City Council - Regular Meeting

I do have notes on my phone. I don't need it today. No, I am going to look at my phone for my notes. Okay.

I was like, wow, she is, she is. No, I'll probably in between subjects, I'll go grab it. I'll be in charge of that. Because I do like to have the presentation open. Yeah. Well, I know you usually do. It helps me in case I miss something or I can look her back.

It's like, what's happening over here? I know, I feel so, there's no stop. I don't know, maybe I'll start moving mine on your side.

Okay, ready?

John's still logging in. Jay's logging in. I'm just waiting. She was here to make sure everything goes smoothly. All right, welcome back, everybody. Welcome to the City Council meeting of September 1, 2026. Before we call the roll, I'd like to thank everybody that worked hard on transforming our chambers. Yay for the new AV. And it's going to be great. We have monitors down below and new mics. So we might have to work on these mics a little bit. City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Certainly. Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Here.

Councilmember Arnold. Here. Councilmember Prem. Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Paschall. Here. Deputy Mayor Black. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. All present.

Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have an overview of the domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy programs. Second, we will have a review of the preliminary, preliminary, 2027 2032 capital improvement program we expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7 30 city manager

All right. So thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the council. So we're going to start off with an overview of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and our pilot project. We are very honored to have Kate Garvey, the CEO of KSAR here today, as well as Juan Goldstein, who's been our legal advocate. They're going to describe our experience so far with the pilot. And then we're going to be turning it over to the public defense team, or excuse me, the public safety team. to talk about the domestic violence. But I wanted to note that this is our final check-in on criminal justice in terms of the city work program item. However, we will be having discussions of these topics during the budget process. So looking forward to wrapping this up and then to take what we learned into the budget proposal that you're going to see in October. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Kate.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you again for having us here. This has been an amazing opportunity. And then to be here with you all today to talk about this past year and what we've learned from having a Kirkland Dedicated Legal Advocate pilot program, it's been just such a wonderful opportunity. And I'm so grateful for the partnership of the city of Kirkland. So before I get into the pilot itself, I wanted to take just a minute to provide a little bit of context. i'm honored to be here and included in this presentation with the kirkland police department as well as kirkland's dv system advocate that context is important because there's a very unique distinction between domestic violence and sexual assault as well as the roles between a community and a system advocate so domestic violence generally refers to a pattern of abuse or course of control within an intimate partner or family relationship Sexual assault is sexual contact or behavior that happens without a person's consent. Yes, they do overlap, but they're not the same thing. And they often require very different specialized responses. So at KSARC, our focus is primarily on sexual violence. And when we talk about sexual assault advocacy, we're talking about supporting survivors through very specific impacts and systems that can follow an assault. whether that means navigating law enforcement, understanding legal options, accessing therapy, connecting with family support, or simply having someone who understands what they're experiencing. There's another part of advocacy that's really especially important to this pilot, community and system advocacy. So KSARC legal advocates, including WA, serve as community advocates. In Washington state, communications between sexual assault advocates and victims are protected under RCW 5.60.060, which establishes a legal privilege of confidentiality. A system advocate by contracts is employed by a government or law enforcement agency and may be required to share information with investigators or prosecutors. Both types of advocates are incredibly important because they create a complete safety net that balances a survivor's personal healing with access to justice. I just wanted to share that distinction as we're both sharing the same space tonight so that you can hear a little bit about sexual assault advocacy and you'll hear it later from the DB system advocate as well. My instructions here was like press slide two please, but it's me.

Okay.

