City Council - Regular Meeting

Start over. I would like to call to order the city council meeting of 04/07/2026. Before asking the clerk to call the roll for tonight's regular meeting, I'd like to note that council member Pascal is absent from our study session and will be joining our regular meeting. Is there a motion to excuse councilor Pascal from the study session?

So moved. Second.

Moved by councilor Black, second by deputy mayor Black, second count woo. It's not a good start. Second by Councilmember Arnold. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries five-zero. I also would like to note that Councilmember Tim Chisholm is absent tonight. Is there a motion to excuse Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

So moved.

Second. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Falcone to excuse Councilmember Tim Chisholm from tonight's City Council meeting. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, five-zero. Now, clerk, will you please roll call for the City Council and the Human Services Commission, as we will be participating in a joint meeting with them during our study session.

Of course, I will start with the council. Council Member Arnold. Here. Council Member Prem. Here. Council Member Falcone.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Black.

Here.

Mayor Curtis. Well, I'm going to call the roll

to Human Services Commission. One

second. Commissioner Hamilton. Okay. Commissioner Chew?

Present.

Commissioner Rehmani? Present. Commissioner Quinn? Here. Commissioner Dodd?

Here.

Vice Chair Liu?

Here.

And Chair Rajagopalan?

You,

Manager. Okay. Thank you, City Ed Moriah.

So as you heard, we're delighted today to have the Human Services Commission members here. I'm actually going turn this over to the Chair, Sriraja Gopalan, who's going to say some opening remarks and introduce everybody, and then we're going to have discussion and join board, particularly with a focus on the Human Services grant program, but other topics as well. So Mr. Chair, please take it away.

Thank you, Kurt. Good evening, everybody. We are happy to be here. We're looking forward to this discussion where we're going to update you kind of what's top of mind for us. This is the year for us. This is a very busy year for us because this is the year that there's funding cycle that we look throughout. There's bunch of applications for and we go through that and make some decisions. So this is kind of our pretty busy year. So we are really looking, would love to update you on where we're at and get some perspectives and guidance from you as we go forward to the funding cycle. I'm going to just start do a round of quick intros for our group here.

My name is Sriram Rajagopalan. I go by Sri, hehim pronouns, and I am currently serving as the Chair. I did want to actually add a note on the Chair thing, which is historically, our Chair elections, for whatever reason that we do not understand, happened in June, which meant that like the last funding cycle, right in the middle of the funding cycle, we had a change of chairs. So we kind of discussed at that time that we probably should change it. So last year, we made a decision to change it.

Chair Gabby was gracious enough to serve an extra few months. And so then we changed it from June to November, which is kind of what every most other commissions operate on the November election cycle. So we did that. So that's kind of when so from going forward, our elections will happen November. So that's just an update for you folks. I've been on the commission for three years. I'm a resident of Kirkland for nearly thirty years. Love the city of ours. Vice Chair, Christian?

Sure.

My name is Christian Liu and I serve as the Vice Chair of the Human Services Commission. I've been living in Kirkland for just about a decade now. I both live and work in Kirkland and my kids go

to school here. We're very

much a Kirkland family. I've been on the commission just about the same time as Shreer and so about three years. I have the pleasure of serving through one of the previous funding cycles and looking forward to this one again.

Hi everyone, my name is Shannon Quinn. I use she and her pronouns. And I'm one of the newer commissioners, and so I've been with the group for about a year now. I have lived in Kirkland for fifteen years with my husband and my two daughters, who also go to school here in town. So really happy to be here.

All right. Hi. I'm Eric. I'm the youth representative. I've lived in Kirkland for all sixteen odd something years of my life. I'm a sophomore at Lake Washington High School.

Good evening. My name is Tazni Ramani, sheher pronouns. Been on the commission for a little over a year now, starting with 04/01/2025. Been in Kirkland since 2003, and we've got a junior that attends Juanita High School and born in Kirkland.

Kobe Sage

Chew. I think I've met most, if not all, of the staffing council over the years. I'm a former youth rep, as Eric is now. So I'd to say I'm a former young person, born and raised in Kirkland. But I don't know if you remember, Shilpa. I was actually the one member of the public when you were interviewing for the Human Services Commission, back on the wall watching the process. So looking forward to talk a little bit more today. I go by hehim pronouns. I've been on the Commission for just over two years now. Think last cycle was my second meeting as a Commissioner as the joint meeting progressed. So thanks for having us.

You're welcome. Commissioner Dodd, would you like to move over so that Commissioner Quinn isn't on the corner of the table?

And

just switch your name tag. You guys might be a little more comfortable. Before you get started, we just want to thank the commissioners for joining us today, and we recognize that you have a hard work ahead of you. You're going to be making some very challenging choices. It's very difficult to meet the need in the community because it's desperate and high. So we thank you for your work and your dedication and your caring for this community.

Okay, we'll go ahead and kick off the discussion items. Before we get into discussion, though, Annie and myself are going to cover just a couple overview items. I do also want to mention that we have our interim human services manager here, Becky Gilley, and she may step up to the table should you have any questions for her. So we're just starting out with a real quick overview of what's going on right now. So we have obviously, we're in the middle of the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six cycle.

And in that cycle, you can sorry, I thought I was on the next slide. There we go. You can see that we have a grand total of 72 grants that have been awarded, and you're seeing the biannual funding, so both 'twenty five and 'twenty six combined. We have an ongoing funding amount of $3,600,000 We have Option B at $1,400,000 and Option C at $1,000,000 I do want to mention that there are several numbers in the ongoing funding. Those include the general ongoing funding, but also CDBG, Proposition one funding, MFTE and House Bill fourteen oh six replacement is what we're calling it.

That is all in the ongoing funding. And Option B includes the rapid response funding that City Council awarded in 2025. And before we kind of move on to the next discussion items, I do just want to start out with a big thank you to City Council for all of the support over the last several years. You'll recall in 03/2004, we had a huge increase in funding because of COVID. We've been able to maintain a very high level of funding per capita, and what we've seen is the percentage of grants applied for has gone down, but the per capita amount awarded has gone up.

So there have been really good increases in the funding in the last biennium and the current biennium, and that's with the grant program, which is what we're focusing on tonight. But I think it's really important to mention that there are additional investments in human services, in particular, in homeless outreach, significant investment in 2025. So just setting the stage to kind of understand the big picture of human services in Kirkland. And on that note, I'm going to kick it over to Annie to start actually, we're going to keep it on this slide, sorry to talk about some of the learnings from the twenty twenty five

Commission. Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council members, good to be sitting in front of you again, and what a great conversation for us to have. This is one of my favorite well, whole thing is my favorite thing, but really having these conversations is really great. So I just wanted to cover briefly 2025 for our Commission was an education year, so on our off years, we like to load up the Commission with lots of information so they can go into this review process with new learnings, better perspective, and really an understanding of what this community is saying that they are needing. And so we started it off by including an additional kind of what we're calling homework.

So the Commissioners wanted to get more involved and more deeply aware of what was going on in the community, so each of them has taken general area of knowledge or expertise, and they're bringing them back to the other Commissioners' reports. So say they attend a panel discussion or they attend some sort of workshop, they bring that back and they do the report out, so that has been really beneficial and really a good way to share information so they're not having to be in a lot of different places at once. Another item and just so you know, the Commission was deeply involved in creating their work plan for 2025, so this was all their guidance of how they wanted to spend this year. They really wanted to be able to hear from a lot of organizations, but understanding that there was little time given this last year in how much work was needed to be done in the community, trying not to overburden those community organizations. We were partnering with other cities and kind of sharing panels.

So as other cities like Redmond or Bellevue or Issaquah were doing panels, they would share that information and invite our commission to attend, and we were doing the same. So the first panel and I think that's really that cross city coordination that we do that we really love, and we have lots of conversations with other cities, and this really helps leverage each individual city's funding as well as supporting their individual communities at the same time. So starting out in January, a disability services panel was held in Redmond, and some of our commissioners attended that one. We had our own impact of changing policies on immigrants and refugees panel, which was absolutely amazing, and I will say the catalyst that was being planned in 2024. I don't know that you all know this, but this was a conversation that started in October 2024, and so this has been a long process.

So that panel was facilitated by Debbie Lacey with East Side for All, included Indian American Community Services, Big Hug Korean American Resource Center, ELAP or East Side Legal Assistance Program, Global Social Business Partners, Africans on the East Side, MCNA sent in a written statement, and ION Maternity Health Care Support. So that really was the impetus of the letter that this Human Services Commission collectively decided to write and to send to you all. So there was a small group that was put together. That letter was written and sent out in July. We had a council meeting, meetings in August and September.

I'm just giving you a quick overview of that. So RFP went out September, posted on September 8, closed the twenty second. We included Redmond in that process, which was a new thing for us, so they took all of our 24 applications that we received and also reviewed them. So that was, again, another understanding that organizations were really tight on time and capacity. So they had 250,000 that they also provided to the community.

So all of that was completed. I think we had the last amendment done in November 2025. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. The next one was we met with new agencies, Renewal Food Bank and Pride Across the Bridge. They came in and met the Commission, and that was a really good meeting and conversation.

There was another panel that spoke to Latino and Spanish speaking community needs, and that was in Redmond. And then the final one was Kirkland Teen Union Building Tour and Youth and Teen Services. And so we had For Tomorrow, YES, and our own recreation division staff present for that. We also did a behind the scenes series, which I'm really proud of. I don't think commissions get enough of information of what happens after we do the review process, so we took them through contracting, of course, and abbreviated learnings, but we had contracting, reporting and payments and also monitoring process, which is really important given a lot of the things that we're hearing.

We do a really good job of monitoring our organizations, and so that was a really great process to take them to. And then we received local updates, including our own dashboard and program performance review, coordinated response for kids, update on their funding, the continuum of care action plan and health through housing updates. The folks met the Case Arc representative, Hwa Goldstein, and that was a really great meeting, as well as the HOPE Link 2025 Regional Needs Assessment Report. That was earlier this year. So that was just a quick update of the things that we've been doing the last year.

And I think we're passing it back over to Sri.

Yes. So if you remember I mentioned last year was not very busy. It was very busy for the staff. So I really want to thank the staff for all the work they did to kind of get us all that information because that really informed us as we were approaching this funding cycle this year because that really helped us understand the community need, what is going on, what are the nonprofits looking at. So I think that will really set us up to kind of get to where we're at.

So the next topic we're going to talk to you about is what are our priorities. So let me just first frame it by what do we mean by priorities. So these are more like guideposts for us is the way to think about it. The official funding is done in these five goal areas. So if you look at our dashboard, there are these five goal areas, which is based on the King County, I think is another county?

United United Way, sorry. It's a United Way based process. So I think all of the joint cities, they all follow the same process. But these priorities are more kind of our lens on how should we look at all the applications that we receive and guide the prioritization because as Mayor Curtis said, there's a set of as we get them, there's our budget and they are wildly different. And so we have a lot of work to do to kind of say how do we prioritize the applications that we receive.

And so that's these priorities help guide us. And so we basically for every year we go through this exercise early in the year, every funding cycle year, we go through this exercise. So this year, we basically identified our top three priorities and these are again ranked is the way you should think about it. Rank doesn't necessarily mean that we don't take every application and rank the applications. This is more a general guideline to say, okay, how is our funding being allocated across these things.

So our first bucket is what we think of as more basic needs. And like if you look at the HopeLink stuff, food insecurity is on the rise, for example, that's a big, big thing that's happening. We've heard a lot about health care with the federal changes that are going on. Health care is a big concern. And we know that with the youth, there's a lot of behavioral health that's really on the rise. So it's a big issue that's in our community. So we kind of put that all together into like this thing where we think this is basic needs, things that people need in order to have the basics of life. They have health, they have food. The second bucket is housing. We pulled that out as a separate thing.

I think we think it's a basic need, but it's such a big need in our community that we call it as a separate bucket that needs its own section. And so just for comparison, if you were to look at what we did for this 2025, 2026 funding cycle, to help you understand about the priorities, about 80% of our grants allocated were in the top two buckets, just so you understand. So that's kind of what we mean by priorities is that it's a big chunk of our money. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen this funding cycle. We don't know.

We haven't been through that exercise. But if I do a retrospective look, about 80% of our budget went to that. And so that's kind of how the priorities guide us is really to say, okay, where do we want to invest more of our the dollars that we do have for us as part of this. So that's kind of the second bucket. The third bucket is something we've always had every year, which is access to critical services, domestic violence, legal assistance.

A few things that have changed this year is we've definitely prioritized immigration support in our current thing, which was not there in our prior years. But it's definitely a need that's come to the forefront in this last year with the federal policy changes. So that's definitely on our list in terms of legal assistance. We've always had legal assistance for housing, eviction assistance, that kind of stuff. That's always been there, but this is something else that we're looking into at this time.

We also increased the priority for seniors and people with disability because that is something Annie talked about a panel for disability services that we attended. We've heard from senior counsel, we've heard a lot of things that the need with our seniors is going up tremendously. Cost of living is also going up at the same time. So I think we are also kind of we put that into like our critical services bucket to say, okay, this is an area where we think those changes. So those are a few changes from our prior cycle.

But for the most part, this has been pretty constant. There's a fourth bucket that we have that is a lot more to do with what we just say is kind of based on equity. It's driven more by equity, this notion that there's a lot of organizations that may be smaller organizations that are about marginalized communities or communities that right now are really facing a lot of challenges like the LGBTQIA community. They're facing a lot of challenges right now with what's going on in our overall environment in the country. So I think we always try to look at those and say, hey, we want to make sure there is a good degree of funding that takes those needs into account, even if they are often these are smaller organizations, their funding requests are not at the same level as some of the more established organizations, but we still think they're really important.

And so we try to kind of make sure that there is sufficient allocation done for these organizations to really promote that equity lens like I talked about. So that's always something that's also in our bucket. And so that's kind of just roughly how we think about our priorities and this like I said is what we are looking for some feedback questions, guidance from the council on because this is going to really inform how we approach our funding cycle when we start doing this in earnest in the May timeframe. It's really when we get we start really getting into all the reviewing the applications and prioritizing. I'll just open the floor now for discussion.

Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Prem.

Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation. Super interesting and provides a really good overview of what you all have been working on. One question I had was you indicated that these kind of three buckets cover 80% or covered 80% of what was allocated previously. Would you say the distribution within that 80% is pretty equal amongst all three categories? Or was there more for like access to basic needs versus the other two categories?

So I'll say that last I'm going to give these numbers, but I want to kind of put them with a big caveat, which is we do not prioritize applications based on these priorities. We look at applications on their own merit. And so I'm just trying to say that I think that is something that we are not looking at applications to save, they don't fall into these buckets, that's not prioritized and that's not how we approach it. But it is like an overall when we're doing the full funding allocations, this is a guidepost like I said for us. So in that context, if we were to look at our last cycle, our biggest chunk was the affordable homelessness, affordable housing about 50%.

That was a big chunk out of that 80% big chunk was 50% of that was really that. So the remaining 30% was the other buckets on our food and legal assistance and all that stuff. That's roughly how that mapped out. So I mean again, one other caveat I would put is we are guided by the applications that we receive. So there are probably many areas where there's a lot of need, but if there aren't suitable organizations or ways for those asks to surface to the commission then unfortunately some of those things get addressed.

