all the time, I shop at Met Market, I go to Kitchen and Market. So I think what we have here is really special and I think as much as we can to invest in our local community and invest in what the residents here have that are currently living here. So I just wanted to actually just say thank you to you all for your service and your commitment to our community.

I think just in reference to Kirkland and its history, Peter Kirk, I'm glad he failed in his industrialist dream and that we have beautiful waterfront parks. And I'm actually very excited to hear that there's projects with remediation of the waterfront because we know that it's kind of a bummer when you can't go swimming at our beautiful beaches. But I think now we have more types of insidious pollution going on in our country, specifically with isolation, nativism, and just ultimately what's all based in fear. So I just want to express my gratitude in all of you and just encourage everybody to keep being motivated in these challenging times because I really appreciate where I live and what you folks do. So that's all.

But yeah, thanks folks and it's been a pleasure just having this opportunity to speak with everybody.

Thank you Amy. All right. I think our last speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Hi.

My name is Alex Zimmerman. I have very good news for you. Yeah. Minnesota State Washington State, I guess, right now. Yeah. Approximately, for my understanding, $400,000,000,000. Yeah. So I don't want to speak exactly about $100,000,000,000. But what is this one speak is about in country housing authority because board of director commissioner black here. Yeah.

And with his approval, we give a government apartment, but it's supposed to be belong to US citizen and we have executive order from Trump about this. Yeah. But he approved something for a few thousand people who not have ever document. So for my understanding, when we go to this $100,000,000,000 stealing money, so for my understanding, this is he's a part of crime because stealing money give people money, American citizen money to people who don't have document or have something. What is not real document?

This is crime. And he, by definition, supposed to be because it's a crime. So this is number one. And number two, what is for me very interesting, he give me trespass for six months after I come to committee. We work in country house and authority meeting every month and speak about my opinion about this, and I do in everything legal. So and because he's attorney for thirty year, for my understanding. So it look to me nothing different from thousand attorney what is how experienced in state Washington. So crooked by definition better, little bit better than car dealer, used car dealer. So I bring to you US Supreme Court decision to you in to mayor. Yes.

To copy. This decision about US Supreme Court, so you cannot give trespass to people in future. And exactly when they talking for trimming it, by definition, it's a crime. So you are a criminal. You are a thief. You are supposed to be something doing to him about this. So I give this definition to you. It is black and white US Supreme Court decision, future trespass not possible when you have three minute civilized speak. You understand? It's not too much worried me because I have 7,000 right now trespasses from Democrat, from this communist Nazi fascist pig.

What is Donald Trump? Listen, my three minute, Kirkland Super. You are best. You're only one who don't give me trespass. So I want to give this copy to professional attorney here and to you. Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up. Stand up poor and happy cow. Yes. Thank you very much.

All right, we are now closing items from the audience. And we are moving on to special presentations, which is our annual update from the Kirkland Downtown Association Board President, Cassandra Joyner, City Manager. It's all right. I know, my timing was terrible.

Slightly distracted. So I think you said it all. We're excited to have the Kirkland Downtown Association here to present. As you know, they do a lot of wonderful community building for us in the city of Kirkland, especially downtown. And to report on their twenty twenty five accomplishments, here is our KDA board president, Cassandra Joyner. I'll note that she received a award at our recent chamber of commerce awards thing, her and her partner. So excited to see that as well.

Congratulations. Oh, slides. Yay.

Thank you so much for your help.

Right. Hello there. Nice to see you all this evening. Mayor Curtis, Deputy Mayor Black, all the council members, staff, thank you all for being here tonight and for letting me come speak and present our year end recap. I will be sharing about our 2025 year.

It was a lot of celebrated meaningful wins we worked through a lot of challenges and laid the groundwork for an even stronger 2026 in 2025 the Kirkland Downtown Association focused on three core priorities: business development, community events, and beautification. Even without a full time employee, our working board remained deeply engaged in day to day work of supporting downtown. We prioritize consistent monthly reporting, merchant communication, and proactive engagement initiatives to ensure downtown businesses felt supportive and informed. A key part of our success was strong collaboration with the city's economic development and parks departments, the partnership that amplified our impact and strengthened our abilities to activate downtown in meaningful ways. To give you a snapshot of our impact, in 2025, we generated over 1,200 volunteer hours.

We engaged 97 clean sweep volunteers. We welcomed more than 30,000 attendees across all of our events, and we brought in two eighty two new volunteers. These numbers represent more than attendance. They represent energy, economic activity, and community pride in downtown Kirkland. Our signature programs continue to thrive.

The Kirkland Wednesday Farmers Market remains strong with a weekly draw of residents and visitors. We successfully placed and operated a downtown ice rink on the Peter Kirk field at the Lee Johnson Baseball Field, a major logistical effort that created a vibrant winter activation and brought families downtown during traditionally slower months. Our summer concerts were once again a highlight, drawing strong attendance and reinforcing downtown as a gathering place. These events not only create memorable experiences, they directly support our local businesses by increasing foot traffic and visibility. Beyond the events, we focused heavily on merchant engagement.

Through monthly merchant meetings, newsletters, social media updates and vacancy tracking, we maintain consistent communication with downtown businesses. Our goal is always to ensure merchants feel connected, informed and supported. One of the most visible and rewarding initiatives each year is the annual Clean Sweep. This effort, led by dedicated board members and volunteers, has a lasting impact on the appearance and pride of our downtown environment. Beautification may not always be flashy, but is fundamental to economic vitality.