So this slide right here is just a brief reminder and grounding and what case arc services provide. So KSARC, as you know, provides legal advocacy. We also have a 24-hour resource line, provide evidence-based trauma-focused therapy. We have family support, legal advocacy, and then through our Don De Voz program, Giving Voice, survivors and their families who speak Spanish can access the full breadth of KSARC's comprehensive services. And then rounding it all out is education and prevention. All of these services are accessible through our 24-hour resource line. And I put up this number here. And I'm going to put it up again at the end. And I just want everybody to know our line. It's 1-888-99-VOICE. Please share that far and wide. Even if you just have a question about sexual assault, that's a great place to start. This is all important context for understanding our pilot, because while Wah, our dedicated legal advocate, was a very specific position that we were piloting, we quickly learned that this opportunity became so much more than that. Wah, you became a point of connection, not just to legal advocacy at KSARC, but to the full range of services KSARC provides to survivors and families. So at the beginning, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to discover. And we set out to look at the impact of the KSARC dedicated legal advocate just serving one city. We wanted to increase access to specialized sexual assault advocacy. We wanted to strengthen coordination with Kirkland Police Department and other partners. We wanted to build community awareness and referral pathways, provide a strong survivor experience, and demonstrate a model that could inform the future partnership between the city and with KSARC. And in my books, this pilot was successful and it gave us important information on how to make this even stronger moving forward. When we look back at this original scope, we believe that the pilot accomplished its core purpose. It didn't just produce service numbers, but it also allowed us to see what happens when you intentionally invest in relationships within a community. So when we look at the overall outcomes we've achieved, so from July to December 2025, 43 survivors served. Then from January to June 2026, that's 62 unique survivors served. WAW was carrying an average caseload of about 32 cases at a time. And that primary referral source, Kirkland Police Department. So 85% of the clients that we served through Kirkland were referred to us through the police department. There were so many other things that happened. And this slide right here is a lot about numbers. But these numbers are also telling a relationship story. And that relationship story, we're looking at 30 coordination meetings. Like, how? You had 283 participants in these coordination meetings, and that included ongoing coordination with KPD, courts, prosecutor schools, human services, and community organizations. Then 35 outreach and education activities. And of those outreach and education activities, we recorded about 519 participants or attendees across those activities. Plus there is much bigger, large scale community outreach through the school district and communications and community events. So the pilot confirmed something that we knew intuitively, but this gave us an opportunity to actually see it happen. Intentional relationship building creates stronger connections and better pathways to services. So we saw this with law enforcement, with schools and with community. And before I talk about the individual examples, I wanna share my immense gratitude for you all and for the human services team, especially Adriana, Juliana and Kurt, as well as the warm welcome from KPD. They all made those introductions possible. They all made those numbers you saw before happen. These connections are making a meaningful difference. They've opened doors, they built trust, and they connected us to partners who are essential to this pilot's success. With law enforcement, we developed regular coordination with KPD, including a department-wide training, created referral cards and a direct referral pathway, and built stronger familiarity between KPD and KSARC. Again, 85% of the pilot's clients were referred to us by KPD. With schools, WA established direct relationship with counseling and support staff and made connections with – I don't want to butcher this. Can you say this for me? Kamiakin Middle School? Kamiakin Middle School? I'm from New Jersey, please blame them. Lake Washington High School, North Star in Emerson, and the LWSD summer school nurse. The school district also promoted one of our webinars that came out in the spring. It was the KSARC prevention webinar, and that reached approximately 30,000 families. And then there's just the broader community that you all helped bring into the fold. We were able to build relationships with Friends of Youth, the Together Center, NAMI, Evergreen Health, the libraries. We were welcomed to so many community events. And a Kirkland High School student will be a member of this year's Youth Advisory Council at KSARC. So when we say community presence, that's what we mean. it's because we're becoming known becoming trusted and we're understanding uh who the partners are in our community and we're making it easier for someone to say i know who to call i know where to send someone i know what case art can do so i just want to say thank you for all of that that's incredibly important for us So WA's intentional presence in Kirkland helped build trust, familiarity, and referral pathways. Her presence was also valuable not only in providing legal advocacy, but in creating opportunities to lift up the full range of services KSARC offers and help community partners better understand how we can support survivors and families. Residents have always had access to KSARC's comprehensive services, but what the pilot demonstrated was the power of this partnership and this intentional relationship building. That's a joint effort between Kirkland and Waugh, and that's our true success. We're especially grateful for your partnership in helping us get the foot in the door of schools and begin conversations about KCERC's sexual violence prevention programming. Those introductions and connections are essential to building relationships and creating new pathways for the future. What the pilot did, the pilot did what a good pilot should do. It demonstrated what works and it opened additional doors for us to continue conversations. As I said, I'm deeply grateful for the partnership, trust and willingness to welcome KSARC deeper into the Kirkland community. And if we look at this at our original goals, our assessment of those goals and what we learned, i just want to show over and over again that we have achieved or exceeded with room to deepen and like there's moments of ongoing opportunity when we look at school engagement achieved initial relationships established we look to we look forward to continuing to that opportunity to deepen survivor satisfaction survivors felt supported and they were able to identify next steps So to us, the pilot demonstrated the value of intentional relationship building that KSARC comprehensive services do in fact work. I know I keep saying foot in the door. But I really want to emphasize how invaluable that is. Getting the first opportunity to be welcomed into a community to build relationships and to have you all stand behind us and make those introductions makes a huge difference. And that's not something we take for granted. Those introductions and that trust is what's going to allow this work to grow. And we're incredibly grateful for the role you played in making this possible. So as I continue to say thank yous, I just want to say thank you again for the partnership and the trust you placed in KSARC and for the opportunity to do this work. We're excited about this relationship that we've established through this pilot and the conversations that we continue to have because of them. And of course, as always, we're available if you have questions about KSARC services, you have more referrals or opportunities to continue partnering with us around sexual assault response and prevention. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate, and thank you both of you for this program and the work that you're doing. And it's hard work, so it's challenging work. And we're so grateful for your presence in our community, and frankly, we're really proud of this program. So, thank you for the feedback. Council, any questions? Council Member Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Well, this is impressive. Thank you for all the work that you're doing. You're making a difference. Everyone who's here tonight and others as well. I really appreciate the very clear partnership with the Kirkland Police Department. So thank you for that collaboration and that relationship and in referring folks over there to get the support that they need as they navigate these tough issues. It's not surprising that so many, did you say 85% of the referrals came from, came from Kirkland Police Department. I appreciate all the work that you've done as well to increase the other 15%, right, to get more folks aware of the program who may not already have reported, you know, being a survivor of sexual assault and, but still need resources. So thank you for that. My question for you is really for those listening, the public. You've shared here on the slide, on a previous slide, some contact information, some phone numbers to call. If we have a Kirkland community member specifically who wants to reach out specifically to Hua, are those the numbers that folks in the Kirkland community should call, or is there a direct email or phone number for the Kirkland program that folks should call?