This is what staff works really hard to kind of reach out to the community and make sure that all these things are represented and they get the help they need to file the ask. But I'm saying we are at the end of the day limited based on the applications that we do receive.

Thank

Thank you. You, Madam Mayor. Well, you, staff and commissioners. I mean, this is human services always has a special place in my heart. I know I say this every time, but being a former human services Commissioner, I know the work that you do, and I know the tug on your heartstrings it is to have to go through and evaluate and prioritize all these really, really deep and important meaningful needs.

So thank you for the work that you do on educating yourself to be prepared and also in the work that's to come in making these really tough decisions. I want to say also for those listening that it's not just the right thing to do to look out for our neighbors in need. It is, right? And it's a responsibility that we take very seriously. But it also this is taking care of people's basic needs is also an important aspect of community safety as well, and that's a really big responsibility for local government.

We know the studies have shown that when people have their basic needs met, rates go down. When people have proper mental health care, violence decreases and so this is really important work that you're doing to help out our neighbors and also to keep our entire community healthy and safe. So thank you. I appreciate that. I, in particular, really appreciate the proactive approach that you mentioned with the commission sending a letter to counsel last year.

I know I've said this before when we've met with our other boards and commissions as well that you have the work that you do in your work plan, but as needs and issues come up, we love to hear from you. You are our eyes and ears and our experts out in the community on the issues related to human services. So thank you for your proactive approach and bringing that to us. I hope that you'll continue to have that mindset. I also appreciate, I think it was Lynn that mentioned the acknowledgment of other investments in human services that the city makes in addition to these grants, right?

I think of I think you mentioned like the heart team and the work that the heart team does I think of our crisis responders I think of our partnership with the school districts and some of the work we do there I think of KTAB that I know that you visited I think of like our MIH team and I could probably go on and on and I know we will when we talk about budget later this year but just for those listening at home this is a very important piece of it but we also as a city do a lot related to human services to help our neighbors in need. Also happy to hear about the collaboration with other cities. This is something I think is really important. The needs don't stop at our borders, right, at our city boundaries, and so it's really important that you're doing that, and I really appreciate that collaborative work that you all have been doing. I hope that continues into the evaluation of the grant applications as well and the consideration of decision making for recommendations to come before Council.

Looking at it holistically, think is really important. I know you've done a great job of that in the past, but I think it's really important to understand where our neighboring cities are planning on investing as well so that we partner and collaborate and understand where gaps may be, that we may be able to fill gaps. And also you know thinking about I know last time we did an exercise of that of kind of what the basic needs are and where the gaps were and I remember having a conversation about for example us not seeing a lot of applications for adults with disabilities in our community and also in the LGBTQIA plus community. So I'm glad that you're looking at things holistically. I hope we'll do that as we have the grant applications coming in and try to address those gaps as much as we can.

Also you know it's really clear as we all know that there is a growing need on the East Side just seeing you know the growing number of grant applications that we're receiving. This is something as we know that is often less visible here on the East Side but I appreciate you highlighting this need and for the public to understand that in an affluent area sometimes that can exacerbate the needs of those who are most in need in our community and also it oftentimes is hidden. And we know that this year is a tough year, right? Locally as far as economically but also you know with the social safety nets being decreased at the federal level, it's going to be really tough and there's going to be some tough choices for your recommendations to counsel and for counsel to make later this year. And I also want to make really clear to the public that the city will do everything that we can, but we can't do it all.

This is something that we hear from a lot of folks that they want the private sector, they want a lot of philanthropy to help fill the need, and this is the year that we need as much partnership and as much community support and philanthropy to help bridge the because we are not going to be able to grant all the applications that come in. And so I hope that we'll have those conversations and we'll consider partnerships with our East Side philanthropy organizations. There are some that do some of this work that may be in a position to partner with the city where we could look at areas that we're not able to fund and hope that we can partner to help still get those needed grant dollars met, again, through philanthropy. So there's some great organizations here in Kirkland on the Eastside who I hope will work on that. I appreciate, Chair, your comments about, in particular, immigrant asylum seeking population as well as the 2S LGBTQIA plus population.

I think of you mentioned legal assistance for immigrant population. I think of mental health care needs and other needs in particular for the to us LGBTQIA plus community. So I hope that we I hope that we receive some applications and that we're aware of the gaps that may exist there that we can be proactive there to help with an equity lens, like you said, to really help our most vulnerable residents who are being damaged by some of the federal decision making right now. Thank you very much. We appreciate you, and look forward to hearing your recommendations.

Thank

you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Commissioners. Really appreciate you being here and appreciate all your hard work. Plus one to everything that Councilmember Falcone just said. One of the things that Councilmember Falcone and also I think staff and the commission talked about is where we, there are needs but there aren't organizations on the East Side in Kirkland that are filling those needs. When that's the case, can you talk a little bit about what strategies Kirkland uses to try to solicit interest from organizations that might either be doing that work and not be aware of our programs or maybe have the competency but have not included that as part of their goals?

So what are our strategies in that regard?

It's a great question. So one of the things, actually, that we've been recently working on, domestic violence services have been an area that think there's been a gap. We don't historically have not received a lot of applications for those supports. We have LifeWire and Consejo that we have funded and then additional, which are very distinctly different, right? CaseArc is sexual assault resources majority in Harborview, right?

So, are not the same, though they can overlap. So, we collectively with other East Side cities reached out to other organizations. One of them was Proud to Be Free, another was Dawn. Those are organizations, though they have applied in the past, we have not funded because they're not as like locally they're not located nearby. So we did meet with both of those organizations recently with City of Redmond, City of Issaquah and City of Sammamish to talk about how they could offer supports here and also be accessible because I think that it really is one of the issues.

We want them to be accessible to our community. So that was one of the strategies. We all talk about these at our city meetings, and we act, so we just kind of resource and were able to do that, and those folks did apply. So, when we see the gaps, we kind of look around, what is everybody else doing, and research and reach out.

Thank you, and thank you for those efforts. I'm glad that in some cases it's bearing fruit. Lynn, sorry?

I just wanted to add to that. In addition to what Annie just said, one of the ways we do that is that set aside money. The very first one we did was three budget cycles ago, and that was Eastside Legal Assistance Program. They had not applied for a grant, and they weren't providing services here. So we set aside money for those services specifically to attract that to Kirkland, which they did. And the next two buy ins, including this one, there was also set aside money with an RFP put out to see if we could attract those services.

Thank you. And I'm going to send it back to you, Chair, but I think what you're hearing is we recognize the complexity and we support your priorities at this point.

And to just kind of close the loop on that, I'm going to share the latest numbers with that. So this is preliminary, but I just wanted to present this to the council that so the applications closed yesterday for this current funding cycle. Staff did an excellent amazing job turning around. We have asked for 145 apps applications, $14,500,000 So that's $14,500,000 That's compared to about $11,800,000 last year, so last cycle. So it's about a 20% increase.

So which is about the rate we have been seeing, I would say over the past cycles too. So just to tell you kind of where things are how things are looking, we are this was not unexpected. We saw that expected there would be especially given a lot of the federal supports that are being whittled away that something like this could happen. But again, these haven't been vetted. These haven't been looked at.

So again, but I'm just saying at a very high level, this just tells you kind of where the scale or magnitude of need, I think, that we're looking at in the communities. I just wanted you to be aware of that as we think about as we go forward. So again, thank you for your support is what I would say. I think the priorities that we have, we've done that over multiple years. I'm not surprised that we're all mostly aligned on that because it was not the first time we've been going through that exercise.

So I really appreciate that. I think what we want to move on to next is basically kind of we had a few topics for discussion that we wanted to bring up with the council. The first topic we wanted to discuss was about our ongoing or base budget. So if you look at the note document that was sent over to you, our ongoing base budget has remained the same since 2019. It hasn't really changed since 2019.

We've had we have some other sources of funding like CDBG, Prop one, those things that add up that ongoing budget to give us a bigger amount overall that we're able to allocate. But our base budget has really not changed even though our population has increased, cost of living increased, the need has increased. So that's just one thing. So that's a consideration for us when we're talking about the base budget is this thing about it hasn't really changed. And what we're basically been discussing in the commission is this thing of the council has been very generous.

We're very appreciative because every year we come back and say this is the need, can you help us? And the council and city manager have been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and find extra funds for us every time that we need. So we're able to do a better job of supporting the community. But we are basically bringing up the question of, hey, is there a different way for us to operate where maybe we have a lot maybe there's a larger budget that we operate from and then we come to the council when there is really a strong need. Right now with the budget we have, we cannot really anywhere meet the need of the community in any reasonable fashion.

So is there a different way for us to think about the numbers instead of kind of having this exercise every cycle where we kind of come back and the city does a great job to find us funds, but it's not a very stable or sustainable fashion. It's kind of what the concern in the commission is. So that's kind of why we're bringing it up. So I'm just going to tee that topic up. And it is just to clarify, this is not for this funding cycle.

We're thinking ahead to the 2,930 funding cycle because the 2728 funding cycle, we're going to go the path we've always been on. This is not something that can be decided soon. So we're just teeing it up for the council to consider and wanted to get early thoughts on what thoughts you have, questions you may have. And we can then take it from there and maybe have a more ongoing effort to kind of roll this ball forward if the council is supportive of us doing that. So this is just an idea that we're bringing up right now.

I just want to clarify what I think I heard you say because your slide says add option B to ongoing funding in the 'twenty seven, twenty eight cycle, but you're saying in the 2930 cycle, you would like to see an increase in the budget?

Yes, I mean mainly because that is something I think of as not as a long term thing, but as maybe something that's a tactical thing we could do for the '27 period cycle. So I think I'm separating that from the long term thing, which is what is a more sustainable budget model for how this the council for how the human services budget operates. So I think we can I would kind of have that discussion in the context of the next item that Lynn is going to bring up, which is how we do this option A, option B, option C and council member for M, this is the first time you're probably going through that? So you may or may not be aware of what option A, B, C is. We'll talk about that when we do, but that's how we've been operating historically.

So that I'm not but I think we're just saying that longer term budgeting is more of a next cycle thing. Thank

you for that clarification. So

just to kind of review how we've been doing funding recommendations, we know that we've seen increasing needs every year, and budgets correspondingly in a municipal environment don't always correlate to that need. And so therefore, we've had this option A, option B, option C method of making recommendations to city council. Option A is representing the ongoing funding, and we are now going to be defining that as all the ongoing funding, like Prop one and whatnot. We've been separating those out, and so we're going to put that that is ongoing funding, and so technically, there is an increase there. It just depends on how you look at the numbers.

Then option B has historically been the same level of funding as the previous bi biennium. And then option C is if there's additional money, would counsel consider this additional investment? Now, one thing to point out is that for this biennium, Option B and C was funded, and that has not quite happened in totality in previous years. So to say Option B would include all of this year's B and C is a pretty significant ask. I just want to make folks aware of that, but the intention is to approach it in the same manner of option A, B and C, and we don't necessarily have to decide on exact dollar figures for A, B and C because oftentimes what the commission has done in the past is do some ranking, prioritization ranking that helps the council be able to see where there might be a critical threshold.

So generally speaking, the question is, is Council still interested in this general approach?

You. Councillor Falcone?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Lynn, for that recap. I have a question about clarify last time when we did Options B and C, did that include one time ARPA funding that we had that we used to be able to fund that?

Yes, indeed. Option excuse me, option fiscal year 'twenty three-'twenty four included a great deal of ARPA funding, and City Council was not sure if you'd be able to maintain that in 'twenty five-'twenty six because there was no more ARPA funding. But you did, and you surpassed it.

I just want to say we don't get credit. It's the finance department that gets credit for finding that. So you're giving us we just say yes. So Councilmember Arnold.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you to the commission for all of your work. It's got to be given all that you're expressing about the needs and all of the homework that you're doing to see what's happening in the community, some agonizing decisions to actually make these recommendations and rank them. To what the chair was saying though where the city manager has always found a way to pull a rabbit out of the hat to fund these things. I fear when the city manager runs out of rabbits.

And one of the concerns I have is how do we deal with that case? And one of the things that you have done with your work is that when there was proposals for enhanced funding, you kind of stack ranked those as well. And we've, as a council and given recommendations from staff, generally said, okay, we were able to draw the line and fund all their requests. But you did give them an order such that if we needed to draw the line at a different point, you said, here's where you should draw the line. And so when I look at option B, which says take the base budget and community development block grant funding and the Proposition one money and the MFT money plus the $1,350,000,000 of supplemental funding that we were able to find.

I worry about that $1,350,000 of saying is that sustainable. So especially within that block in Option B, I think it's going to be important to have that ranking is because while I believe human service is going to be a priority for the council, I can't presuppose here in April about a decision we're going to be making September or October. And so want to have some options in the case that this is one of those budget years. And frankly, part of why we're here is we don't have a reliable federal partner. And that impacts your work, but it impacts a lot of other work in the city too, where we're going to be looking at some trade offs.

And so while I think human service is going to be a priority, I want to be able to say if we can't hit that full option B or even get to an option C, where could we draw the line if we have to scale back? Thank you.

Thank you. This is bothering me. Yes, thank you, Councilmember Arnold. In my heart, I would give you the $14,500,000 in a heartbeat. But we are going to be making some very, very difficult trade offs when we go into our budget. So I agree with Councilmember Arnold. Having the different tiers helps us weigh those trade offs that we need to make. And as he said, if we end up having to draw the lines somewhere else, that also helps us in our budgeting. So I do support what we've done in the past.

Thank you for that. I think we are definitely planning to do the ABC that hasn't been part of the plan. So this confirms for us that we will continue to go out on that path. So thank you for that input. I did want to ask if there was any thoughts on the base budget thing, if there are any thoughts on how you want to proceed with that for the next submit cycle?

Too early to tell. So we'll just table it for now. The third topic we had that we want to bring up since we already talked about it is the rapid response funding that we did. And one of the things we've been we're really glad to be able to do it last time. But as Annie indicated, I will just say from the commission point of view, we heard a panel in April, it was November before the money went.

And especially during these times when the need is urgent, where we are debating in the commission whether there's a way to have a faster process where within two to three months we can get the funds out where there is need in the community. And so we don't we're just proposing this as something that we are asking for counsel and thoughts and input on, is this something that you see a need for also for us to think more about to say how can we get through a fund do this rapid response funding on an even faster cycle than what we've done so far through the commission. And so that is just something and there's also a process of how do we have funds allocated for that, which is a different or related discussion that we also need to think about because the funds have to be there in order to the rapid response funding. So it is something that the commission hasn't really discussed, but when we're talking about ideas to bring up in front of the council, this is definitely something that's top of mind for us is to say, especially during these times. It happened last year.

We don't think that's the only time it's going to happen again. We think other things that likely could happen in the next two, three years. So we wanted to just bring that up as another suggestion and to see if you have any feedback or thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Sorry, I won the battle between Council Member Falcon and I. That's what we were laughing about. Thank you, Chair. I should have known you were I should have anticipated you were gonna ask this question because Mayor and I met with you and Vice Chair just last week, and you raised that you told us this was on your mind.