2025 was also a year of learning for all of us. Operating without a full time employee required our Board to truly roll up their sleeves. It reinforced the importance of clear processes, strong partnerships, and shared leadership. We also made important improvements in our permitting approach. After navigating challenges in 2024, we hired a professional events company to ensure more accurate and streamlined permitting.

The adjustment has strengthened our operational capacity for moving forward. These lessons positioned us for a more sustainable and organized future. Of course the KDA would not be what we are without our amazing volunteer ran board members. As you can see on our screen, we are a working board made up of local business owners real estate professionals and community members who actively contribute their time expertise and leadership their commitment is the reason the KDA continues to move forward transitional periods and why we continue to strive for excellence. Downtown success is a truly shared effort of all of us and everybody really here and even community members.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are focused on early planning and strong execution. The first part of the year includes submitting permits, securing sponsorships, recruiting vendors and finalizing logistics. We present our annual report, continue promoting upcoming events and prepare for clean sweep and summer activations. Our goal is to stay ahead of timelines and build momentum early in the year. As we move into summer and fall, our concerts, Wednesday markets and additional activations will be in full swing.

We will finalize permitting for WinterFest and the ice rink well in advance, ensuring smoother operations and stronger coordination with city departments. Planning and promotion for Small Business Saturday, WinterFest and winter activations will begin months before execution, creating more strategic marketing and sponsorship opportunities. By late fall and winter, our goal is to bring back the ice rink through January,

which I think was

a big hit this last year, celebrate small business Saturday and host WinterFest in the tree lighting, continuing to drive economic activity during the holiday season, which has always been something we've been focused on and trying to improve, so hopefully that was very welcomed. In closing, 2025 demonstrated resilience, collaboration and growth for the Kirkland Downtown Association. We strengthened partnerships, improved processes, and continued delivering meaningful community experiences that support the downtown businesses. We are excited for what 2026 holds and remain committed to ensuring Downtown Kirkland continues to thrive as a heart of our community. Thank you for the partnership and for being a part of the downtown success this past year and for many years to come.

We very much appreciate all of your support.

Thank you, Cassandra. Well done. And thank you to you and your board for all the hard work and the big difference that you make in our downtown community. And congratulations on the ice rink. It was a fabulous success. We're really proud of the work that you're doing. So thank you.

Thank you. That really means a lot to us. We'll continue to strive to make you guys proud.

Thank you. Councilor Mary Falcone, you have some comments?

Thank you, madam mayor. Well, Cassie and Chrissy, thank you. And Christian, thank you so much. You definitely are a very hardworking volunteer board. So thank you for all that you do to just make bring our community together to help with economic vitality, as you mentioned, but also just to bring community together with these events.

It's and all that you do in supporting our businesses in the in the downtown core. I have to say as chair of the of the tourism development committee that I'm really proud of the city's support of some of the work with the ice rink, the summer concerts, and the Wednesday markets. And so I'm thrilled to see those events continue. I also just wanna give shout out. I mean, that ice rink really, really was it was beautiful.

It was beautifully executed. It was just something that really made Kirkland proud, and I've heard so much positive feedback from not just Kirklanders, but people from around the region who came to Kirkland. So well done. A special kudos to Alyanna, I know worked incredibly hard on that and Garrett as well. So thank you to them. I know we've thanked them before, but just kudos. I recognize some of the pictures on the screen here from my iPhone. Those are, you know, just really proud moments for our city, and I really appreciate those partnerships. I know many of us too enjoy the annual clean sweep. And, again, you mentioned economic vitality, but it's also a great community building opportunity for folks.

So thank you for doing that. And I would just add on your time line, don't forget to apply for

the TDC grant as well.

That is true. High on our list. Thank you so much. Was very nice of you. Thank you.

Thank you, Cassandra. We appreciate you taking the time to be here tonight.

Of course. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for your time tonight. All

right. We are going to move on to our consent calendar. Before we have a motion, I'd like to ask Deputy Mayor Black to present audit of accounts and to highlight the proclamation we have on consent.

Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. We had payroll in the amount of $7,563,496.06 and bills in the amount of $12,261,979.28 Also tonight, the mayor, on behalf of the city council, proclaims 02/17/2026, as Lunar New Year in Kirkland. Lunar New Year is traditionally a time for family gatherings and embracing the hope of prosperity and good fortune in the year ahead. Please join us at the city's annual Lunar New Year celebration on February 28, starting at two p. M. At the Peter Kirk Community Center.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

Second?

It's been moved by Councilmember Falcone, seconded by Councilmember Black. Are there any questions, comments? What's your name? Councilmember Falcone.

I don't know. I dropped my name tag earlier. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just have some comments on Item 8H2.

This is

Resolution R5720, adopting the twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven Transportation Commission Work Plan. During our last council meeting and also during tonight's study session, council gave several council members gave feedback on wanting to see really wanting to prioritize curb management planning as well as downtown parking studies. And so rather than pull this item and, you know, propose a further discussion and delay the approval of this work plan. I'd like to ask the city manager your thoughts on perhaps discussing this at our upcoming council retreat. Maybe it could be something that could be pitched during hot topics and then we could follow-up during our budget discussion.

My understanding is some of this work will take some money to do, right? But I just want to make sure that we're moving forward with it, even though we would be adopting this plan, that maybe it would be amended or maybe it would be something that would come straight to counsel later. Thank you.