They should call our 24-hour resource line first. Once they connect to our resource line, we'll connect them to someone in our client care team to do an intake with them. That intake is really important, so that gives Wah the information she needs to help them through their first steps if they want to talk to a legal advocate. Because they may want to talk to a therapist, or they may just have a couple questions about what sexual assault is. So the best first step is always our 24-hour resource line.

Great. Thank you.

Council Member Paschall?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for kind of the overview. When I think about this program, and I really like some of the words you use, the relationship building, the connections, the trust that you're building, I mean, those are kind of the things that are hard to quantify. But, you know, when it comes to sexual violence, sexual assault, those are really critical elements. You mentioned that this was a good model that Kirkland kind of took the lead in this. know my my questions are that you know is it a repeatable model um how can it grow from just kirkland um we're not going to solve problems for every community but we can do what we need to do for our community so i want to make sure that we continue thinking about that with that in mind because i know case arc has a greater um um you know i guess responsibility for the county But I want to recognize that Kirkland's kind of stepped forward and said, hey, this is a priority for us. And we wanted to solve what we can do for our community. But we can't necessarily solve it for the rest of the county. So I just want to make sure we keep that in perspective. I guess a couple things too is that, you know, it's hard to just look at the numbers and go, hey, is this good or is this bad? Did we reach success? Because if you are a survivor, it's a very lonely experience. There's very few people you can turn to to even discuss it, the situation. And, you know, even difficult with family or, you know, it's not stuff that you talk around the kitchen table let alone in social circles and so the the advocate becomes an incredible resource that just otherwise who knows where else you go um so survivors need that that that support um and so You know, it's interesting because they're going through the most excruciating time in their life, but trying to navigate a system that I think even just a common person that isn't even dealing with that would have difficulty navigating. with the criminal justice, with just getting through the mental issues. So all of that. So anyways, enough about that. But I just would want to make sure that we're really kind of being thoughtful about next steps and that we're looking at how we can kind of move this program forward, that this isn't the end. This is the beginning. Let's keep going.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Prim.

Yeah, thank you so much for this presentation, for your incredibly important work you're doing for our community. One question I had was just the assessing the pilot and kind of looking at all the original goals that we have. One of the goals that I'm very interested in is the school engagement, just given the vulnerable population that you're going to be dealing with and what we learned. So you say that we had some initial relationships established and we look forward to obviously deepen those relationships. Can you just talk about what function within the schools were your primary contacts and were you able to reach all the schools in Kirkland or what age group? If you could just maybe expand on that a little bit.

Do you want to answer that one? No, we haven't reached. I want to say, I mean, like the webinar.