I'm gonna put the staff and the city manager on the spot a little bit. I wish I had anticipated this point and I could've explored this with staff before the meeting. But can we talk a little bit about what the critical path was for that funding that we did last year when the Human Services Commission's experience is one where they identified a need, an amount, and there was a six month process. Where would we shortcut that process? Obviously, we want to be deliberate, we want to be responsible, we want to make sure organizations are accountable, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So, can we describe that a little bit for the

channels? I'm

gonna give

you my perspective and then, you know, the staff who worked on it directly. What I would say is the whole situation was unique and new. So we'd never done it before. We never had a direct request from a commission before. So when it came, we're like, does one do with something like this? It's not our normal process. And then I think what we looked at as staff and other council had questions about was as opposed to what. Right? So this came up, what other things come up, where should the money come from, who should we take this. So I think we're just trying to think through a lot of process questions on it.

I wasn't trying to not respond quickly, but there are some real policy issues that came up, some real procedural issues that came up. And I think we demonstrated that we learned from that when the whole SNAP issue came up, and we turned around and did that faster. So I think it was really just getting used to the idea of could this happen? And that's at least my perspective as a city manager, there was a lot of discussion that had to happen inside the staff and with the council about that request and about that process.

The only thing I would add is there was quite a bit of time that it took from the commission to staff as well, right, because we needed a formal recommendation from the Human Services Commission, meaning that was at the next meeting, so that's a month right there. And then that was elevated to me. Now I'm elevating it to Kurt, now we're coming to the first council meeting, the second council meeting, so you've got two to three months' worth of process right there. And I would just echo what the city manager said, is having gone through that, I think we could streamline that, and there's a couple places there where we could make adjustments to the process.

Okay, thank you Lynn, you answered my follow-up question, which is going to be, is there places to find streamline?

Can I share a little bit of information? I do want to say there are a few things. We had a lot of that work teed up as we were waiting through that process. So RFPs were done just in case. We had a plan of, if we do this RFP, how long does it need to be out?

Jay was an amazing support in that process. And so we had all of these things as well teed up to make this go as quickly as possible. We had our commissioners put together a small team to also review this, so they were already I think we did two days and something like eight hours of reviews applications. So they were really into that process. And so if we didn't have all of that set up, I don't think it would have gone even as fast as it did.

And also, getting those amendments out, We have them ready. We had CAO support in making sure that we had everything ready to go. So I think that was part of that process. The conversations, though, those happen, and those take time. But I think there is a better way and also to coordinate with cities, because we were able to get a lot of other cities follow suit once the City of Kirkland and the City of Redmond did that process.

Thank

Thank you Madam Mayor I'll

try to be quick.

Thank you for leadership on that work before I mean that's really impressive I know it seemed to take a while but at the same time that is really expedited process compared to a lot of other city processes so well done on that. I'm sure there are things we could do to improve the process internally, but also I'm sure this is a part of the conversation too is cutting the need to have a council decision as part of it, right? Having like preapproved funding for certain type of uses where you could more rapidly deploy those funds. Something like that would likely mean though that it would be that much less of a human services grant that we would award, right? So it would be a trade off that we'd have to consider prioritizing that.

I think that's a lot to kind of talk through and think through in order to make a recommendation or a decision like that, but I just want to mention that that is possibly something that we could consider. We also, I mean, we have council contingency funds that we don't often spend and so that's something that's also a potential option in a crisis situation where we could try to deploy that but again that would mean coming back to council. So I know that we can sometimes be a bottleneck in getting things done. So thank you, though, for bringing forth this recommendation.

Councilor Mayor Arnold.

Thank you. And just to clarify one of Annie's comments when she's talking about Jay Gerwin in finance procurement, occasionally exchange some email. But I concur with Councilmember Fakhon's comments and would like to see some feedback from staff on how council can expedite this process. We've talked about how you all can expedite your process and I would be in favor of establishing a reserve of some sort even though it may mean that for example, we had $100,000 a budget year for the Rapid Response Fund before. It may be worth it to have that where under certain circumstances that that could get tapped into.

For other areas we have a concept that the city manager can declare a state of emergency and act before the next council meeting. Maybe this is a similar sort of thing. But we'd like to understand what are some options to get council out of the loop so that you would have that flexibility to really do rapid response in a time where it's not a six week process on our end just to even say, okay, you're bringing it to council and then we generally will have two meetings before we tap into our special projects reserve. Thank you.

All right, Tara, back to you.

Thank you. We really appreciate the support for the rapid response. I think that's great to hear. I think we have we'll definitely continue that discussion, but it's great to see that. I think we all want to respond to the community as soon as possible. And so whatever like was mentioned, we took two months to write a letter. So maybe that's something for us to do. And we do that differently next time we're out, that would be faster. So I think there's lessons for all of us in this process to kind of expedite getting the response out there as fast as possible. So I think with that, I just wanted to thank you for the time and for giving us your input.

If there are there any other questions, any other topics for the City Council members that you would like to ask of us at this point? I just want to kind of open the floor. We have a couple of minutes left, so if there's anything that you have.

It doesn't look like it. So no more questions from counsel. I do want to thank you all again for your time and your dedication. One of the things that Councilmember Falcone put up or mentioned at the start of this conversation was, how do we share with the community what Human Services grants process is like, the need in our community, and how do we get other philanthropic partners to join us in this. And I would like to explore that with city manager and staff, how we tell the story.

Perhaps it's this week in Kirkland or something like that. But I think that there's a lot of invisible need in this community. And I think that educating our community on the very real need that we're seeing, and as Councilmember Arnold said so well, our federal partners are not helping us right now. So this is going to be an ongoing issue, so I want to help tell that story. So again, thank you all for being here. Thank you in advance for your very challenging work of making these grant recommendations, and we look forward to seeing them.

Thank you all. Thank you.

All right. So I forgot to introduce our study session. So we are now concluding the Human Services joint meeting. We are going to be next discussing the independent peer review of water pressure in the Upper Highlands. We will re convene our regular meeting at 07:30. City manager walked away.

Just as we're figuring out the switch here, wanted to make sure we get the right people. So a combination of public works leadership as well as our firm, Consular Engineering. Brian, sir. Okay. Alright.

So as they're coming to the forefront, so just to tee this up, council, both for your own advice and also at the recommendation of some members of community, to get an independent peer review of all the actions that had been related to the Highlands water pressure changes and the alternatives. So you funded that graciously, and we hired consular engineers who did that work. They're here to present their initial findings and answer any questions that the council might have about the work that they did. So I think I'm going go ahead and turn it over to Rob English, our capital projects manager to kick us off.

Great, thank you. Good evening. And this item is a presentation on the peer reviewed findings for the Highlands Water Pressure Alternatives the level

the

of wrap up the presentation with a couple of slides the and then we'll open up for questions. So with that I will turn it over to Brian.

Start with introductions. I'm going give a little background just to bring everyone up to speed on where we're at today, talk about the scope of our peer review, spend some time discussing the findings, talk about the recommendation and then you can see staff will give an update on the fire sprinkler study status and then

give plenty of time hopefully for any questions you may have.

So just a quick background, the five ten pressure zone at the Highlands area has had hydraulic deficiencies that have been identified for a number of years through a number of studies, primarily related to the fact that there's a single point of supply into the area that results in fire flow capacity deficiencies primarily undersized pipe, single point of service is typically a problem in a water system. In 2024, modifications were made to the water system to integrate that 510 Zone, the Highland area into the surrounding 450 Zone. Those are representative of the hydraulic grade or the level of water supply in the zone. This resulted in improved hydraulic connectivity, supply resilience got better, fire flow was improved, water quality was improved, it reduced the risk and dependence on those critical aging water means that are undersized. It resulted ultimately in more stable pressure under a range of flow conditions for the area, which is a good thing.

However, it also resulted in negative community response because average day pressures were reduced because that base hydraulic grade was dropped by 60 feet. Following those negative responses, the city had RH2 do an alternative analysis looking at how to address the pressure issues and then also hired us to do a peer review of their analysis. The scope of that peer review was to confirm that the technical analysis was reasonable, consistent and appropriate for both planning level decisions, but also for budget decisions around implementing those improvements that were recommended. We're assessing the evaluated alternatives to make sure that they met the established level of service goals that the city has, both city goals as well as the regulatory requirements set out by the State of Washington Department of Health. We looked at performance, constructability, schedule and cost considerations.

There's always trade offs as you look at alternatives. The best solution often is also the most expensive. And then finally, just making sure that the analysis did support defensible future water system plan updates and CIP plan. So looking at those four areas, the quick takeaway is that the technical analysis was sound. They used industry standard methodologies, the inputs to the hydraulic model that they used were reasonable and appropriate, They used consistent application of analysis criteria as they looked at the alternatives that were identified.

They developed appropriate alternatives, so there were four that were developed, and I'll talk about those a bit more in a moment. They addressed both short term needs and long term level of service goals. And one of the things that we were asked to do in our analysis was to determine if there were any other feasible alternatives that should be considered. We didn't find any. We did do quite a look at what the potential alternatives could be.

One, the analysis our H2 did was very sound and they really did look at a wide range of alternatives and carried forward only the ones that were feasible from a cost and schedule standpoint and met those goals. And so the ones that they considered really were the right ones to consider. We looked at their alternatives evaluation to make sure that they were considering performance to constructability costs and schedule, and again, it was a very sound in that regard and looked at are they addressing resiliency in aging infrastructure. A piece that I didn't put the check mark next to and we'll talk about this a bit more is in planning and implementation. So the recommendation they made does most effectively meet the objectives of the study.

So one, water system performance is maintained at a level that's appropriate and it addressed community water pressure expectations. One thing we'll talk about a bit more though is that there is some additional investigation warranted to make sure that the potential risk associated with residential fire sprinkler systems that have been installed in this area will still perform with the selected alternative. Kind of walk through the four alternatives. Alternative one is the recommended alternative from the RH2 study. It is the most effective for meeting the long term level of service goals.

As I said, the primary risk is related specifically to operation of those fire sprinkler systems in the event of a fire for those homes that would be outside of the reinstated 10 Zone. So Alternative one is a reduced size reinstated five ten Zone. Hits primarily it includes the customers that had the most significant decrease or change in pressure from what they had previously bringing them back into the 510 Zone. There are, though, a number of customers that wouldn't be in the reinstated five ten Zone because they still have acceptable pressures today and where they have fire sprinkler systems. There's a small risk should be mitigated or at least identified and then if needed mitigated that those fire sprinkler systems wouldn't perform as they were originally designed when they were in the 510 Zone.

Alternative two also meets level service goals similar to Alternative one. This is a full reinstatement of the 510 Zone. But it doesn't give the same overall system performance because by not bringing largely the southern portions of the original 510 Zone back into the 510 Zone, you get the benefit of improved hydraulic connectivity of the system across that South Side, which benefits the broader area and improves fire flow for those customers, albeit with reduced average day pressures, but still above the minimum acceptable level. Alternative three is really a phased implementation of Alternative two that was identified. The challenge with this is while it could be implemented fast, it results in a significant reduction in level of service until all of the improvements are completed.

So what would happen is you would see a return to reduced performance and risk under fire flow conditions for those customers until all of the improvements that are identified essentially in Alternative two are complete. So that was deemed to be really not a desirable option. Returning to a state where a number of homes are at risk is really not an objective that the city should be trying to meet. Alternative four, again, is a short term improvement that essentially makes Alternative one pressure zone reinstated but puts in a temporary pump station to improve pressures until the rest of Alternative one can be implemented. Citi is moving forward with this option, and it is a good one to address in the short term.

It has the potential to meet improvements this summer, although it will take significant effort to get there and there are some challenges, but it will address that. But it doesn't meet long term goals. So putting in a pump station that would need to operate to supply customers really doesn't meet the long term objectives, but it does address the short term need of community. I went really fast there, but I'll get to it here and then take any questions. If the potential residential fire sprinkler system performance issues can be addressed, then alternative one, as recommended, really is the right option.

So the takeaway here is that you have a really strong alternatives analysis that was developed, a good recommendation. There is a need to do some additional investigation. Staff will talk about here, but we agree with the analysis recommend you move forward.

Thank you, Brian. And I did squeeze you on time.

Thank you. Thank you for being here, Brian, and thank you for your peer review. As we're looking at alternatives, if we have to go to alternative number two, when we had discussed this as a council before, one of the issues that came up in the previous discussion is that Alternative two creates for lack of a tactical term, an overpressure situation where pressure reduction valves are needed in some circumstances was not mentioned in your at least in the memo and the peer review study. Is that an issue that would is valid and under consideration if we were have to go with alternative two?

It is a consideration, although my perspective, it's fairly minor. So most of those homes, if they would see pressures above 80 psi, which should have already had a pressure reducing valve installed the service, that valve would still be in place. It's not functioning today. It's not doing anything and would be used. I understand that one of the things the city staff are looking at is making sure that anyone that's brought back into the 510 Zone is notified so that they are aware if they are going to see pressures near 80 psi, they need to confirm that they have that in there.

But it really is a customer and plumbing code issue, and they should have been installed already. So I see that as a relatively low risk in that the plumbing code has been in place requiring this since 1980. And so most, if not all of those homes should already have pressure reducing valves in place.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. As we heard earlier that the to make a informed recommendation for which alternative to select, it is important for us to identify and quantify the risk of the impact of the reduced pressure on those fire system that was designed with a higher pressure. So this effort actually is already currently underway. And I'm here today to actually give you an update on the status of this effort.

So I will start with communication. We have identified it approximately 70 properties that will potentially have that impact with the fire sprinkler system because it was designed in when the pressure was higher. So March 31, a notification letter has been sent to offer bucket tests to identify whether there is an issue or not. We have continued to making the effort on the resistance communication through mailer and website, which I will get into a little bit of the update on the next slide. But the point is, if we started to recognize that the response is low, we will also initiate a phone call outreach to make sure that the properties owner are have been reached and understand realize there is offer for bucket test.

In terms of the test, we have contracted with Fioshield company to conduct the bucket test. So April 1, the day after that the notification letter was sent, the sign up is open, allowing the residents to sign up and schedule for the test so that we can start to collect the data. The idea is going forward, we would like to collect enough data to analyze whether there is truly at risk that we can quantify and then we can identify mitigation if it's needed. The other effort we're working on is to identify homes that no longer require fire sprinkler as a result of the fire flow improvement. As you know that there are three different factors to require fire sprinkler, the size of the home, the access to the house and the fire hydrant that's serving the home if it's not meeting the fire flow.

So we are trying to identify those that will no longer be required because originally they were required because of fire hydrant. But now that we had the fire flow improved, these homes should no longer be required fire sprinkler. The idea is after we have all this information, we should be able to come back to the council for providing or making a recommendation for an alternative to move forward. So here is a brief update on our communication effort. Since last October, the council this council adopted a resolution R5797 5697, I'm sorry.

We have been working, constantly meeting with the residents and business owner, discuss the alternative solution for reinstate of, the pressure. We have also sent out a letter response to the petitioners to inform them the effort that is going on. We even we have also invited them when we've started to introduce the Alternative four, which is the temporary regional Busu Palm station. So as you can see that yesterday, as of last week, we sent out a letter. But then right after the letter is sent out, we also had an e mail to notify that there is a modification to the mitigation program.