Think you've definitely outlined all the possible choices. The way staff interpreted the conversation was you didn't take anything off the transportation commission work plan, and the things that you asked about, like the curb management, were additional funding that wasn't yet in the budget. So how we looked at that is that something that we could bring to you in the budget process, or council can ask for it to come as an individual item. So under hot topics in the in the retreat coming up on February 27, we could talk about this a little bit. We also have our May council retreat, which is the fiscal retreat, where we look for direction from councils to things that you want to see done.

We also have our mid buy budget process, where it comes to you in June with tweaks to both the budget and to the capital project. So we felt like we could accomplish, if the council wants prioritize that and fund a study like that, which they both sort of fall in the several $100,000 category that those would be the right time to do it and not necessarily as a transportation commission work program item.

Thank you very much, City Manager.

Thank you, Councilor Mary Falcone and City Manager. The question is on the motion to approve the consent calendar. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, seven zero. All right. We are now moving on to our first business item, which is a discussion of the Peter Kirk Pool closure, city manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So we did start to talk about this a little bit during our study session with the Park Board as this was one of the topics they cared about. This is a follow-up to conversation we had in 2025 about what actions could we take to begin to increase the number of swim lessons provided, particularly at the Peter Kirk Pool and potential options for eventually covering the pool. So we are looking for some feedback and direction for the council tonight on some of the options we have in front of you. Here to give you the presentation is our Parks and Community Services deputy director, John Lloyd, and we'll be looking for your feedback at the end.

John, do you have any embedded video in this presentation? Because that was pretty impressive.

I do not have any embedded video. I do have some photos.

The bar has been raised.

They probably aren't as good. Good evening, madam mayor, deputy mayor Black, city council members, city manager. Tonight, I'm here to discuss, as you heard, the continuing or to continue our discussion on the Peterkirk Pool enclosure with a focus on increasing swim lesson capacity. It's a little preview for what we're going to talk about tonight. I'm going to provide a little bit of background and context on this.

It's not going to be a full twenty year history of the need for a pool within Kirkland, but a little bit more of our recent history. I'll give you a preview of what we're going to recommend and then we'll go into detail of all those recommendations, which include other options to expand our swim lesson, some of our funding opportunities, as well as of relooking at the enclosure options, and then we'll talk about next steps. So a little bit of background, I want to frame the conversation with some of this background data. Some of it on the slide here just provides some context about what we can currently serve with our existing pool. So this is all from last year 2025 data.

Last year, we had a capacity of just under 2,500 people for swim lessons. We saw about an 80% registration rate, which is about average for to about nineteen ninety people. Unfortunately, was still a giant wait list at the end of the summer of over 4,600 people. And on that list, were seven sixty six unique people across all the wait list. The reason we can't fill all the classes to 100% is just based on the people moving between levels and just people dropping out of classes and whatnot on a short notice, where we don't often get all the spots filled at the last minute.

Additionally, use the pool for open swim approximately thirty one hours a week and lap swim another fifteen hours a week. Most recently, we've discussed the option of enclosing the pool following the ballot measure in couple of years ago, we initiated a study to explore prefabricated options at a lower cost than building a whole brand new stand up facility. We presented that study on March 3, and then we came back again in July to provide some additional refined options from all the data that was presented in that big study. At the time in July, we were still waiting on a couple funding questions. There was a grant application that we had pending with the county that unfortunately did not get and then there was a King County ballot measure which included a significant pass through funding portion for this pool, which did pass.

So we do have some answers to some of the funding questions that were left unknown back in that we will provide an update here. So a little sneak preview of what our recommendation is, which is also the memo. We are proposing to extend the swim lesson season to utilize the shoulder in May and September to just expand the capacity a little bit. We are proposing renovating the waiting pool and turning that into a larger activity pool. And then we are also recommending that we proceed with the design phase for that work, which we would come back to counsel with incremental milestone design updates.

Any of the proposals tonight do not preclude us from doing an enclosure in the future or now if you want to. Just want to put that out there. But to clarify that, an enclosure is not part of our recommendation at this time. Like I said earlier, one of the primary drivers for this conversation and for the ongoing work is to expand our swim lesson capacity. With such a huge waitlist every year, and that number sounds kind of low because it has it does get upwards of 9,010 people at the peak of the summer, We just have a huge, huge demand that we cannot meet in the small season that we have available.

Looking at things, what staff have done is proposed an extended swim lesson season, adding two additional sessions in May and two additional sessions in September. I mean, a session is one of those two week lesson blocks. They're either two weeks on Monday through Thursday or Saturday, Sunday, two weeks in a row. What we could do with this extended lesson season is add capacity for a little over 1,000 people, which again based on that 80 capacity rate, we're projecting to be about eight fifty people that we would be able to add in that May and September window. This is utilizing the current pool configuration.

So this is using the main lap pool and the small waiting pool. This is a scaled down version of a normal semester session, so instead of nine to 11 different groups at one time, there's five. So it is a smaller start, but that gives us room to grow. It also lets us figure out if that's what the community wants. This would equate to about a 42 increase in capacity for our swim lessons for about $28,000 in net expense.

The expense that we're showing is utilities and chemicals to maintain the water, staffing to manage the pool as well as some lesson instructors and lifeguards. Question?

John, maybe we'll pause with each of these and see if there's any is there any questions on the extended swimming lesson season? Okay. I have one. Okay. My daughter taught swim lessons. She wore a wet suit frequently because it's chilly in June. So were we planning on increasing the temperature of the pool in this extended season?

We would keep the pool warm. We already keep the water pretty warm as is. We keep it about 85, 86 degrees, which is warmer than most pools. So we would keep it as warm as we can within reason.