Would you mind turning on your microphone, please? Sorry.

Yeah, so for the webinar, we have reached certain things. It's our prevention webinar. We have reached to the entire, not only Kirkland School, it's Lake Washington School District. So certain things, we have been to do that. But for each schools in Kirkland, it's taking time. So I started building relationship with some of the schools. I'm still working on the process, hopefully, You know, my goal initially, my goal is to basically have my presence in, at least show up in each school to have some sort of a contact with each school within the Kirkland, you know, region. But the thing is right now, you know, just step by step, you know, And my name, personally, my name, my contact is on Lake Washington High School website. That's quite a achievement, I have to say. I'm very proud of that. Just step by step. So some school staff know who I am and how to contact me directly if they have questions. Those kinds of things, like I said, relationship building takes time. So we work on that. When they send out the webinar, prevention webinar, especially like for kids, that webinar is targeted, you know, to support the kids and the family. And we are able to distribute that to the entire, you know, Lake Washington School District parents. That's, you know, the resource they know there. So it's wonderful.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Council, anyone else? City Manager?

Just, are we ready to move to the second part of the presentation?

Yep, sounds good.

So I wanna go ahead and introduce our police chief, Maxine Jean. He's gonna introduce his team and we'll go to the next part.

Thank you, city manager. Good evening, mayor, deputy mayor, members of council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight about our response to domestic violence and to highlight the advocacy program that we offer to survivors through the process. Joining me this evening, our deputy chief, Phil Goggin, and our investigations lieutenant, Clayton Slominski, and our superstar, Domestic Violence Advocate, Shanice Dawson. We have about 15 slides to present. We'll talk fast. I know we're cramming a lot into this study session, so talk fast, everybody. Before I turn it over to Lieutenant Szymanski, though, I did want to acknowledge the letter you all received from Mr. Fox as it related to this study session. He is an attorney with extensive experience in family law. We do appreciate his thoughtful feedback and his longstanding expertise in this area. letter is accurate and offers helpful context regarding the complexities of domestic violence law. The council memo and tonight's presentation were not intended to serve as detailed training on investigative procedures or charging standards in domestic violence cases. Instead, they're designed to give council and the general public an educational overview of domestic violence and the advocacy we provide. I do want to emphasize that our officers, our detectives, our advocates and investigators are rigorously trained and deeply knowledgeable about Washington State's statutory framework related to domestic violence and protection orders. So with that being said, I'll turn it over to Lieutenant Slominski to start the presentation.