And then the picture that you see right there is the postcard that we sent last Friday to update the neighborhood of the upcoming upgrade with the regional booster pump station so that they will know what is the what to expect in this upcoming April, mid April to June of the construction activity in order to reinstate the pressure at the Upper Highland area. So the idea is there will be an ongoing planned correspondence meeting communication. We will update continue to have the communication with the community and also update the website, which has already been done November through April. And there will be two more postcard that we would like to send out specifically to update a construction, but more importantly, to remind the residents whose pressure will be reinstated and their pressure if it's going to exceed 80, which they should have PRV, pressure relief valve installed before. Make sure they check, make sure it's working condition and make sure they turn it on when the pressure is reinstated.

So that's the effort status.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? No questions? We have fifteen minutes. Brian, you want to go back to your presentation? No, you guys are doing a great job, and you're being very thorough. And I appreciate, one, the peer review that supported what we're moving forward on, and two, the robust communication that you're doing with the neighbors. So thank you all.

Thank you.

City manager?

I was just going to

say maybe we have two pre authorizations with the council done, one you already approved and one is on the council meeting tonight and maybe just talk a little bit about the first one and the second one if the council approves that we need to make sure that's within 10% of the bid and if it's not we have come back for council approval. Maybe just give a quick update on that because there's action underway that will get the temporary booster pump up and running.

Yes, so the vault construction contract that was awarded, actually the council preauthorized that at the last meeting so that city manager awarded that a few days after we had all the documents in place. And so that project, we actually had the preconstruction meeting today, is ongoing, and work will begin soon on that effort. The other contract, which was the pump station that actually provides the shed and the pump installation, we opened bids on that yesterday. The bid result had it was higher than the 10% amount. And so the way the council memo was written for tonight on consent was it would authorize it.

If it was within 10%, well, obviously, since it wasn't, we'll bring it back for approval in the consent calendar for April 21.

However, we don't believe that's going to delay the project. I think that's important to point out. So we already purchased the pump already in advance. So again, we don't expect any project delays, right? You win?

Thank you. Anything to add, City Manager?

Oh, I had.

Yeah, just want

to make

sure that you got that since we're here.

All right, So that concludes our study session. All right. We are back in session following a joint session with the Human Services Commission and a discussion of Upper Highlands water pressure. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that Councilmember Tim Chisholm is not in the audience or attendance tonight, and that his absence was excused by the council earlier this evening. We will start tonight's meeting with honors and proclamations. We have two proclamations this Autism Acceptance and Neurodiversity Celebration Month proclamation, which will be read by Deputy Mayor Neil Black, and the Sexual Assault Awareness Month proclamation, which will be read by Councilmember Jay Arnold, city manager.

Thank you, madam mayor, deputy mayor, members of the council. Yes. We'll be declaring April 2026 as autism acceptance and neurodiversity celebration month. Here to accept the proclamation is Naomi Martini, who is a devoted disability advocate and a Kirkland resident, and Scott Bellman, is the director from the University of Washington's Disabilities Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology Center. So welcome to both of them and anyone else who would care to join them if you want.

Okay. Hopefully this yep. It's working. Alright. Tonight, I'm gonna read a proclamation of the city of Kirkland declaring April 2026 as autism acceptance and neurodiversity celebration month.

Whereas autism acceptance and neurodiversity celebration month promotes understanding, acceptance, appreciation, pride and support for the entire neurodivergent community. And whereas Autism and Neurodiversity Acceptance emphasizes the importance of celebrating the unique talents, skills, and contributions of neurodivergent people, while also recognizing the barriers and lack of sufficient accommodation that exists in society. And whereas autism and neurodiversity are quite common in our society, with neurodivergent people making up about twenty percent of The U. S. Population.

And whereas neurodiversity should be a valued and celebrated aspect of our community's diversity, an additional work is needed to achieve acceptance and appreciation of the neurodiversity that exists in our community. And whereas using positive language when discussing neurodiversity is especially important because neurodivergent people see neurodivergence as a fundamental part of who they are, and yet they are not defined by it. And whereas neurodivergent people need to be treated with love, dignity, and respect and to be provided accommodations that lead to equal opportunities to thrive, and whereas the city is committed to making Kirkland a safe, inclusive, and welcoming place where people of all abilities belong. Now therefore, mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the city council, proclaims April 2026 as autism and other neurodivergence acceptance and appreciation month in Kirkland and where and encourages all community members to promote acceptance and appreciation of autistic and neurodivergent people making valuable contributions to our community as family members, friends, classmates, co workers, and neighbors. Hi,

thank you so much first off for being here. It's quite an honor. Neurodivergence is a part of my life and is across cultures the way we view neurodivergence autism is very special to all of us because it's a part of our everyday lives So being a resident of Kirkland for so long is quite unique in the way that it's one of the best places to grow up, and what a wonderful city. I'd like to thank Mayor Curtis for just being such a great amazing person and having a residence of 15,000 residents roughly identifying with neurodivergence is quite amazing. So today I ask you all how can we embrace all these talents today in Kirkland?

Well, it starts with we. We can start understanding what laws help us in the neurodivergency community thrive in school, workforce environment, and everyday social events such as the Americans Disability Act, Individual Disabilities Education Act. We can listen and hear concerns from the community and elevate voices, which is super helpful for us. So I just wanted to say thank you so much. My advocacy journey actually, professional advocacy journey started with DUET at the University of Washington Center, which provided me such amazing opportunities to work with people across the community with the greater Seattle area.

It would not be for an amazing support system, my family, my two parents who accepted me and my neurodivergence with open arms, love and support. I just want to say thank you so much again everybody. It means the world to me and I just want to conclude by saying a quote from my late friend Natsumi who said, When we are able to listen to our children and embrace each other with open arms and listen with our hearts, we can connect to all communities. Thank you so much.

Yes. And again, this is Scott Bellman from the University of Washington Dewitt Center. I just wanted to say, if you would like to connect free of charge with advocates like Naomi or other services in your community here that might help you embrace and accept people who identify as neurodivergent, please reach out and we'll be happy to connect you at no charge.

I see that dad wants to join us. Do you want to join us also?

Out, I just wanna introduce our next topic. We're doing also proclaiming April 2026 as sexual assault awareness month. I do wanna note that in the memo, which you'll put in the packet, we found online there are also a lot of resource links related to sexual assault awareness and resources for all members of the family and people those who are impacted. And receiving the proclamation today is board member, Vice President Lisa Scherz, who's on the board of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and also a Kirkland resident. So we're very happy to have her here today.

We have a proclamation proclaiming sexual assault awareness month in Kirkland. Whereas the month of April has been designated as sexual assault awareness month to promote the importance of consent, educate communities about prevention of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse, and highlight the importance of providing support to those who have experienced it. And whereas black, indigenous, and other people of color as well as people living in poverty, LGBTQ plus people, elders, people with disabilities, and others who have been historically oppressed are disproportionately affected by sexual violence in significant and complex ways. And whereas awareness, education, prevention are critical in addressing the root causes of sexual assault, empowering individuals to speak out and ensuring that survivors are supported, believed, and provided with the resources they need for healing. And whereas the city is committed to working together to foster a safe and inclusive Kirkland community where all residents are treated with dignity and respect, free from any form of sexual violence or harassment.

And whereas the city supports programs and initiatives with King County sexual assault resource center case arc in order to provide resources, advocacy and services for survivors of sexual assault while also promoting education, prevention and awareness efforts. And whereas the city calls upon community members and institutions to educate themselves and others about sexual assault prevention by exploring the National Sexual Violence Resource Center at nsvrc.org and the KSARC website at kcsarc.org/prevention both of which offer a wide range of prevention and education resources for parents, caregivers, educators and community groups to stand in solidarity with survivors and to foster environments in which respect, consent, and dignity are upheld. Now therefore, America Kelly Curtis on behalf of the city council proclaims April 2026 as sexual assault awareness month and encourages all to look back to remember the survivors and advocates that laid the foundation for change and move forward to renew focus on prevention, healing and action.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you to the city of Kirkland, to the mayor, and the council. You have been amazing supporters of CaseArc, and I also wanna just say to the community and to the survivors, we are here for you. We served over 4,300 survivors and family members just last year, and we are so proud of our partnership with Kirkland and really appreciate all that you do and I just want to say thank you.

All right. We are now moving on to items for the audience. This is our time in our meeting when we 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.

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 council chambers. For those participating by phone, please dial 9 to be recognized to speak. Items for the audience is important part of our business meeting. We ask that everyone be treated with kindness and respect. Very the pleased progress We made.

Different viewpoint. We We are 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 meetings, regardless of their content. Kirkland prides itself on being a respectful, welcoming community. We want everyone to feel like they belong council chambers expressing their viewpoints. City Clerk, who do we have signed up? We have

three guests currently wishing to speak, Mariana Martinez, Marie McKinney, Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you. Mariana? Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much, Mariana Martinez. I am the new Executive Director of Centro Cultural Mexicano, is a nonprofit organization that serves a Latino and Hispanic community across three counties. King appears as Najmish. While we are located in Redmond, we do serve a of residents, including residents of Kirkland. Centro Cultural Mexicano is a nonprofit organization that serves a Latino community across, I would say, four major pillars. The first one is through events, celebrating our heritage. Second pillar is our programs. Third pillar is our makerspace, which is dedicated to youth in a place of innovation and imagination.

Organizations advocacy being in places like these telling you and lifting uplifting the voices of the communities that we serve. I'm here to also let you know that aligned with Kirkland's human services element, we advanced the city's goals by supporting residents of Kirkland through housing stability, food security, culturally responsive mental health services, and emergency preparedness and crisis response education and support. Examples of some of the collaborations that we do include startup on small businesses networking, HopeLink or partnerships with HopeLink as well as Sound Transit updates and transit changes, as well as our most recent collaboration with the King County Crisis Care Center initiative through focus groups as well as art workshops where we will help this initiative inform how to best serve individuals in residents of Kirkland, how to promote mental health awareness. The seven areas of the programs that we serve include arts and culture, basic needs, health, education, support to small businesses, environmental sustainability, as well as digital equity. And I'm just here to remind you that we're there and we'll serve the citizens and or rather residents of your city, and we look forward to more collaborations and just make you aware that, yes, the future collaborations that we hope to receive support eventually for services that we provide to our communities.

Thank you so much. Thank you so

much. Murray?

Yeah, Murray McKinney, resident of Highlands for fifty plus years. With regards to the water pressure peer review report that was presented to you during the study session this evening, alternative three was designated as the Stoneman option. Just to be clear, Scott Stoneman proposed that option over a year ago without complete access to a water system map, system model and other information. His solution was to add pressure reducing valves and two check valves in order to recreate the five ten pressure zone. Alternatives one and two are actually modifications of Scott's original idea and they should be labeled Stoneman modified alternatives.

Alternative one creates a five ten zone that is smaller than the original zone. Alternative two creates a five ten zone that is the same size as the original zone. Alternative three is Scott's original proposal from last spring, it isn't really applicable based on additional information the city has since provided. Alternative four is the installation of a temporary regional booster pump station and is only a short term solution until the water pressure has been reestablished in several years by either alternatives one or two. Yesterday, asked Scott to review the report made by CONSOR.

He thought that either alternative one or two would solve the issue. However, according to the chart two in the report, alternative two provides more customers with a higher pressure during peak hourly demand than does alternative one. Chart three in the report also shows better fire flow with alternative two. With either alternative one or two, the peak hourly demand could drop to 57 PSI which is probably only just barely adequate. However, it is far better than the 28 PSI which is where we are now, about 30 psi better than what we have.

As you know, the City Public Works Department and RH2 have already selected alternative one. The residents of the Upper Highlands should never have gone through this two year plus ordeal. In my opinion, without citizen protests and the help of Scott Stallman, the city would never have properly addressed the low water pressure issue. I and a lot of the residents of the Highlands are very disappointed with how this whole matter has been handled by the city. If we didn't have a Highlands resident who is a licensed civil engineer with experience in municipal water systems, we would have been up a creek without a paddle.

Scott spent a lot of his time helping his neighbors without any financial reward. I think we should recognize Scott I think he should be recognized by the City Council with the proclamation. To shift gears and the few remaining seconds I have, I'd like to bring the attention to the issue the neighborhood is now having with 112th Avenue Northeast and what's been done with the Gateway project. The street has been re striped, the center line has been shifted over and it's very close to the curb line, so it really puts pedestrians on the sidewalk in jeopardy. Right now, with large garbage trucks or other vehicles that have large mirrors, you're in danger of being hit by them. And people put dumpsters out Tuesday night, pick up Wednesday, don't remove the dumpsters right away and it's blocking the sidewalks.

Okay,

see you next month.

Alex?

Hi. My name Alex Zimmerman. I live here for four year and I'm 15 time candidate for election. So I come for the last few months. We have very small question about very hot potato, King Country Housing Authority. Housing is a big problem right now because many people in King Country Housing Authority give a thousand and thousand apartment to not American citizen. Sometimes they say there are people who not have a document. And

the

one from this guy who doing this is here. His name Black. He's a deputy director commissioner. And I talking about this for a couple of months right now and ask him three simple question. What is by definition when this public request is exactly what's happened?

So he can answer answer first question. When you restore my voucher from King Country Housing Authority, what did you steal from me for twenty year and I try fighting for twenty year. Number two, you're acting like a criminal like Bandita. He's stealing people money, senior citizen American money. We so poor, we have a problem, and everybody knows this thousand senior citizen, disabled, low income, new department, but he gives this King Country House in apartment to people what has never have a document.

To me, it's look like a pure criminal, a pure bandit, a chief. It's exactly what's happened. In third question, when I go to King Country House in authority meeting, what is he present? He speak three times, he give me trespass for six months. They don't like what is I'm talking, he support American citizen. It's very confuse me right now. So my question right now to everybody who listen to me, when we have a criminal who steal money, a thief who steal money from disabled, low income senior citizen, you know what this mean. What is Vini doing with him? Theoretically, need prosecute him. Can you prosecute him?

I don't think so. His attorney. You know what this mean? He know all tricks. Yep. For long time. I understand this story a year. Yeah. So I right now asking a very simple question to you guys because he part of your business. How about would impeach him? Because what is he did, know how analogy in king country how in King Country in King Country. Totally, you know what this mean. It's very unique situation. I demand impeach him. When he don't give me answer for a few months what is he talking, so he dirty like a shit.

I'm so sorry. We were Trump. We were new American revolution. Stand up, slap, and happy cow. You need impeach him.

City clerk? Do we have any more?

We have two more guests signed up to speak, the next being Joe Kunzler, who is virtual, and Liz Hunt. Thank you.

Thank you. You may start my time, please. Joe Kunzler here. I want to thank you for your public service and I appreciate being on the autism spectrum. I happen to appreciate your autism proclamation. As you may have noticed over the years I happen to feel words not just hear them. That's just part of neurodivergence. That's not an excuse for past, present or future bad behavior on my part. I don't believe in excuses when you power around with you know heroes. I do want to address a couple of things though with the time remaining.