Oh, Councilor Mayor Falcombe.

Thank you, madam mayor. I had a similar question, so thank you for your answer on that. I do support the extended swimming season, but I do have similar concerns about the weather, especially given that, like, a lot of the target population for this will be in school still, right, during some of these extended months. And so I think it was mentioned in the memo it be like evenings and weekends for a lot of it, which it will be chillier in those evenings, right, than I mean, I've been with my kids in July and August in the morning, and sometimes it's a little bit chilly for them. So I'm just wondering what our like if we are thinking through kind of what the contingency plans would be if we don't get enrollment.

Or are there things that we could do to, you know, I don't know, have on the side or something?

Yeah, could explore putting some pop up tents or some heaters out there to help keep folks warm in those seasons. Again, not knowing how what the weather looks like or what it would actually be like. It's going be a learning opportunity for all of

us.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you. To

clarify, to we wouldn't be start this this year. This would be something we proposed in the budget for next year. Based on the timing it takes to hire and get everyone onboarded, we're already well into that to get folks ready for May or for June. So that's where

that Additionally, would

we are also proposing renovating and eliminating the current waiting pool with a larger, more functional activity pool. The study included a few different concept designs which are shown on the screen, and I just want to reiterate these are just concepts. Nothing has been fully designed, but whatever does get designed would have some lessons in mind. So we would really try to make this pool very intentional for swim lessons. Some of the features that I've built in other pools, and you can see on the right side picture I'm actually going try and show it is a little underwater bench, which is great for the little kids to stand in the water but still be in the water.

All three of these options would be more fun. They all show a basketball hoop and a volleyball net. And so they'd just be a little bit more ways to activate the pool deck and get folks using the water. And you can really kind of see how small the current wading pool is compared to any of those larger activity pools. So like I mentioned, there would be underwater bench.

We could also use the pool for hydrotherapy classes or any deep water exercise or shallow water exercise classes in addition to those just kind of fun activities that I mentioned earlier. With this activity pool, this also increases swim lesson capacity. In our small wading pool we can only fit about two groups, generally the smallest groups. We're projecting again depending on which pool and what the pool gets designed, but any of these options up here, our aquatic staff have a pretty good feeling they could fit an additional two groups in that. And so that adds another 22% capacity of our swim lessons, again, just in the current summer months.

So if you do the next slide actually. Think I'm there. I am there. Okay. Any questions on the

activity Let's take a pause here.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, thank you for mentioning the additional swim lesson capacity here as you heard our comments during the study session. That's the lens of the Park Board and the lens of many of us as well wanting to make sure that that's the focus and that's the goal in addition to obviously safety and maintenance and those things, of course, with some of the maintenance that needs to be done. Can you speak to, like, what your ideas are on how to make that happen? Because it's the pool now, obviously, it's very shallow, right?

And it is, like you said, very small. So are we talking, like, much deeper so that the older kids can do it? Because I think of, like, I know with my kids, that little pool is like there's, like, a sweet spot around, like, a year old, right? And before that, they're kind of with mom or dad or grandma or grandpa in the big pool. After that, they're taking some lessons in the big pool because that shallow depth is really good for, you know, dunking your head under and getting comfortable, blowing bubbles, right, and learning the ice cream scoops. But anyway, so can you speak to that a little bit more about what you would like to see in the design to make sure that we really are maximizing additional swim lesson capacity?

Yes. I mean, there's a variety of options you can do. The one on the left here shows a zero entry ramp where you basically get to switch back and go in and out. So there's a lot of different options you could do to make it easier to get into. I wouldn't do a beach entry where a full zero entry because that would literally take the entire length of the pool before you get to two feet deep.

So that's why you see those carved away like that because there are rules and regulations. I think we could probably reasonably get a pool that's four to five feet deep at the most but have a good significant shallow area. If you ever want to play water basketball or volleyball, you don't want it to be five feet deep where you're having to work to get out of the water all the time, but you also want it to be beneficial for those younger swim lessons. I think it would have a variety of different areas and spaces. And like you can see in some of the different options, like this lower area could be deeper on this one option here and this area is more shallow for more play. So you really can do a whole lot with it. And I think what we would do is just work with our aquatics team to figure out what exactly we need to accommodate the most to have the most flexibility because I want to make sure that we can accommodate the most lessons but also make sure it's useful when we're not doing some lessons and the folks actually want to use that pool.

My

question kind of builds off of I was thinking that, you know, I know these these three concepts are just for visualization kind of examples. But it got me thinking about about that, say, that we we do move wanna move forward with that activity pool replacement. How do how would you reach an agreement on what type of design? Because I'm assuming that, you know, there's a lot of there's a there's trade offs

Mhmm.

Right, that you just discussed. So that's something that I'd be interested in thinking about, you know, if we move forward is is how to how to navigate that. And I know I would rely upon the aquatic experts for that, but but also wanna weigh in on the trade offs, right, of priorities. Certainly. And then I guess and then the last thing was you developed a cost estimate that's before us for this option of adding activity pool. Did you pick the most expensive option for that? Because I would assume each one of these are probably different price points.

These were based on the consultants' estimates from last time, they gave us just kind of a rough number because nothing had been designed yet.

Okay.

So it is a real ballpark estimate.

Yes. So if as designed so if we pick so if a more expensive version was picked, that cost could go up?