Good evening. Thank you again for having us here. As the chief mentioned, my name is Clayton Slominski. I'm currently the investigations lieutenant. That means I oversee both our detective division and the PROAC unit. And then I also have the benefit of working with Shanice Dawson, who's, as the domestic violence victim advocate, she is within that investigations unit. So Really what we're going to try and cover is broken down into two different parts. The part that both myself and Deputy Chief Phil Goggin are going to address, which is kind of what is domestic violence advocacy, why is it important, and then what types of calls are officers responding to. And then Shanice will be able to dive in a little bit more about exactly what her role is in the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day in terms of What's the reporting look like? When does adverse case start and end? And then talk a little bit about our domestic abuse response team. right off the bat you know what is domestic violence advocacy well it's the professional practice of supporting survivors of intimate partner abuse through survivor-centered non-blaming guidance safety planning and resource navigation here at the kirkland police department domestic violence advocacy is triggered by the relationship between the parties not the specific crime was that was committed that's an important distinction as mr fox points out there is actually a legal definition for domestic violence under the rcws THAT'S TYPICALLY REFERENCED FOR CRIMINAL ENFORCEMENT AND ISSUES OF PROTECTION ORDERS. IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE WE CHOSE TO GO WITH A MORE BROAD DEFINITION BECAUSE FRANKLY THE GOAL IS ADVOCACY THAT WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT. IT'S NOT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WE PUTTING IN JAIL BUT HOW IS THE CITY OF KIRKLAND AND MORE IMPORTANTLY THE KIRKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT SUPPORTING VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REGARDLESS OF WHETHER CRIMINAL CHARGES ARE EVER FILED. YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE THROUGH OUR SUPPORTING MEMORANDUM THAT We have a significant amount of cases that actually get reported that maybe no crime was identified, but still falls within that definition of domestic violence, either through coercion or frankly, just not treating people the way we should. So domestic violence advocacy has always been an important part of the Kirkland Police Department, and that's primarily because the impacts it has on the community and society in general. It extends well beyond just the impacts that victims of domestic violence receive. There's an impact on health and social services, such as increased in demand and medical care, counseling and supportive services. There's an economic cost with lost productivity, missed work days and increased cost to employers and the community. There's a generational impact for children that might be exposed to violence in the household that may not be direct victims of that, but they now face the repercussions of some of that violence through missed school days, exposure to violence at a young age. There's an increased strain on law enforcement and the criminal justice system. This is gonna include more calls for service, investigative time, prosecutions, court time, and even the incarceration costs around that. And then lastly is the housing instability through domestic violence. Many survivors do face housing insecurity and even homelessness after leaving an abusive situation. So it's been important to us to have this domestic violence advocacy, both after something's been reported, but even preemptively. And you'll see again, a lot of our cases revolve around some preemptive advocacy work before a crime's ever happened. So I chose to include this slide a little bit specifically to highlight the types of cases we are seeing the most of. As you can see, predominantly we're seeing domestic violence assault followed by domestic violence order violations. Give me one second. So I think what's not included in this slide that I think is very important is specifically the total number of domestic violence case reports that we took. In the last 18 months, and that's what this slide is intended to show is the amount of reported crimes over the last 18 months, the Kirkland Police Department took 1,159 case reports with a domestic tag associated with them. Of those, 509 of the cases had reported criminal offenses. There was an additional 650 domestic violence cases reported where no identifiable crime occurred, but we were still dispatched out there for some sort of domestic disturbance. Those can involve verbal arguments that escalate to the point in law enforcement of intervention. It could be questions about civil parenting plan where one parent may be manipulating the situation through coercive behavior with parenting. I think it really highlights the fact that We can't just look at arrests and criminal prosecution when we're looking at domestic violence advocacy, right? It is all encompassing. It is about the relationship of the people and how they're choosing to treat each other and our ability to intervene in that early on. I know I'm talking a lot about how great our department is at having this advocacy, but I think really the history of it is what highlights how long we've been doing it and the benefit that our department has brought to this particular area. I want to turn it over to Deputy Chief Phil Goggin to kind of talk about the historical perspective of our program.

Thank you. So during the 1990s,

Chief Trudeau, microphone on.

I knew it. So during the 1990s, a rising public awareness of domestic violence brought increasing expectations of how police departments responded to these incidents. In 1997, the Kirkland Police Department explored creating a specialized unit dedicated to investigating and following up on misdemeanor domestic violence crimes. The proposed model integrated a specifically trained officer, a full-time in-house advocate and a prosecutor focused exclusively on domestic violence, consolidating their efforts into one coordinated team. In 1998, under the support of then Chief Green, this proposal became reality with the establishment of the Family Violence Unit. The unit provided direct support for domestic violence victims and included a full-time DV advocate, replacing the previously part-time advocacy position supplied by King County. As the program developed, the department identified a gap in victim services, services during hours when the advocate was unavailable. This led to the creation of the Domestic Abuse Response Team, or DART, as you may know it, which is a group of community volunteers that are trained to provide wraparound support outside typical business hours. DART members complete 40 hours of initial training, followed by an ongoing quarterly training, ensuring that they can offer immediate compassion, assistance to victims. The team itself is managed by our advocate, Shanice. So over the years, the Family Violence Unit has undergone several evolutions. What began as a unit focused on misdemeanor domestic violence investigations eventually shifted to handling only felony level crimes. But more recently, updates within the Investigations Division has restored emphasis on misdemeanor domestic violence with felony responsibilities reassigned to major crimes detectives, bringing the unit's full mission, excuse me, bringing the unit's mission full circle to its original intent. So that's the historical perspective. I would like to now turn over to Shanice so that she can talk about advocacy and the services that she provides to victims in our community.