The first is I requested notes from your recent retreat and I got very few. I'm not terribly sure how it is that you haven't come up with a plan to deal with the previous speakers' malicious outbursts, some of which language I found hateful. And earlier today, Mr. Zimmerman was admonished by the president of the Seattle City Council for using racist language because of Seattle City Council rules. Then, and I am not speaking in any shape or form for the city government of Redmond or any official there, but these rules that Redmond has have gotten Zimmern excluded for six months twice.

These rules, if you adopt them, require people to speak only to what's on the jurisdiction, require people to speak each other with respect, and have stood up the court muster. I ask you please adopt the Redmond rules because quite frankly, I think we're all hurt and we're all tired of a troubled individual coming down here and hurling hate and once in a while lobbing attacks on your neighbors. And when he's not doing that, he's attacking a gentleman who's trying to build homes and house the homeless. Now I've also called up the letters to King County Housing Authority sent Zimmerman. Zimmerman has been excluded from commission from the King County Housing Authority meetings for disrupting those meetings.

He also has engaged in anti Semitic rhetoric that and racist rhetoric that they find offensive. These are good actions by the King County Housing Authority and if you find a problem with Redmond's rules, you might want to try King County Housing Authority's rules. In any event, I want to ask you politely and kindly to do more than passing proclamations, but to take action against people who disregard your mayor's instructions on public comment. The only thing Zimmerman understands is an exclusion. That's it.

You can't walk up to him and ask him to stop. You can't email him and say, hey. I can't have you doing such and such. He just doesn't listen to reason. He listens to action. And so I beg the motion that you please develop some rules and get Zoom in out of your airspace. Thank you for your public service. You deserve better.

Thank you. Next we have Liz Hunt.

Good evening, counsel and staff. I'm speaking to your Item 9F, the Neighborhood Plan Updates. Why do people live in Kirkland? What are our key assets? We don't have light rail. We don't have big Bellevue Square shopping and entertainment complexes. We have great schools and a top notch hospital that we share with our neighboring cities. But what is it that makes Kirkland so special? We have fabulous parks and we have fabulous neighborhoods. Those are two key attributes of our city.

I was talking with some new neighbors and they are so excited to be living in Kirkland. They have a nice medium sized new home. They love to go for long walks. Our community is safe, and they just love how friendly it is. They really are just overjoyed at being in our city.

And that's just my neighborhood. We have 13 or 14 wonderful neighborhoods in the city, depending how you count. There are similarities between those neighborhoods, and there is great variety as well. And those are all wonderful assets to our community. So tonight you're going to discuss a new process for updating the neighborhood plans.

A beauty of the current process is that a city planner works with representatives from the neighborhood and they learn from each other. The city planner knows all about city planning and the neighbors know about their neighborhood. And they work together and update the vision and the description of their neighborhood. And the new process would be twofold. The city staff would update all of the neighborhood plans together at one time at the same time that they're updating the comprehensive plan, which is the twenty year big project.

That's when the twenty year vision, that's when the neighborhood plans would all be updated at the same time. So the other piece of it is that there would be an opportunity for people to submit amendments to the neighborhood plans in the off years. So that sounds logical, but there are some issues. The staff memo says that the staff doesn't have the resources to update a couple of plans neighborhood plans a year, but yet they're going to have time to do all of the plans all at once while they're also doing the massive comprehensive plan update. So that's tricky.

The other is that the amendment process is built for nerds like me. It's technical and arduous and that's not going be something everybody can I see my time is up? Thank you very much.

Alright, City Clerk, anyone else?

There are no more guests signed up to speak.

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

Thank you, Mayor. We had payroll in the amount of $8,871,712.61 and bills in the amount of $9,432,145.70. For our proclamation on consent, tonight, the mayor, on behalf of the city council, proclaims April as Arab American Heritage Month in Kirkland. The contributions of Arab Americans are woven into the story of our community through traditions, entrepreneurship, community activism, literature, art, and music. The city celebrates Arab American Heritage Month by reaffirming our commitment to honoring diversity, promoting unity, and ensuring that the Arab community is recognized for contributions to our shared history and future prosperity.

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

So moved.

It's been moved by Council Member Deputy Mayor Black, second by Council Member Falcon. Are there any questions, comments, or corrections to the consent calendar?

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to pull item 8H4, ordinance 4,933 related to the Salary Commission.

Thank you. We will move that to the business item nine gs. Questions on the motion to approve the consent calendar as modified. Because this calendar includes an ordinance, vote must be by roll call, city clerk.

Council Member Arnold.

Yes.

Council Member Prem.

Yes.

Council Member Falcone?

Yes.

Council Member Pascal?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Black?

Yes.

Mayor Curtis?

Yes. The modified consent calendar is approved six zero. We are now moving to our first business item, which is the discussion of policy principles for the twenty twenty seven-two thousand and thirty two capital improvement program. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam mayor. So this is the first discussion and possible action on the capital project principles that set the stage for how the city staff will develop the capital projects list as part of the budget process that will come to the council for adoption in the fall. So I want to outline those for you and get council feedback here to make the presentation is our financial planning supervisor, Veronica Hill, and our capital projects manager, Rob English.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor and council members. It's my pleasure to be with you this evening for the first presentation on the twenty twenty seven-two thousand and thirty two capital improvement program. So every two years when we develop the CIP, we first develop priorities for that that become guiding principles for the departments who are building out their projects and proposals for the CIP. This evening we are looking at Resolution R57.26. Staff have developed six priority statements I will take a few minutes to go over here pretty quickly.

They are lettered and not numbered because they are not in a priority order,

Directors

of

of will quarter

of project. We transportation projects to support the transportation strategic plan and the Kirkland 2044 comprehensive plan, including maintenance and preservation of existing transportation infrastructure. Some possible projects that we expect to be completed within the six year timeframe are improvements at 122nd Northeast and Northeast 70th Street, as well as improvements at Northeast 87th Street and 116th Avenue Northeast and then also annual preservation projects. Item C is invest in parks property acquisition and parks projects that maintain current parks facilities and increase active recreation opportunities throughout the city to meet the needs of a growing population. Projects in this area include dock and shoreline renovations, field upgrades, as well as property acquisition for new parks.

Item D, invest in water and sewer and stormwater projects according to the priorities contained in the adopted utility strategic plans. Projects there, we expect completion of the Northeast 108th Street sewer main replacement, the Holmes Point pipe replacement, as well as the South Reservoir replacement. Item E, invest in the maintenance, replacement and operation of city buildings and facilities. With the recent completion of the facilities condition assessment in 2024, staff have now developed a sinking fund model that will provide funding plans in order to do maintenance and renovations and upkeep of the various facilities. And then item F is invest in unique opportunities to create measurable progress towards achieving one or more of City Council's 11 goals.

So we asked departments to align their proposed projects to one or more of those goals, which, for example, are dependable infrastructure, community safety, abundant parks, open spaces and recreation, and balanced transportation. Okay, so next steps. I have a few here. I'm going to open it up to questions and feedback. I do want to make note that we have received two additional amendments to the resolution from Council Member Pascal and Council Member Falcon.

And also we did add a couple of slides so they can be part of the discussion on those particular proposals. And then just to recap, staff are recommending approval of the resolution R57.26 with potential amendments to that and or alternatively to provide feedback tonight and have staff return at the next council meeting with the final resolution. And then saving save some dates. Looking forward we'll have our first CIP study session on September 1, we'll have a second study session if needed in November, and then return in December for a final adoption of the next six year plan. And with that, Madam Merrill, we turn for questions and feedback.

Thank you, Veronica. Before we address the resolution, does anyone have any questions for Veronica? I see none. I will take a motion on the resolution. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move that we adopt resolution R5726.

Second.

It has been moved by Mayor Falcone, second by Councilor Mayor Pascal to move forward resolution 5,726. Is there any discussion? Councilor Mayor Pascal.

Yeah, thank you. I had I wanted to propose an amendment to this resolution, a couple of I mean, one amendment with a couple add ons. And before I make a motion on this, I just wanted to explain a little bit of what I was thinking. One is, I really wanted to call out individually the 85th Street Station area plan, the infrastructure investments that are necessary to really make that area move forward. Similar to how we've called out the Public Works Maintenance Center and the Seattle Kraken and because it's such a high priority item on our city work plan.

And then two, I wanted to emphasize the safety action plan as part of the transportation projects. One, because that was adopted after the strategic plan, the transportation strategic plan and the comprehensive plan. So I wanted to make sure that that was a focus, safety is a focus and some of the updated policies adopted related to addressing vehicle speeds across the city. So my motion and I'll a motion to amend resolution R57.26 as shown on the screen.

Second? Thank you. It's been moved by Councilmember Pascal, seconded by Councilmember Falcone to move forward the Pascal amendment. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion on the amendment carries six-zero. Is there any further discussion? Councilor Mayor Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Surprise, surprise. I have my hand raised because I have my proposed amendment on the next screen. So in reading the policies, I noticed that there was a practice. My understanding of a practice is that we look out for, as my predecessor would say, other people's money to make sure that we're really able to leverage our local tax dollars and stretch them our dollars as much as we possibly can for the benefit of our community.

And I know that's our current practice, but I wanted to make sure that that's codified in our policies here since that's something that we currently do, and I think it's a very good practice for us to continue doing. So my amendment addresses that as just really adding a subsection one g, inserting the phrase as you see on there seeking regional state and federal grants as appropriate and also making sure that we have local matching funds when needed to do that. So will you entertain a motion now?

Yes.

Okay. So I move that we amend resolution R5726 as shown on the screen. Second.

It has been moved by Councilmember Falcone, second by Councilmember Pascal to move forward the Falcone amendment. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Amendment carries six-zero. Is there any further discussion? Okay, the question is on the motion to approve resolution 5,726 as amended. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six-zero. Thank you, Veronica.

Thank you.

We'll see you in the fall. Okay. We are moving on to 9B, which is adoption of the city's hazard mitigation annex to the King County Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. City manager.

All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So this is the adoption of the city's hazard annex, which is required by state law on this cycle. And here to talk to you about what's in the plan and changes from the previous version is our emergency manager, Heather Kelly.

Good evening, everyone. Good on that, thanks Cassie. Good evening Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council members, City Manager. Thank you for giving me a few minutes to talk to you about the hazard mitigation plan. We're excited to bring this forward to you.

Every five years we do this as our updates. So a little bit of the overview on here, I'm going to talk a little bit about what the process was to reach this position for you, what are some of the mitigation strategies, how they've changed from 2020 to 2025, and then ask you for adoption of this so that we can complete that process and move on to our next effort. And on the screen, you will see a picture there of the 132nd Square Park. This is just one of many projects that the City does to do mitigation and address some of our erosion and other So we like to highlight those when we can. So the mitigation process is really focused on risk associated with natural hazards.

There are other documents, other plans that we work with that focus on broader topics and other pieces, but the mitigation plan is really on how can we reduce the impacts of disruptions and disasters in our community, what can we do in advance is really the key here that we're looking at. The mitigation efforts reduce our recovery timeline and our costs. Many of you have probably heard that an ounce of prevention is worth so many dollars than the under end. This is what we're looking at doing. How do we save the city and the community money by doing the right things on the front side?

This other is the City Manager addressed. This also makes us eligible for any potential mitigation funding that could come following a disaster from the state or federal government. It is one of those requirements that they ask us to do in order to be eligible for that. So the process is we start looking at what the risk is, we look internally, what do our departments and our continuity of operations say, and we also talk to our community about what is their concerns and their risk, and I'll show you that in just a moment here. We identify strategies to address those risks, how can we reduce them, how can we be a better partner to our community and to our environment?

We work with King County Emergency Management on creating a regional document for this because disasters don't know geographical boundaries. So they're going to cross over. We're going to have projects that reach into Bellevue and Bothell, so it just makes sense to work as a region rather than do this solely on our own. Once we've worked all those processes, we submit this to Washington State and the Federal Emergency Management Agencies for their approvals so that they can see how does this fit into their plans and their bigger pictures, and the last piece of the process is bringing it forward to you for adoption to finalize that component. So public hazards and concerns, we did Carly Pascones was the lead on this.

She did a lot of outreach with our community at markets, City Hall for All, at presentations, and we simply asked them, what are you most concerned about, the major concern in the red stripes there? What are you kind of concerned about? That's that moderate concern in the blue dots. And then what are you not so much concerned about? That's the green.

The key thing to notice on this is there is not a single zero on this slide. Everybody has a concern of some point on something. As you can see here, what the community responded back to us was their major concerns were earthquake and cyber attack. We did this internally as well. We talked to our department directors, we talked to our managers, we put posters up at all the city facilities and said put a sticker, where is your concern, what are you worried about, and not surprisingly internal department side, Citi came up with the same answers.

They are most concerned about earthquake, are most concerned about cyber attack, and I think that's because we have such dependency on infrastructure that we know will break in these catastrophic situations and on technology, which feeds into our infrastructure. So the good news is we're all on the same page there. We all are concerned about primarily the same effects on there. So looking at the strategies that we put in 2020 to where we're at in 2025, there are some strategies we know are going to be ongoing. We will never reach a comfort level.

I will never say to you, we're ready, right? We're not going to get to that point. We will always have more operational readiness and things like that. What we have learned over that time though is there are some opportunities to make improvements to our emergency operations center, to harden it, to build it up more, to add technology, to add tools to help us be ready to respond and recover when something bad happens. Same thing with landslide erosion, our natural environment, there will always be changes to that.

That's part of nature. But we recognize that we are going to continue to evaluate and prioritize those projects and most importantly monitor the projects we have done to make sure they are effective and they are working, so that's an ongoing effort. Power capability is one of those that we would love to not have the wind come, we'd love to harden the grid, we'd love to control the power system, but we don't. So what we have to do is plan for consequences of that. So the city has been making a significant effort to put more generators, to put more hardening to our critical facilities to maintain our operations.

The other thing that we've done during this time is we've implemented through the strategies and into our mass care framework the idea of power centers. So it's not just a warming or cooling center, we now have a capability at these generated facilities to open them up for people with medical equipment, for people with critical devices to come and keep that sustainability going for them while they work through this. We're continuing to work on that. We will continue to work with those generation projects as we move forward because we just know the power system is a make or break sometimes. Some mitigation strategies that we've done some adjustments to, I won't say completely updated, tweaked or changed, but we've learned over the last five years, things have changed and adjusted.

So when we talk about our community, the big buzzword used to be resilience, resilience, resilience. And what we know is even with the most effort and the most mitigation, there's still going to impacts, are still going be challenges. So we are really focusing on readiness now. We are focusing on conducting public preparedness education that's more focused. Carly is still busy.

So right now she is working with Lake Washington Tech College and she is doing a presentation on preparedness for parents with toddlers. So we are looking at these populations, we are working with our businesses, we are working with our seniors, how do we get some of our more vulnerable populations prepared ready to handle these. We are working with our supporting housing initiatives and outreach because what we know is if you don't have your basic needs met, you are not going to do as well when there is a disruption and those systems are broken. So by working with those teams, our HEART team and those kind things, we are able to strengthen our community through a readiness approach. Our climate change, we know it's still there.