Probably. We would work with whatever the budget is and work with the designer to come up with different options that work and present those different trade offs as we go. Because I think you don't know what's possible or what you can't get away with until you know what you can get away with. So I would rely on the architects and the experts just like everyone else. But I've got ideas, but they're going be able to tell me, oh, you need to have this much depth before you can get two feet deep. Because there's all sorts of rules and regulations that

fully understand that. Just want to make sure I understand kind of the assumptions and process moving forward if we decide to go down this path. Thank you.

Anyone else? So I see that we're trying to maximize our footprint here, and we're moving towards the senior center and taking up some of that grass space. So assuming if council wants to move forward with this, which we'll talk about later, what would how long and what would be the process for how we move through this?

We would start we'd go out and get under design contract with a consultant. They would come back and give us some options. And then I'm guessing construction would be about I'm guessing under it. I think we could get it done in an off season.

Okay. That was one of my questions.

That's a guess, to be honest. I'm sure with other work going on around the scene, like incremental, but

Okay.

I could be completely wrong but I think you should be able get that eight, nine months.

Okay, thank you.

So those are that's the two major components of our recommendation at this point. So like I mentioned, the expanded swim lesson season would add another 42% swim lesson capacity. If we are able to renovate the waiting pool into an activity pool, we project that would add another 22% capacity. And that's just in the summer. And so if we did the fringe season, it might even add more.

And like I mentioned, that shoulder season is starting small. So there is room for growth in that. One of our concern and the reason why we are starting small is because as previously mentioned during public comment tonight, we do rely on lot a of part time high school and college students as lifeguards. So we don't know what the challenge would be to find enough staff to run that pool to teach those lessons. Obviously, there's other opportunities.

If you're heating the pool and maintaining it, we could open the pool for other opportunities such as lap swimming or just more open swim. Concern there just having the capacity to do so. Our recommendation, this is the budget that was shown in the memo to renovate the the waiting pool, expand the bathhouse to accommodate the loss of update the mechanical system so that both pools are separate. In doing that, we're probably going to lose some of the guard space in the current building, So we would expand the bathhouse to include all gender restrooms as well as additional space for the guards. Based on the estimates from last year, and these are last year's estimates, it's a little over $10,000,000 and like I said earlier, you could enclose the pool in the future with any of these options.

Diving into the potential funding sources, this is a little different than you'll see in the memo based on a property acquisition that we're proposing a little later tonight. So the neighborhood impact fees number here is missing one of those line items. We're proposing to use that for something else already at this point. But a little over $4,000,000 in our current pool CIP project budget. You can see what that's made up of there.

What is not in that project yet is the two just under $2,500,000 from King County Parks Levy that we received or that was in that package. There is an additional $1,900,000 in neighborhood parkland acquisition fees coming into next year's budget. The one thing I do want to put the caveat on that is we use all of our impact fees. While impact can be used for expansion, it does limit our ability to expand other Parkland. And then the biggest source of funding that wasn't available when we discussed this last summer was the potential debt capacity, which was intended for Houghton Village.

As senior manager outlined in the previous discussion, that would be a potential $10,500,000 available towards the pool, which brings the total up to around $19,000,000 of available funding. And to compare that side by side because that's what I like to do. We do feel like there is adequate funding to begin the design phase. It would at least give us a better tighter cost estimate, and determine what those options could be. Think with that again, pulling out the enclosure only prices for reference, we looked at the estimates from last time and these were just the enclosure only.

This doesn't include any of the other soft costs or other infrastructure that might be required with an enclosure. But in case you were wondering, the activity pool alone was just under $5,000,000 to enclose with the OpenAir style enclosure. The lap pool was just under $12,000,000 Again, my estimate is those numbers have gone up a little bit because it's been a year. The other option that was presented last year was the sprung structure, which is like, we describe it as a big tent, covered the entire pool for a little under or just over $7,500,000 So with that, we are seeking your direction on how you'd like us to proceed. We are going to continue using the funding we have to continue the repairs that are necessary on this past off season.

If you notice the pool was drained for a little bit and we did have some folks in the bottom pool replacing our drain covers. So that did use a little bit of that $4,000,000 to replumb and re pipe the main pool so that the drains are compliant. So yeah. Questions?

Councilor Mayor Prabh.

Just had an overarching statement and then a question. I do think that having an overarching cover enclosure on the pool would provide the real public benefit where we could increase the number of people getting swim lessons and really providing the community with the full benefit of a pool year round. And so my question is, you know, if we were to do this in a staged approach where we do this $10,100,000 investment first and then go to stage two and close it, are there any sunk costs that would be part of this $10,100,000

For the enclosure?

Yes.

Again, you're comparing to what we presented last year, yes, because a lot of the stuff we included in those $17,000,000 to $32,000,000 included a lot of the work that's included in this. So it's a lot of the mechanical infrastructure work. This $10,000,000 is basically getting the pool up and running to last into the future and it could just run for a while. I don't there'd be a few other things that we'd have to do with an enclosure like HVAC and things like that to make sure that we actually have air moving in that inside the space, but there wouldn't be a ton more cost, don't believe, if I understand your question.

Okay, so there would not be any sunk costs. If we were to move forward with an enclosure now, then we would have had to do these things anyways. Okay, thank you.

Okay, just one small clarification. The $3,000,000 for the waiting pool replacement wouldn't necessarily be something that would be a choice to create the activity pool. But other than that, yes, all the rest of it would be done in any scenario. But if you also did the activity pool, you could cover that as well, so it doesn't impact the decision one way or the other except the cost. So

the costs are additive, we're not?

We wouldn't lose anything by not doing an enclosure now, other than time and inflation.