You'll see in 2020 we talked about mitigation and adaption. We've added in resilience. I know, I just said we don't, but we are. And what we're talking about that is it's through planning. Planning and Building has been doing a lot of work with the strategic plan, with the weather initiative actions, with some of those pieces. David Barnes has been working with the Energy Smart East Side program to how do we help some of our seniors, our vulnerable people build more resiliency in that. We know that's going to continue to change, but we know that we have to be flexible and adaptable to meet the needs of our changing environment. And the last one is water. Water, water, water. If we don't have water, we aren't going to go very far at all.

What we've learned over the last couple of years is we want to have a resilient hardened water system, but that's going to take years. That's a large big project, and we are making progress and we are taking steps in that direction. But for this cycle, we wanted to look at what do we do if that system isn't ready to go when we need it. So we are looking at alternate sources capability. What other water measures do we have?

How can we implement and affect those and use those while we're working on these big long term projects? So with those efforts, what we'll say is we're always going to come back to you every couple of years with new strategies, new ideas. This is a snapshot of some of the key projects that we recognized under the guidance of this program to bring forward to you, but we know the city is doing all kinds of efforts and projects and programs around mitigation, around readiness, around these aspects. For this piece though, what we are asking for you is to adopt the hazard mitigation annex to the King County Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan via resolution so we can complete this process and we can start focusing on the next document and update that we're going to do.

Thank you, Heather. You're welcome. I am so grateful to you and your team. I do sleep a little bit better knowing that you're on top of this.

We'll try to increase that.

Any questions for Heather? I will entertain a motion. Council Mayor Arnold.

Thank you. A couple of questions, Heather. In the community readiness strategy in the document, The community emergency response team isn't specifically mentioned. There are several council members that are certified as well as people in every neighborhood of the city. Is that included in there or does it you know is there any impact with it not specifically being mentioned as far as eligibility for grant funding or things like that and not being in the annex?

We are taking a very strategic approach with some of our federal programs right now because this document is for five years and right now there's uncertainty as to what kind of education prevention grant funding type programs there would be. That's one of the things that we're working with our community to look at is the CERT program, which currently is suspended under the federal reorganization reconfirming of FEMA, is that the right program? Do we need to create something in Kirkland? And so that's where we talk about that targeted public education. We're actually working within my team to identify what is the right tool and what is the right method.

And it may be continuing with the CERT program, it may be a Kirkland, Kirk program or something. So we wanted to leave it flexible so that two or three years from now it's not out of date.

Great, thank you. And then secondly, on the first page, the population numbers are twenty twenty three number of 93,000, where many other documents we have mentioned the $97,000 Does that impact any per capita funding or anything like that where that change is significant?

No, this document is a snapshot again of where we're at. If we had eligibility to grant fund, it would be based on current or most recent census data.

Great. Thank you.

Uh-huh. Chancellor Bourbem.

Thank you so much for this fantastic presentation. One question I had, in Kirkland, one of the most visible and recurring risks that I think residents experience is power outages, frankly. And I noticed that in the mitigation plan, we talk about strategies like vegetation management infrastructure and then the items that you mentioned during the presentation. Are there any conversations that we can have with PSC or any other mitigations that we could implement just given how apparent that risk is and something that a lot of Kirkland residents literally experience every year?

We do meet regularly with PSC. They are part of our quarterly emergency managers team and discussion, and they share the upgrades and efforts that they are doing. Unfortunately, we don't have much control over the power system. We influence all we can, but that's where our mitigation management projects come in, like generating facilities to make sure we have power centers, like working to have redundancy and capability so that we can keep continuity of operations and continuity of government going to be able to provide those essential services to our communities. Okay, thank you.

Anyone else? Deputy Mayor.

Well, I'm happy to yield to any of my colleagues if they have any further questions. Otherwise, you'll entertain a motion.

I will.

I'll move for adoption of Resolution R5727.

Second. It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Councilmember Prem to approve Resolution five thousand seven twenty seven. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Resolution carries six-zero. Thank you, Heather.

Thank you all.

Have a good acquisition of the Perrin property for the Public Works Maintenance Center expansion project. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So you said it well. We're looking for council action tonight on approving the purchase of the site. Here to give you the explanation of the purchase sale agreement is our facilities manager, Leanne Skipton, as well as our senior deputy attorney, Kevin Hanson.

Ann, you've had a busy year with us.

Well, I'm excited to be back. So, thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council Members. I'm here to present to you an opportunity to acquire the Perrin property. So the staff is requesting action from council to adopt resolution 5,728 authorizing the city manager to acquire the Perrin Building parcel for $6,000,000 There is a purchase and sale agreement included in the council packet that outlines the terms. This property is a follow-up to a conversation that we have had regarding the needs and the expansion of the Public Works Maintenance Center facility.

This parcel, as you can see from the map, is immediately adjacent to the north of the existing Public Works Maintenance Center and runs parallel to one of our existing buildings, Building F, at the north end of the maintenance center. This is a little over half an acre. It is zoned light industrial, which is in alignment with the current use of the Public Works Maintenance Center. It is an 11,000 just over 11,000 square foot building. This building currently has three tenants leasing the space, and we will transfer all of the existing leases, which will allow for a revenue stream over the next several years to help offset the investment in the building.

As the existing tenant leases expire, then the public works maintenance crew will be able to occupy the tenant spaces in the building as each lease is allowed to naturally expire. And that's the best opportunity for us to move into the building but still allow the businesses a soft transition to whatever next space they need to move into. And so with that, I'm going to pass it over to Kevin to talk oh, sorry. And this is a continuation of a conversation that we've been having for almost two years now about the needs of the Public Works Maintenance Centre, and I want to thank Council for their recognition of the needs of the maintenance centre by including this in the Council work program. And very pleased to be able to present to you this opportunity to expand the maintenance center in alignment with the things that we've discussed in our previous conversations.

And with that, I will pass it to Kevin to talk about the terms of the purchase and sale agreement.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, council members, the agreement is based on a standard commercial brokers association agreement with some modifications and I can discuss what those are if you care to hear that. The agreement provides for a ninety day feasibility period during which we will do a Phase one environmental site assessment. My understanding is that that creates the potential, strong potential to shield the city from future state and federal cleanup requirements if we do it before the sale. During that feasibility period, we would also review

the

impact the

first

eminent domain. And that's significant for the seller, not so much for the city because it does eliminate the requirement to pay excise tax. So if you have any questions I'm happy to respond.

Any questions for Leanne or Kevin? Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, it has been a long time since the council originally began this conversation about expansion of the Public Works Department. A lot of folks listening may not have followed along from the very, very beginning. Since the annexation of Juanita, Finhill, Kingsgate neighborhoods, we've expanded the Parks Maintenance Center to meet the need of all the additional activities related to that, crew and equipment. We built the Justice Center.

And this is, Leanne, the next and maybe close to final big step to bring the city's major facilities up to the standard necessary for the larger number of people and and more equipment necessary to serve the annexation area. Is that true?

Yes. This is that is absolutely true. Thank you. You said that very well. That I I won't dare to say that this is one of the last, but it it definitely the next major site that we need to expand to address the current needs of the city. And this really truly is to help us maintain the service levels that the community is used to.

Including in the annexation Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Councillor Mabrym?

Just on the ninety day diligence period, so how does that work once so the assessment's done, diligence is done for the ninety day period. If there are issues that are identified, then how does that how do those things get addressed and what is the process?

If they're raised during that ninety day period? I think if there were issues, say for example environmental issues, we would go back to the seller and negotiate revisions to the contract. Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry just one quick note, if that happened we would return to counsel if they were substantive changes to the PSA to get approval. So you'd hear about those.

Deputy Mayor?

I won twice tonight. Know. Two and a half. Will move thank you. I will move resolution R57.28.

Moved by Deputy Mayor Black, seconded by Councilmember Falcon to move forward resolution five thousand seven twenty eight. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Any

opposed? Motion carries six-zero. Thank you both.

All right.

We are now moving on to our next item of business, which is adoption of the zoning code amendments related to minimum parking space requirements in order to comply with state law. Manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So here I give that presentation to our senior planner Martha Rubart. She's going to explain what the proposal is, and we do anticipate a potential amendment. But we're looking for action tonight at the council. But if the council needs more time, we can also bring us back to future meeting if there's additional questions or concerns. So with that I'll turn over to Martha.

Thank you. Good evening council mayor deputy mayor. I'll be presenting tonight on planning commission's recommendation for minimum parking changes to comply with Senate Bill 5,184 which includes ordinance 4,935 that council may consider for adoption tonight. I have 10 slides to go over and I can go over any of the topics more in detail if you'd like. Starting with the bill itself here's an overview of the minimum requirements that cities must comply with.

The bill limits the parking minimums for single family, multifamily, and commercial uses It also includes a list of uses and scenarios where cities may not require any minimum parking for which I've listed on the slide here. Council supported an early action ordinance to implement these changes as soon as possible so staff drafted an ordinance to apply the parking regulation changes now with the cleanup of the zoning code to occur after in phase two of this project. So ordinance 4,935 consolidates parking regulations into one place in chapter 105 of the Kirkland zoning code. It splits up the uses into four groups residential, commercial, industrial and institutional and it includes an exemption section. The ordinance incorporates the minimum requirements for 5184 and it maintains the existing regulations for all uses that are untouched by the bill and it also maintains existing regulations for uses that already had lower parking standards than Senate Bill 5,184 would require.

There are also some add ons that go beyond the requirements of the bill that Council and Planning Commission were interested in. This includes accessory dwelling units, commercial spaces expansions, the parking in the station area, and bicycle parking and I'll go into detail on all four of those in the next slide. So first starting with bike parking requirements, the existing regulations establish the bike parking based on the number of required vehicle parking spaces and so then with the implementation of 5184 the bike requirements would unintentionally reduce the bike parking requirements quite drastically and so the ordinance includes new bike parking regulations and it just copies those regulations that were created for the station area with one small change for the long term bike parking rate for residential units we changed it to half a space per unit instead of the one space per unit that applies in the station area currently but the rest are consistent with the station area. The ordinance also exempts all accessory dwelling units from parking requirements and the reason for this recommendation is that layering on the 5,184 requirements on top of our existing parking regulations for ADUs would already exempt the majority of ADUs from parking requirements.

The only scenario under that where parking would be required for an ADU is if it is exactly 1,200 square feet or if it's over with the director's approval, which is an allowance in the code, and if there is more than one ADU on the property and if the property is outside proximity to street parking and to transit. And so given that that scenario would only occur maybe a couple times a year if that planning commission staff recommends exempting all ADUs from parking requirements for simplicity's sake and this is included in the ordinance. Another add on that Council and Planning Commission were supportive of is to add an allowance for existing commercial spaces to expand without having to provide additional parking for that expansion. So the ordinance includes this language here on the slide which exempts commercial space expansions from parking requirements but only to us up to a certain amount so if the addition is within the existing building envelope so if it's like a mezzanine addition that doesn't expand the footprint or the height or any of that they would not be required to provide additional parking and then the second scenario is would allow for a one time expansion for commercial space per property up to 3,000 square feet in size or 10% of the existing gross floor area whichever is greater and this is included in the ordinance.

The ordinance also includes Planning Commission's recommendation for parking requirements in the station area which is to exempt all commercial uses which would be subject to the Senate Bill 5,184 requirements. I know that there's a potential council amendment to this and I have a slide on that at the end. Senate Bill five thousand one eighty four also exempts all affordable housing units from minimum parking requirements and our current practice with affordable housing parking is to negotiate how the parking is assigned units and the cost of it in the affordable housing covenant that is recorded with these projects. Planning Commission didn't include code provisions for affordable housing parking in their recommendation, which would result in no change to our current practice. And amendments to codify requirements on this topic could be considered in a future task for staff.

The next steps for this project is phase two which will include the cleanup of the zoning code to rectify all of the chapters with these parking regulation changes. Phase two will also include additional research on ADA parking which is a concern of planning commissions. They want to make sure that enough ADA parking is being provided with these code changes and if necessary additional coordination with public works on the bike parking regulations. There are longer term requests from council that we've heard from council that will entail additional staff time and research beyond this project and will be led by Public Works and those are the curb management plan and the tracking of the impacts and potentially mitigating for the impacts of these code changes with overflow parking onto the right of way And with that I'll pass it back to the mayor for any questions.

Thank you Martha, any questions for Martha? Councillor Pascal.

Thank you, thank you for the presentation. I was hoping you could maybe go back to slide seven or a slides around the Northeast 85th Street Station Area Parking. Yeah, thank you. So just a couple of questions about this. So my understanding is that did staff provide an option that exempted all uses and the Planning Commission wanted to insert commercial uses as an exemption? Is that my understanding?

That's correct, yes.

What's staff's thoughts on that or what's your recommendation?

I think our advice would be to simplify the regulation so either exempt all uses in the station area or just apply the 5,184 rates to the station area to kind of keep it consistent for uses within the station area.

Can you provide any more kind of background or context to kind of the Planning Commission's thoughts on this?

Yeah, we presented an option to exempt all uses in the station area or to exclude some areas of the station area from the full exemptions and from those options they took those options and they came up with this and I think that kind of came out of discussions and concerns around single use commercial projects like a grocery store specifically was discussed a lot concerns that those uses wouldn't provide enough parking for the demand of that use and kind of what what the impacts of those would be. So that's why they landed on this.

And then as far as like one of the questions I had was, you know, there are a number of cities that are moving forward with removing minimum parking for all uses across the entire city. In this case, we're recommending it within the Northeast City Fisheries Station area. Have any of those cities that you know of that have done that, have they exempted commercial in this situation?

Based on my research, the cities who have pursued getting rid of parking minimums, they've done it across the board for all uses they haven't split up the uses.

Okay. Thank you.

And just related to this discussion the 5,184 parking requirements for commercial uses apply. What are those requirements?

They are commercial spaces under 3,000 square feet would have no parking requirements and then spaces that are over that would be one space per 500 square feet.

Anyone else? So Martha, my understanding on 5184, these are parking minimums. But if you're developing, say, a grocery store, you can exceed our minimums. So if I'm building a new Safeway, I'm not going to build 10 parking spaces before the Safeway because I know that's not going to meet the need.

That's correct. Yes, it's not setting a maximum. Thank you. Anyone else?

I'm going to give them some time. All right, why don't we why don't I take a motion on the ordinance? Is that Councilmember Koretz dot com?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move that we adopt ordinance 4,935 relating to the enactment of minimum vehicle and bicycle parking provisions for commercial and residential uses.

Second.

All right. It's been moved by Councilor Mayor Falcone, second by Deputy Mayor Black to move forward ordinance four thousand nine thirty five. Is there any discussion? Councilmember Pascal.

Yes. As you mentioned, there is a potential amendment. And so I was hoping you could bring that slide Yes. Yes. Here you go. Yes. So my line of questioning was really kind of getting at, I think my intention from the beginning was all uses would be exempt for in the station area. Really want to not treat the uses any different from one another and we still want to encourage commercial. It's a very important commercial area to the city. So and then I'm in favor, and I think we're always kind of trying to simplify things and make things consistent, and this would do that.