All right, I know you all have any questions and thoughts. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, Madame Mayor. Well, thank you again, John and team, for bringing this forward. I feel like this is, the mayor mentioned earlier, a decade long plus. I mean, I remember just being a community member, know, when the ballot measure a decade or so ago was put forth to voters. So I'm glad we're continuing this conversation.

It is really important. I'm glad we're trying to figure out the right sized approach for our community, and so I think we're headed in a good direction. As I shared earlier, I do share the Park Board lens of really wanting to make sure that we maximize swim lesson capacity. I think that other things are great, but I think that that should be our primary focus. I am intrigued by their phased approach that Councillor Maprem was mentioning with her line of questioning.

So I have a couple of questions, and then I'll share some more of my thoughts. You mentioned a little bit about the opportunity cost with the land acquisition. Can you speak a little bit more to what else would potentially be bumped? Do we have specific projects or areas of projects in addition to land acquisition that could be bumped?

Anything that could count towards capacity building, and I will admit that I am not the best at understanding that rule because I could say that a restroom adds capacity but I don't think we interpret it the same way as the law. Are there any specific projects that I should be aware of?

I'm not 100% clear on the question. Do you mean are there other projects we could defund to add to pool funding?

Just with the existing funding, we heard some comments from the Park Board tonight about opportunity cost with the funding the current funding proposal for paying for this, that there just were some opportunity costs, that there were other opportunities that would not move forward or would be delayed.

Right. And right now, the only thing that we'd be potentially looking at is land acquisition. There's no other project that would be negatively impacted in any way. This would strictly pull land acquisition funding. A lot of our primary priorities for parks projects is infrastructure, so we can't use impact fees for that anyway.

Great. Thank you so much. That's helpful clarification. Well, like I said, my focus being on increasing swim lesson capacity, I think we're pretty much all in agreement, at least based on the discussions we've had over the months and years, of the improvements that need to happen, that $7,000,000 or so that needs to happen in the improvements. I would like us to still consider whether the best short- and long term approach to increasing swim lesson capacity is just renovating the activity pool, or would it be better to first to do a phased approach to first cover the larger pool?

The larger pool has a lot more capacity for swim lessons, has a lot more potential for usage and revenue with swim teams, and, you know, think I of like the as we heard earlier tonight, the programs such as, you know, every second grader, you know, learns how to swim. That could happen year round. And so I'm interested more in Enclosure than improving the activity pool, but I don't want to take that option off the table. I do think there's pros and cons to both, I think during the budget discussion, I'd really want to understand I see the numbers in front of us, but I also know that the numbers are a little bit fuzzy right now, so I would like to have a better understanding of really what our tradeoffs are, right? Like if we were to phase, do the $7,000,000 of improvements and cover the large pool versus do the $7,000,000 of improvements and redo to create the activity pool, I understand it'd be more expensive to cover the lap pool than to redo the activity pool.

However, we could still put that towards it, and I feel like we should at least discuss whether that would give us more bang for our buck, right, with what our goals are. So I'd like to still keep that option on the table during our budget discussions. I also thank you so much for bringing up the family restrooms, the all gender restrooms. Know, I'm all of us are, you know, appreciate that we're going to do that. I'm just going to say it again because I say it every time we talk about this that I really want to make sure we have an adult size changing table in there. That's something that's really important that if we're not hearing from hundreds of residents on, but we're hearing from those who are most impacted that would make a really big difference for folks in our community who have disabilities that require diapering knees, that that would make the pool accessible to them, whereas it otherwise is not today.

Very much so.

Thank you so much. Chancellor Apasco?

Thank you. So, yeah, thanks, John and team, for this. You know, just a question and some comments. First question is, I just want to make sure I'm super clear on this recommended scope of work. You call under construction, you have the waiting pool replacement. Is that the activity Yes. Pool? Okay.

Sorry. I just I use different terminology. Okay.

I just I I saw that. I'm like, okay. Maybe I I read that wrong. So it includes the activity pool.

Mhmm.

And one of maybe those examples that you showed earlier. Mhmm.

Okay.

You know, for me, kind of where I'm at with this is, you know, I think that we've heard from the community the desire for additional investment year round aquatics. I think what we've what you've presented here are some kind of right sized thoughtful options. I'm supportive of moving forward with this scope of work. However, the things that I'm looking for to clarify and or add on would be to consider a design, a planning design engineering that would also include enclosure options so that we could kind of have more information in which to make some of these decisions that council member cone identified. And so I'd I'd like to see that phase of this work program include the enclosure as well so that we could make a better

We can do it as an ad alternate or something like that.

Yeah. And that could include either the activity pool and or the Okay. The lap pool, but we would have more information, better costs in which to make that decision. And then at the same time, I'd like us and I'd like to see manager to bring back options, funding options, you know, during the budget cycle or down the road on kind of what that would look like. So I'm saying I'm supporting this, but I I would like those add ons there to both design the enclosure and to to look at options and how to fund that.

So we're phasing it. We're moving forward with this, but we're but we're also still considering the enclosure option. That's where I'm

at. You.

Councilor Mayor Arnold?

Thank you. Thank you, John. Really appreciate the creativity and looking at things like the extended schedule. And even since what we read in the packet, it looks like your net cost of that has dropped for the extended lessons. So that seems like something that is really worth it for tens of thousands of dollars to move forward and appreciate that creativity.

As we look at phasing of this, I think moving forward with the activity pool and all of the other upgrades that need to happen make some sense and then look at covering in future phases. As we look at the details for this, a couple of things that I would like to see. One is a timeline that says, as we're designing the activity pool, when do we get to make the decisions and how do we plug the park board into that so that they're weighing in on the recommendations before things even get to us? As was mentioned in your previous question, we really would want to see this done during the off season. And I would like to see the timeline of how that decision making process works and what are the deadlines to be able to do the construction during the off season because the whole point is to make capacity and I don't want to lose somewhere in the existing pool.

And then for funding, it's great that we have a variety of sources that can cover this. It is, for me, it is one thing to say, okay, we're not doing any land acquisition if we were going to say, well, this would meet all of our needs and then close the pool. I'm less willing to raid the land acquisition budget for the mechanical upgrades and the activity pool, so want to look at other options for that. It's great that we may have some debt capacity that could be done councilmatically for this, but we want to look at different options as we move forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Black?

Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. So I don't need to add to what we've already heard. I agree with a lot of observations and questions and ideas. I do want to ask a couple questions. They might be for parks, but they also might be the city manager. So, on the King County Parks Levy dollars, and there's two different sources, are there any time constraints on either of those funding sources? Oh, your Parks Director has

Sorry, I just spoke to King County last week. They are going to put a timeline on that pass through funding, the $2,500,000 that they earmarked for Kirkland. And if we're going to work out an agreement with King County on how we would get that funding in on what timeline, so if we have that agreement in place, hopefully that mitigates their timeline requirement. But they were hoping that, like, if they don't see action by 2028, they could release that funding and put it into a grant pool. Sorry, fresh off the presses there.

Mine's been by the end of the levy, so that's

good clarification. Okay, good. And there's also state there's a state director preparation of $515 $15,000 How about that one?

That one, there's definitely usually a if you haven't done something in several years, they come asking for it back. So but there's not a specific deadline yet.

Okay. And then, as far as so this seems like so you've heard a lot of different ideas from my colleagues. And a lot of it is, we want to explore kind of multiple paths and all with more detail. City Manager, are you imagining now this is probably an issue paper in the 'twenty seven-'twenty eight proposed budget? And it might be a good thing because that's an opportunity for the public to read that issue paper and the parks board. So I'm just curious where do you think

So I think I think our intent was slightly different. Okay. And actually, I was gonna ask for clarification. So our intent in asking today is with approval, 'd start designing. Like we'd start moving ahead with the assumptions that we're doing this using some of the existing money we already have. Right? We don't need new money to start. But one clarification I had was John, council member Pascal's comment. I saw some nod, but it is more to design the roofs at the same time. So I guess I would need to know from the council that everyone wants to see those designs starting also at the same time.

Then we'd check-in at the sort of 60% and then you could make your decisions at that point, but our intent was to start with council direction this year, not have it all via 2728 budget discussion. The full funding would have to be, but starting sometime this year is the goal.

Okay. I wanted to ask a question. Council Member Arnold made a good point, or well, maybe I'll just say a point I share, concern about sort of rating the park land acquisition budget. One thing we know, given our strategy in the city of Kirkland, because we don't have sort of a condemnation strategy where we are going to go out and condemn lands in order to add to the parks. We're really looking for it's more of an opportunistic approach.

It is kind of important, if you're going to take an opportunistic approach to land acquisition, to expand in the lands of the park that we have that fund that Councilmember Arnold mentioned to mentioned. I want to be clear. There was information in the memo about it, but also there's information here for the public, 1,900,000.0. How much is left in the land acquisition fund after spending this $1,900,000 And I realize it grows every biennium, so I guess I'm asking kind of in the near term.

We have $4,000,000 right now available, and there's a property acquisition coming up in front of you tonight for $2,500,000 So at the end of the twenty sixth biennium, we would have 1,500,000 in there. There's another land acquisition we are looking into, which is why we actually did pull some of the funding out of the funding chart. For twenty twenty seven-twenty eight, that is the sum total of the full land acquisition budget for twenty twenty seven-twenty eight. So the dollar figure you see is all of it.

Okay. All right, that helps. Thank you.

Well, maybe I'll add a little bit of nuance to that. So raised this at a previous council meeting that I guess I'm reacting to the raid comment.

We know I use that term loosely.

I know. But what we have done in the past is all of our impact fees have just gone into the generic neighborhood land acquisition fund because it's the most straightforward thing you can do with impact fees. We've then taken money from that fund to do other things to like invest in other park expansions. What Council Maranold brought up, which we're going bring to the retreat, was we really need a second fund to say other park expansion. So it doesn't look like it's always just going to land acquisition. So we have constantly pulled out of this fund to do these kinds of things. It's not abnormal for us to do it, but the title obviously lends it to feeling like we're doing this incorrectly, but that's not what's happening.

Thank you for that clarification. That's helpful.

And to follow-up on that, so what the director just said is we would empty the fund. When would the fund be replenished?

Well, there's a couple things that would happen. So park impact fees come in irregularly, right? So they come in when big projects happen or a lot of small projects happen. We average between $1 to $1,500,000 a year. So that but sometimes it comes in $2,500,000,000 one year and nothing the next year.

So you don't really know, but the average has been pretty steady between 1 and $1,500,000,000 each year. So we know that we'll start to replenish in 'twenty seven, 'twenty eight, 'twenty nine. The council has also passed recently the impact fee for middle housing, which doesn't go into effect to 2027, and so we haven't included it in any projections, but we actually expect that to be a relatively significant amount of money. Finally, and the director can speak to this, we've actually asked for conservation futures reimbursement for some of the purchases we just made, particularly the one along Forbes Creek Drive. And if we get that back, we're actually going have several million dollars going to come back into the fund, and we think there's a high likelihood that we'll get those numbers.