So I'm going to make a motion that on this amendment that we change Section one line 75 to 79 of the ordinance to remove institutional, residential, industrial and replace that with all.

Second? Thank you. It has been moved by Councilor Pascal, second by Councilor Falcone to amend the ordinance as shown on the screen. Is there any further discussion? Councilmember Arnold.

One of the things we've had a big discussion earlier this year is how do we incent and preserve our grocery stores and I'm feeling a little bit of disadvantage of not hearing the planning commission's discussion and deliberation on this particular issue. From the memo that we're very thoughtful in having some specific changes around affordable housing and if they looked at parking and commercial areas. And they also were looking at things with an eye towards removing barriers to projects being constructed. If they were specifically making a recommendation that commercial stick to the requirements of House Bill 5,184. I'm concerned that there's something that we might be missing without the benefit of understanding that discussion.

So given that, I'm not able to support this amendment. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? I will be supporting this amendment. It was the staff recommendation to follow the intent of 5,184. I agree with Councilmember Pascal in that we want to make this as simple as possible. And I believe that anyone that's building a grocery store or a Costco or a Target are going to provide the adequate parking. It's not something that we need dictate outside of the boundaries of 5184. So I will be supporting this amendment. Deputy Mayor?

Thank you. I'll just add one thought, and that is that, you know, I think under both the vision that we have for the station area, as well as under the direction of the state through Senate Bill sixty twenty six, requiring housing in all commercial zone spaces. I think the effects of either of these proposals are going to be very minor. There's only, you know, the number of properties that this is actually going to impact, I expect to be exceedingly small in the city of Kirkland. And so, you know, I was conflicted about this.

I was conflicted when I read the memo. I was conflicted about balancing the staff's recommendation with the Planning Commission's recommendation, but ultimately, I think this helps simplify things. It's consistent with the overall vision and the overall policy direction that we're trying to go with. So I'll be supporting the motion, or rather the amendment. Thank you.

Anything else? All right, the question is on the Pascal amendment for ordinance 4,935. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Motion or amendment carries five one. The question is on the ordinance 5,935 as amended. City Clerk?

Council Member Arnold?

Yes.

Council Member Prem?

Yes.

Council Member Falcone? Yes. Council Member Pascal? Aye. Deputy Mayor Black?

Yes.

Mayor Curtis?

Aye. Ordinance 40 nine-thirty five carries 60. Thank you, Martha. Thank you. All right. We can squeeze in item 9E, which is our next item is discussion of the draft resolution 5,729 on preparing the city for safe and legal responses to federal civil immigration enforcement operations in the city. City manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So this presentation was going to be given by our Deputy City Manager of External Affairs, Jim Lopez, but he couldn't be here for this meeting tonight. So David Wolbrecht, our Communication Program Manager, is filling in ably. And I'll be providing some color commentary as well as he goes through this. This is the first discussion. That's what we wanted to emphasize. This is not for action tonight. We wanted to walk you through the resolution and then get council feedback and any pieces of it. And then we'll be coming back to a future council meeting. So with that, opening, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Wilbrecht.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council. So this is a conversation about draft resolution R57.29. R5729. And just a little bit of background, this was prepared following a legislative response memorandum approved by council on February 3.

That response came back to council on March 3, and council approved option two. And so in response to that, this is what we're here talking about tonight. As city manager emphasizes, the first reading of this draft resolution and staff really just seek council feedback on it tonight and staff will return to a future council meeting for action. So we're just gonna dive right on in. So I have four slides that have the four sections of the resolution, and so I will turn it over to you, Madame Mayor, and we can go section by section.

All right, we are diving in. Thank you, David.

Yes.

All All right. We're not going to read this for the audience. So in Section one, Council Members, do you have any feedback for Section one? Council Member Arnold.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, David. In item 1E, it talks about the IT department making sure that cameras comply with the city's security and data sharing policies. I'm not sure what the city's security and data sharing policies are. To my recollection, we last looked at these as a council over ten years ago. And so, there may be some changes to those policies.

There may not be. I don't know that council would like to make. So, I'd like to have an addition to this to say that the current date the city's current security and data sharing policies will be reviewed by the council. And then that gives us the opportunity to take future action.

Thank you. Anyone else have comments on Section one? All right, we'll go to Section 2. Oh, Deputy Mayor?

Just so that we're providing clear direction to the council, I mean, was a lot of head nods, so it looked solid. But do we want to actually call that out each time as we're going through these? We're giving direction just to make sure. Staff.

Looks like no one objects to Councilmember Arnold's suggestion.

That's how I understood it.

Make you feel better?

Yep, it does.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Section two. I see no one. So before we move on, so line 43, the FIT will facilitate and provide education information to local businesses. I just want to add nonprofits. It's not just the businesses that we need to reach out to. Does anyone have any objections on that? I see agreement. Oh, Councilor Pascal.

I just had a question about this. It might apply to other sections in this one too, but do we feel like this is we have the resources to do this? Or are you going to or would you expect to come back with budgetary requests to do, like, in this case, more education?

Yes. I think our starting point, we probably aren't going to need a ton of new resources. It definitely will be a reallocation of some staff time. So there'll be an impact on other, you know, initiatives and and focus. If we think we need education materials and and more kinda marketing and training, then we might come back for things. I think it'd be small scale ask of money, not like huge amounts of money. Okay. Thank you.

Councilor Burke Balcombe?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I appreciate the discussion so far, and this has sparked another question that I had. The language that's here, would that include some of our largest employers? I'm thinking of, like, Evergreen, like Washington School District. I know we've partnered with them on similar efforts before, at least with the school district. Are we is that defined under local businesses and nonprofits? Do we need to have it like other organizations or something listed there? They may or may not be interested and may or may not have their own programs, but I know sometimes if we have the resources there's a potential partnership there that I want to make sure is open to them as well.

Yeah, we're trying to reference them in the Section A, but the two sections are slightly different. The two sub sections are slightly different? Yeah. Because one doesn't talk so much about a coordinated education effort. So I think we can find a way to reconcile those that they're all included.

Thank you. Does anybody else have comments

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On Section three, Letter A, starting on Line 150, talks about a one year moratorium on acceptance of permits for new or expanded detention centers and then talks about a comprehensive zoning review of land use and regulations. Thinking about our recent discussions on the planning work program, whenever I hear about comprehensive zoning review on land use, I think that could be a potentially heavy lift. Can you kind of speak to how this might fit into our current draft planning work program? How much of a lift we think this is? Can is one year the maximum amount that we can have the moratorium for? Just wondering what the one year is. Can you speak just a more to that please

and I actually pass those questions on to our planning and building director Adam Weinstein so he can address those

thanks councilmember Falcone I guess to start with your last question moratorium The state law basically says that you can establish a moratorium for six months unless you have a detailed work program in which you can extend it, you can make it a year, initial year, and then you can extend by six months. But you have to have a public hearing each time you extend. So that's sort of that part of the question. In terms of the staff time, I think something like this, you know, we haven't put a huge amount of thought into exactly the mechanism by which we would achieve the goals that we've stated, that we've laid out. There are more simple routes to do that and probably more complex routes as well, so I think we want to be really thoughtful about how we craft the zoning code amendments to achieve these objectives.

That said, it's not something that's penciled into the planning work program at this point, so I think we would need to reprioritize projects in the planning work program. I don't think necessarily a moratorium of this nature and the zoning code amendments that we're talking about is a massive staff lift. But it's right, it's gonna take dozens and dozens of staff hours probably even for a really simple moratorium and simple code amendments once you factor in all the things you have to do for code amendments like CEBA review for instance. So I think to answer your question there would be some impact to the planning work program, we would have to reorganize projects.

Thank you, and would this necessarily go through the planning commission and have public Yep,

yep.

Just an additional comment on the six months, you can extend it for an additional six months and another if you needed, but there's a specific statutory requirement that there be a plan developed for the studies justifying the longer time. So it can't be just an ongoing six months without an explanation of why you need the six months longer each time. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I follow-up on Councillor McLeod's question? So, staff, this is going to come back to us. We're going have an opportunity to decide whether we're going to actually do this moratorium. And at that time, maybe we could have a little bit more of an idea of what resources are going be necessary and what impact it might have for the work program. Is that fair? Yes. So, we're not deciding that we are going to do this today. We're going to decide this later and we're going have more information when we decide it. That's great characterization, yes. Okay, thanks.

Anyone else? Do you have another one? Oh,

I'm sorry.

Thank you. Were you asking about this, that particular topic or I this whole

was ready to move Okay.

So, in Section C, talking about evaluation on civil immigration enforcement activities in city owned buildings and properties, I want to make sure that we're focusing not on the crisis of the day, but trying to anticipate the crisis of the future because there seem to be so many. And one of the things that I am concerned about is election intimidation. So I would like to see incorporation either in C or is in a different section in Section three talking about what the city can do to allow free, fair and unintimidated access to the voting drop boxes. I would not want to say if we are able to prevent it, I would like to not allow ICE to park in the Westerlot where voting is happening, as an example. So I do think that that is something I'd like to look at as part of this work.

Thank you.

Anybody, anyone disagree? Okay. Anyone else on Section three? I have in Section C, evaluate whether city may prohibit civil immigration enforcement activities at city controlled buildings or other fixed properties. I also want to consider parks and what we can do around parks. Does anybody disagree with that suggestion? Okay. All right. We'll move on to Section four. All right. Any comments on Section four? I see none. All right. Back to you, David.

All right. Well, just some concluding questions for counsel. Thank you very much for those thoughtful piece of feedback. So one question, it was referenced in the memo, but is counsel looking for staff to seek community feedback on this draft resolution, which staff can would then do and it would add some time to when the draft resolution would come back to council.

Councillor Falcom.

Thank you Madam Mayor. I want to say first off that I'm just I'm absolutely disgusted that we're in this place that we even need to consider this resolution. So I just want to state that for the record, but at the same time, I'm really proud of our city and our community for our compassionate person centered approach to handling this. So thank you to everyone's work on this. Regarding stakeholder input, yes, I think it should be very strategic and specific stakeholder input from leaders, organizations and community members who are most impacted who will be able to speak to their lived experience on this and the direction they would like to see us go on this resolution.

So yes, but a very specific tailored community input. I also want to say just as we're kind of wrapping up with these concluding questions, I agree with Councilmember Arnold. I have in my notes here that this, you know, we are currently reacting to the reality and the ever changing horrific reality of things that are happening across our nation and here in our community. And I want to make sure that we are future prepared as well, that, you know, a resolution such as this takes some time. It has taken us some time, and there's additional time to take this action.

I want us to be really thoughtful about having a process in place for when things happen unexpectedly that we did we're not able to anticipate, that we're prepared to be able to react quickly and respond quickly to help meet the community needs and protect, especially our most vulnerable community members, but to protect our community as a whole. So that's something that I think is important. You know, I know we have tools that we could use emergency declarations etc if warranted but I just want us to be thoughtful about that and be prepared so that if and when sadly we're in those situations that we're able to respond quickly to the needs of the community so thank you very much.

Thank you. Councilor Arnold.

Thank you. David, I want to make sure that I'm understanding the question that you're asking. When you're talking about community feedback on the resolution, are you talking specifically on the language of Resolution 5,729?

Yes.

Yes. Because one of the things I'm concerned about is moving expeditiously. I think the place for community feedback on this is when we're developing the policy. What this resolution does is says we should go think about policies in these four sections. And what I don't want to do is have a public feedback process that delays the start of that work.

So I wanted to ask council member Falcone what it is you were asking for because I think we do want to hear from those communities, but I'm wondering how this fits in because I think this resolution could potentially come back to us in two weeks given what we have at this point, and that would be I wouldn't want necessarily slow that down.

Thank you. I agree with your comments, Councillor Marrall. I don't want this to I don't want that to be something that delays the implementation and the adoption of this resolution. What I had in mind is just leveraging existing relationships we have with leaders in this community to have to set up a meeting and run through the resolution and make sure that we aren't missing anything and that the language we use is appropriate and that the actions that we're asking staff to undertake are inclusive that the resolution does include everything. So I don't think it's a long engaged public engagement process. I think it's really a very strategic targeted few meetings that staff could have just to make sure that we're not missing something. Thank you.

You. Councillor Merkrum? Yes, just wanted to mention that as part of the creation of policies for our officers, I do want to make sure that we have visibility around, you know, what those policies will look like and making sure that they're super transparent. So, I mean, practically, if someone if an officer gets a 911 call involving a federal immigration activity, what would the kind of the step by step expectations be for our officers? I do want to make sure that they are also safe as part of this whole initiative, creating clear decision trees, scenario based protocols, something that an officer could look at within sixty seconds and know, Okay, this is what I need to do because those situations are so fast and fast moving.

So as part of that creation, is that is that something we would, like, get feedback on or at least exposure to on what those protocols will practically look like in the field?

Gonna refer back to city manager and police chief.

So yes, we would be sharing the protocols with you that they would be developed by the police department, the city attorney's office, and the city manager. But we want to post them and have them transparent and available to everybody.

Thank you. Anyone else? Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, good conversation. So I guess where I'm coming down is I would like to see this resolution come back in a form that we can vote on and approve quickly. I do want I do like the idea of seeking community feedback on certain aspects, certain proposals. Not I guess my main thought is not every action item throughout this entire resolution is the same.

Actually, Section 4C, which Customer Prem was just highlighting, is a good example of something that I think, you know, feedback like we want to we or the community want to know what ultimately what the protocols are that have ultimately been developed so that the community can know what to expect when they call 911. I think that's important. But this is a perfect example, one that I think is going be highly technical. When the city manager answered the question, he highlighted that it's going to be the chief of police. It's going to be the city attorney's office.

There's a reason that it's going to be the city attorney's office, because this is ultimately going to be a highly technical analysis in order to develop these protocols. This, by the way, I'll just say, was the most important paragraph for me in the entire resolution. I appreciate it being here. I appreciate the way it's crafted. I think it's going to be highly technical.

And so it's an example of something where, if we're going to seek feedback, we're going to just it's going to have to be in the right posture because, ultimately, questions of federal statute and constitutional principles are going to be at play. So just it's how we present each of the action items for feedback that I think is important. And I don't want it to slow down adoption of the resolution so we can get started on the work involved in each of these action items. Thanks.

This is this moment where I appreciate my council members and how thoughtful you are all are, so thank you. I think this is really good work. I agree that I would like to see the next meeting so that we continue to move forward. Thank you, Deputy Mayor, for being clear that it's really not every section that we're looking for community members. I think it's primarily section three.

I also feel like we have been having these ongoing conversations with community members, so we've probably captured most of their concerns. But I agree with Councilor Mary Falcone. It can be a quick convening, and let's get some feedback so we can move forward. So thank you for staff on this. I think it's really well done.

All right. We are back from a short break, and we are now going to move on to a briefing on the proposed neighborhood plan amendment request process. City manager.

Alright. Thank you, madam mayor. Council members, welcome back. So the goal time is this is your first check-in. We are looking for feedback on this proposed process. Here to give you that presentation is our senior planner, Leandra Baker Lewis. Welcome, Leandra.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Counsel. My name is Leandra. I'm here to brief you tonight on the draft process and criteria for neighborhood plan amendment requests. So this is a new concept with mostly administrative implications, so no formal action is requested from the Council tonight, and I have about or I have 10 slides of information for you to consider.