So it's always a little bit in flux, but we expect to have a significant replenishment soon, and then we expect to get more money over time.

Thank you. So the landscape is going to change over time. And the $500,000 that comes from REIT, we can only use REIT for expansion. Does a

No, you can use REIT for capital, basically.

Expansion. Okay. And the $500,000 is why is that the max?

That's just how much is already currently budgeted. We could add more. We could add more. Those were numbers that were already in the budget.

Okay. So we could add more. Okay. So I believe what you're hearing from counsel is yes and that we're interested in continuing to explore covering the pool year round. I am supportive of the 10.1 to move forward with the activity pool and the structural improvements. I do want to follow-up on Councilmember Pascal's question about why the activity pool as opposed to covering the pool? There's a reason that you came to us and suggested we do the activity pool first. So how did we come to that decision?

Because it expanded capacity, and we could afford it. It was really within our It

was more about we could afford it.

I'd also add

I also think it would be more well received. Think an enclosure has to be one of the kind of culminating projects. And if you have more to do, think having been closing the current pool would undersell what's there, guess.

I'd add a couple of things. We also want to go for what could do quickly. And so the outdoor expansion is quicker. We do know even from the original feedback we got that generically people say cover the pool when it starts to become a reality. Then don't cover the pool in the summertime, can it be a retractable roof?

And we saw those comments last night. What about the noise, what about the chlorine?

Right, about what you can do covering the pool. And finally, we did tee this up a little bit, we haven't talked about it, but year round operation is also significant operating cost. And so, while we definitely want to look at how we can maximize recovery, that's a budget discussion, not just a capital discussion. So that's the other main reason.

Okay. So I'm supportive of moving forward rather than waiting for the budget conversation because we feel like we can fund that. But I definitely want to have the future conversation of the next phase, which is exploring covering the pool. Anyone else? Deputy Mayor?

Yeah, I'd just add to that. I think so with the yes, and if the answer the consensus is yes, and, and I agree that's the consensus. I think the and part is potentially the subject of an issue paper, just for the right? It's the and part that we might be really interested in seeing what the and looks like with the details. The public would be able to sink their teeth into it, as well as the Parks Board members.

All right. Anyone else? All right. Thank you, John. You. Yes. Go ahead.

I guess I wasn't clear. So the one thing I had suggested was around considering to as part of the when you're going to hire a consultant to plan, design, and engineer, It'd be I don't know. It doesn't sound like there's support to kinda move forward with the planning and designing to to kinda capture cost of what that enclosure would be. But I guess the question would be how much additional money would that be just to kind of do the 30% design so we know kind of the magnitude of what that cost is. So we're not we're not going down a pathway where we said we're gonna do the enclosure.

We just are getting more information so we can make a better decision on whether to do it or not. That's I'm not clear on whether we

Yeah.

Yeah. That decision. I thought I heard the council say, yes. Do that. Okay. Well, I'll

Go ahead.

I'll be quiet.

No. It's good. It's a good follow-up.

So, yeah. So we'll we'll that so that you have what would it take to do the enclosure options also.

Okay. Sorry.

Alright. Thank you. Oh, councilor.

Sorry. One one more question. I just want to make sure, just to double click on, if we do decide to do the enclosure as a stage two, looking at these kind of original numbers, the $10,100,000 so like the electrical and mechanical systems, for example, that number, would that change significantly? Like if we're adding an enclosure, which would require, I'm assuming, HVAC and a lot of other infrastructure to enclose a pool, would those expenses significantly change? Like would we have to redesign the electrical mechanical system because we are enclosing?

I just want to kind of drill down to whether or not we're really going to not have sunk costs if we do Yeah.

I'll double check those numbers to see what was included in that. We would scope the project to ensure that the electrical is ready for future mechanical needs if we have to add an HVAC system for enclosures or something like that. So we would write the design to be ready for that. So there would not be a, oh, now you have to replace this thing too. So yeah. Good question.

Great. Thank you. Superfalco. Thank you, Madam Mayor. We're all

so passionate about our pool. We love it. I appreciate Councillor O'Prem's question and agree, and I feel like the approach of the direction Council's given tonight might help with that, right, that if we are moving forward with some sort of design of both, we could understand that a little bit better. My question is I think I've asked this before, but I'm not 100% sure I remember the response. It's a pretty big investment to if we were to enclose either or both of the pools. Is there one close by that we could go visit and see what it's like, see what the experience is so we can have a good sense of the experience and what we get for that investment.

I will get you some locations to

Thank look you. I appreciate that.

I know there's a no, no, We're not proposing one of those.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Cool. Any other questions?

I think we're good.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, is nine, but since we have Park staff in the room and we're in the Park mindset, I'd like to move forward to 9B, which is authorization to acquire the Lamas property adjacent to Mark Twain Park through either negotiated purchase or condemnation. City manager.

All right. So thank you, madam mayor. As we're switching out, so we did have a presentation to council about this potential purchase. Council gave us direction to come back with the purchase and sale agreement. This is working for the decision, but we're just gonna remind you of the project itself and its potential benefits, then we're looking for council questions and then final action if the council's ready to do so. And here to make that presentation, believe, is our planning and development manager, Mariah Gil Murphy, but I see also Jason Fileon here as well. I'm not sure which is speaking.

It's getting potted up, heard from a credible source. About the