The agenda for my time with you begins with an overview of Kirkland's neighborhood plans, how they function and how we've updated them in the past. Then we'll introduce the neighborhood plan amendment request concept and the criteria. We're using the abbreviation NPAR tonight and moving forward, so you'll probably hear me you will hear me say that again. It stands for Neighborhood Plan Amendment Request. I'll then describe the staff recommendations for the NPAR review process.

We will take a look at the timeline for how an N par moves through review, and then I will detail the next steps for daylighting this new opportunity before moving into discussion. So what is a neighborhood plan? In short, the neighborhood plans are sections or chapters of our comprehensive plan that specify a vision for each neighborhood, and they set policy direction for future growth that is specific to the context of each neighborhood. Neighborhood plan policies are considered when the city undertake zoning code amendments, when projects and programs commence, and they can lend to support the prioritization or funding of a new initiative. Our neighborhood plans are updated using a community oriented approach where city staff work hands on capacity with interested members of the public, gathering data and feedback from the neighborhood, which then informs policy direction for the neighborhood plan.

The plans do not codify development standards for the neighborhood and, as with the comp plan, are not considered regulatory documents, so they don't set any rules. A key feature of a neighborhood plan is its specificity. The guidance in neighborhood plans are meant to describe where and how citywide policy guidance should be applied to a certain neighborhood. This is an NPAR history roadmap of sorts. So we've historically updated the neighborhood plans in a sort of sporadic way as staff resourcing has allowed, usually one to two plans each year with dedicated staff assigned.

The comprehensive plan update in 2015 included a mass update to all plans, and we also committed to establishing a framework for future updates to make sure that the plans can be updated efficiently. A few years later, in 2018, we honored that commitment by establishing the Neighborhood Plan Framework document, and we used it to update several plans throughout the following years, giving most all plans a contemporary update. And then when it was time to update the comprehensive plan again in 2022, Council supported retaining all of the neighborhood plans and switching the update cycle for them to align with every periodic comprehensive plan update, which is required by state law to occur every ten years. Council also directed at that time to create a different way or an avenue for neighborhood plans to be updated by request in between cycles through an update to the planning work program. So with that go ahead, we completed the last of the contemporary updates to the remaining neighborhood plans, Juanita and Kingsgate, and we completed minor, more administrative updates to all the other plans as well just to align them with K2044 policy guidance.

Then, more recently, in 2025, the Council approved a task on the planning work program, which carries out the implementation of that desired alternative and more frequent update process to allow folks to update their neighborhood plan outside of that ten year cycle. And the work done to complete that task is the subject of tonight's briefing, and that is where the genesis of the NPAR process came from, and it's due to begin this year. Staff is proposing that NPARs seek changes to policy language within neighborhood plans. An important part of the NPAR process is to keep it as open as possible, allowing any person, group, organization or other entity to submit changes with no application or review fees associated. We are recommending a biennial review process for NPARs, which will begin this year in 2026 and occur every even numbered year.

This frequency takes into account staff resourcing and will run concurrently with the established community initiated amendment request process or the CAR process. We also recommend using the same review process for NPARs that we do for all comprehensive plan amendments, which are reviewed as process for decisions. One note is that an NPAR cannot change the boundaries of a neighborhood or the current function of our neighborhood associations. There are several benefits for implementing such a process, but first and perhaps foremost, it really allows us to hear from more people more often about their ideas that they may have for the future of their neighborhood. So it allows dedicated and predictable timing for hearing and addressing this feedback as all proposals will be reviewed by the Planning Commission and the City Council on a consistent, reliable basis in a transparent manner.

Neighborhood plan changes have always been an option through the CAR process, but by removing the financial barriers and providing dedicated space on every planning work program, it becomes a more predictable option that people can prepare for and organize for. This also has the potential to streamline the major periodic update process led by the city every ten years, and we see it as a good way to address urgent policy needs if they arise. It can also help streamline those major periodic updates as it serves as a supplement to the city led process that will still occur every ten years and that will utilize the Neighborhood Framework as guidance. So to provide clear expectations for applicants and to streamline the MPAR review for not only staff but for Planning Commission and Council, we have recommended some additional criteria to make sure that the proposals are well suited for a neighborhood plan. In general, each NPAR applicant will be asked to identify these identified components within their proposal.

They are described at length on ePage two sixty of your full meeting packet, and I've summarized them on screen. For the sake of time, I won't read them all. But most importantly, NPARs need to show alignment with the adopted comprehensive plan policies. They need to be able to demonstrate widespread community interest or support. And proposals should have focus on policy rather than zoning or development regulations and should address issues or opportunities that have a long ranging impact on the community.

So all comprehensive plan amendments require a two phase review by the Planning Commission and by counsel, as I'm sure you're aware. A Phase I threshold review will decide which proposals, which NPARs should be considered for further study. This will involve Planning Commission study and a recommendation on which proposals should move into Phase II. So Planning Commission recommended NPARs will be scheduled on the next upcoming of the annual planning work program when the Planning Commission recommends that document to you all. If an NPAR is light in scope, an NPAR could be wrapped into the annual comprehensive plan amendment task on the work program, or if it's more intensive, an NPAR would likely need its own item line on the planning work program.

Council will receive that draft planning work program with any eligible NPARs and can support or adjust the Planning Commission recommended prioritization of those proposals within the planning work program in context with other upcoming planning projects. So that's how Phase I plays out. The second phase is the final review. Specific text amendments are proposed to implement the proposal, and these text amendments are studied by the Planning Commission, brought to a public hearing and put in front of the community for public input and then they are finally considered by the council for adoption.

Leandra, can you pause before we move on? Does anybody have questions on this slide? Right. It says Planning Commission provides recommendation on all proposals. This is after the proposals have gone through the first vetting process. So if people make an application for an NPARC because of course we have to have an acronym it doesn't go directly to the Planning Commission because some of them might be called because they go against transportation strategic plan or something like that, correct?

Yes, for the most part, although staff is recommending to present all proposals to the Planning Commission with a staff recommendation on how it does or does not

meet This the one doesn't qualify it. Yes. Okay. Then after the Planning Commission reviews these, Council has the next review before it goes on to Phase II. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

So here is what that looks like for the twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven NPAR cycle. We are recommending the applications be due on November 1 year. They would be processed and relayed to the Planning Commission, all of them, for their recommendation. The City Council will get their first look the NPARs when discussing the planning work program, which usually we adopt sometime in the spring, and it would prioritize proposals for further study by approving their placement on the planning work program. So that's the council's opportunity to deprioritize or heighten the priority via where it's placed on the planning work program.

That would then set in motion Phase II schedule, which the subsequent actions would be determined by whatever year they are slated for on the planning work program. So that's why you see to be determined for the date. But eventually, the Planning Commission will review those text amendments, make a recommendation after the public hearing and pass it to you all for consideration of adoption. So once the NPAR process gets signed off from Council, we plan to launch our updated webpage, which will explain all this in detail, and it will also house some resources for potential applicants. We've met with neighborhood groups, including the Kirkland Alliance of Neighborhoods, multiple times in the past to inform them about this topic, and we're excited to circle back with them very soon to relay your feedback.

We also plan to notify folks digitally via e mail and newsletter announcements. This will go to interested party via the announcements this week in Kirkland and then directly to Neighborhood Association chairs. We'll also be circulating this new process internally so that department employees who interact with the public most often are aware of this process, can highlight it to community members and really help us get the word out. So that's what we meant by staff support with applications and public awareness. So finally, as staff, we are seeking counsel's thoughts on the MPAR process and would like to know if the counsel would like to receive this or revisit this process before we formally launch it with the public.

Thank you. Councilwoman Falcone. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Orlandra, thank

you for a great presentation. I love that we're wanting to be very inclusive about who can propose ideas for changes to the neighborhood plans. I think that's good. I think we have some really good engagement from our neighborhood associations and other folks, and we want to continue that engagement but also welcome more folks in, right, to help provide some input. So I appreciate that.

I appreciate the comments we heard earlier this evening about wanting to make sure the process is as approachable and easy to understand as possible for folks who may not have engaged, you know, in past or may not have a very deep understanding of how City Hall works, right? So and I think you've laid that out and kind of touched on that in the presentations, but I just want to highlight that, that I really hope that we do that. And that's obviously in the actual process, but also in the communications that you've laid out, right, with reaching out to various community groups and organizations and leaders who can help spread the word and making sure the communications are really welcoming and also really easy to understand, right, because our processes can be complicated, right? And I like in the presentation how you talk about like you had the slide, the what, who, when, how much and how, and the who says that applications can be submitted by any individual or group. In the memo, the language is a little bit different.

It says that they can be initiated by any individual property owner, civic organization or other group. I like the simplicity of what's on the slide and that language in the communication I think is a little bit more inclusive by just saying any individual organization or group or something simple like that. So thank you so much.

And

just to your second question, thank you for this Leandra. I think you've covered it very well. You've got a thoughtful process that allows for thoughtful planning commission review and council consideration. I certainly don't need to see another briefing before this process launches. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Pascal?

Thank you. I guess I'll kind of share some kind of wide ranging thoughts just in general. I might be my opinion not be I I I think not be shared by others here. But, you know, I've struggled with the neighborhood plan update process for for, like, fifteen, twenty years, I feel like, since being on the planning commission before. I like that road map because I remember back in 2010, we were talking about it and five years prior to the start of your road map.

And it's like it's like up and down, up and down, you know, around and doing this, doing that. You know, we we we keep changing and and evolving it and it's a really challenging issue. And we've solved some things, and then other issues arise. And I know I recognize that we're trying to be as thoughtful here as possible. But, like, for me, I've always just had a real kind of issue with the CAR process, and now this kind of just raises additional questions.

Because I like I like the comp plan update process where we're talking about everything all at once and how it's all interrelated and when we try to bisect it out into kind of small things. And we've seen that kind of with the CIR process too. It creates some inconsistencies, citywide policy inconsistencies where it has an opportunity and then false expectations from the community. What I did like about the neighborhood plan process prior was the process itself, not necessarily the end result or the specific change, but bringing people together and talking through that, that was what was that was what was neat about that. I'm concerned that this either won't be used or it will be used and the requests we get don't meet the requirements.

So then there'll be that false impression or false expectations by the community or that it will be really well used and it's going to be really difficult to prioritize. That's my own opinion on it. So, I mean, the thing that I've been thinking about is I I understand this is moving forward. And, I mean, I definitely not gonna stand in its way. But I I really wanna hear more from the the neighborhoods groups because I think there's a lot more details here than have been shared previously.

So it'd be good to get that updated feedback. But I was just thinking that this feels like an evolving thing. Why not couch it as like a pilot or a temporary thing? Let's try it out. Let's see how it works. And then and then maybe make changes based upon that. So it's not like a permanent, you know, process change. It's a it's a temporary thing, and and we can make it permanent if we think it's really addressing the problems that we're we're trying to address. That's that's my one kind of critique or feedback on maybe something to consider is how we is how we talk about it, and maybe we talk about it in a temporary basis and try it out and make adjustments as needed. Thank you. Deputy Behr?

Thank you. I appreciate that. I think, we have a let me think, how do I want to articulate this? You know, I think we're going to learn some lessons. First of all, can I just say, really well thought out process?

So it's already been mentioned, but especially the way it was presented tonight, very clear and well thought out. So thank you from staff. But I think we're still going to learn some stuff the first couple of cycles. And to kind of spring off of what Councilmember Pascal is saying, I think we'd benefit from a check-in by being clear that this is maybe a process that we're going to try a couple cycles, so a couple cycles being four years. We have a check-in coming up on our comp plan in 2029, if I'm not mistaken, required either by law or by our own best practices.

Yes, that's correct.

In 2029, it might make sense for us to make it clear that we are going to revisit this, both from the I think there's two aspects to checking in on it. One is it providing the results that we are looking for? Is it sort of a substantive analysis? And then I think separate from that is, is the process actually working? I share Council Member Pascal's concern that that there could be a number of applications that just simply don't meet the criteria, and so they are then we're going to upset expectations just simply because the criteria are not well understood or the process isn't well understood.

So I think it would be wise of us to revisit this at a date that we all agree on. And it just strikes me that 2029, when we're going to be checking in on the comp plan anyway, makes sense. So that's what it's really just a refinement, not even a refinement, it's just more detail, I think, on what I was hearing Council Member Pascal describe as a pilot. And I okay. And I have one more comment, which is we just did the comp plan December 2024, including completing all of the neighborhood planning processes.

We finally completed the last two. One reason this is better, by the way, is it was taking us something like sixteen years to get through all of the neighborhood plans. Now we've got neighborhood plans being discussed in every ten years. There's a check-in every five years, and we have this, potentially, process. So, I mean, I think we will have this process.

We may not potentially have it forever if it doesn't make sense. I've said all that in order to say that do we need to start this I mean, we just completed all this process. I feel like maybe the pilot is a one, two year cycle starting in 2027 to end in 2029. We do one full cycle of this 'twenty seven to 'twenty in 'twenty seven, 'twenty eight leading up or something like that leading up to our 'twenty nine check-in, and and we evaluate the kind of uptake we've had, whether the process is working, and whether it's resulting in the substantive results that we want. So that would be I guess I would propose that to my colleagues is if we're going to do it as a pilot, give it a year, start it, do one full cycle of it, and let's assess how it's working.

Thank you. I had a similar thought, in that we just, two years ago finished our comp plan. Was this too soon to start this? I'm also concerned that we are approving the work program for 'twenty six, 'twenty seven on the twenty first. And have we allocated room in the work program for any potential NPRs? What was it? NPRs. NPRs. Yes. So will that impact the work plan?

And I want to follow-up on Deputy Mayor Black in that we intentionally did even years because we wanted it to also align with the CAR process. Correct? Right. So my proposal would be to start this in 'twenty eight because then we would have that input for 'twenty nine when we do the comp plan. I would love to hear planning staff's thoughts on that. Leandra, you want to tackle it?

Yeah. Before I pass it to Adam and Allison, I think that that makes sense. I don't see any staff or any barriers on behalf of staff. I would have a question on if there are any expectations that council has in the interim or any additional research or outreach that you would like us to do ahead of 2028 or ahead of process launch that could help inform it, that would be something I would be curious about.

My suggestion would still since we're this is so new, and I also want to compliment you not only on the your slides were gorgeous. Thank you. Well done. Thanks. So my expectation, we would still go out to the community to get feedback now because this is fresh, but we wouldn't start the open application process till '28. And I don't need to see this again, but I would need counsel's support or lack of support for the idea of starting in '28. Deputy Mayor Falcone?

So, Mayor, the only question I think I need guidance from staff if 'twenty eight is the right year or if 'twenty seven. I just Yeah. I'm not able to work backward from the actual period of time when we're going to be doing the work related to the comp plan check-in.

Mhmm.

It's from the commencement of that I don't know. It feels like it's from the commencement of that work back two years, that's when we should start this pilot. That's what I'm that's the only I have a question. This is my only point.