Hi, thank you for having us tonight. My name is Shanice Dawson. I'm the domestic violence victim advocate with the Kirkland Police Department. And excuse me if I have to take a couple of drinks of water tonight. So, oops. I'm gonna talk about advocacy within the systems-based setting. My goal isn't to just process a case, it's to support a victim throughout the case to increase safety and provide access to resources available within the community. An important distinction that sets my work apart as a systems-based advocate, that means that I connect with victims, my conversations with victims are private, but they're not confidential. It's something I tell my victims in the first conversations I have with them, and I continue to remind them as our relationship develops. For victims that prefer a confidential advocate, I refer them to community-based organizations, such as LifeWire or DV HopeLine. The benefit of my advocacy being systems-based is that I work side by side with officers and prosecutors to ensure victims' voices are heard and they feel empowered and supported by the system. I have a similar access level to criminal justice databases as police officers, so I can quickly review probable cause reports and domestic violence supplemental forms, which was referred to in our memo. I can also watch body worn camera to view initial trauma informed interview that the officer had with the victim so I can better equip and tailor my call with the victim. Because of my work in the PD, I have a deep understanding of the system and have inner department relationships that position me to better support victims through the process. One day my work can be focused on the court process and phone contact with multiple victims and the next it could be focused with one victim supporting them after an incident occurs at a hospital or at the police department. Safety planning is a very important piece that I touch on with every victim regardless of whether there was an arrest or they deny abuse. It's a way for victims to identify what they would do if an incident occurred. Another important topic I discuss with victims is understanding the spectrum of abuse. I often point to the power and control wheel and let people know that domestic violence isn't just physical abuse. I review financial abuse, litigative abuse, using children to control, how isolation from family can make victims more reliant on their abuser. and I'd like to tell you a story about a time I safety planned with a victim. An officer referred a victim to me who was experiencing verbal abuse. When we talked, she shared concerns that she had minimized because of their long history together. I introduced the idea of safety planning, and together we walked through some simple questions. I asked, who can you refer to for support? And she said her aunt. I said, is there a safe space you can go during arguments? She said she goes to take a shower because that gives her time to cool down and time away from her partner. I asked, if you ever needed to leave, where would you go? She said her aunt's house. Together, we built a basic safety plan. Three months later, when I was doing my case intakes, I saw her name appear. When I call her, she told me that she had used the safety plan we created together. During an argument, she went to take a shower. While in the shower, her partner shut the water off. When she tried to escape the bathroom, he wasn't letting her get out. She asked for her phone to call 911 and he hid her phone. She then grabbed her keys and escaped. She started driving to her aunt's house. On the way there, officers pulled her over thinking she might be DUI. Instead, they found her emotional, injured, and scared. Using trauma-informed interviewing, our officers leaned into what happened and eventually arrested her partner for assault for domestic violence and interfering with reporting domestic violence. Safety plan didn't just help her in that moment, it helped her potentially in what could have been a more serious incident. Navigating the court process is a space that fills a lot of my time with victims. It starts with walking victims through first appearance, which is called arraignment. Then the pretrial phase is next. This is when I continue to update victims on the process, and this is also when I ask victims how they feel about the case, such as their desired outcome. some of those desired outcomes as a potential stipulated order of continuance or going to take the case to trial. Before trials are set, a defense interview is usually scheduled. I continue to be a support pillar for the victim and I attend the interview for support. If a case is set for trial, I invite the victim to the Kirkland Municipal Court, I walk them around the courtroom, let them know they will sit when they testify, let them know where prosecution and defense sits, and then I'll let them know we're all set to be a support pillar during that process. On the day of trial, I sit with the victim from the moment they arrive at the courthouse to the moment they leave. Sometimes that's just sitting in silence, sometimes it's coloring, and sometimes it's talking about their anxieties that they're going to experience with reliving this trauma. The voice of every victim matters, even if their wishes are complex. Building a strong relationship helps me communicate their needs clearly to the prosecutor by advocating the victim's desired outcome. This could include accountability by way of a guilty charge or by way of an SOC. the stipulated order of continuance where the case is dismissed from their record after a set of number of months if they abide by the city's recommendations. In both scenarios, the defendant is likely to be court ordered to complete a domestic violence or anger management course or and or substance use or mental health evaluations. Unfortunately, there are times when the victim doesn't feel like their voice was heard. That could be because the victim won't settle for anything less than a guilty verdict, or the prosecutor cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Another possibility is that the victim wants the case to be dismissed, but due to the defendant's past history, the prosecutor won't offer anything less than a plea guilty. My advocacy doesn't stop there. I explain why the outcome occurred. I remind the victim why I'm still someone that they can lean on for resources and why I'm still there for future support. Being based at the KPD allows me daily interactions with officers, detectives, and supervisors who respond to domestic violence-related calls. This helps me stay connected and make sure that the victim's voice is heard throughout the entire process. I regularly attend squad briefings where I teach officers on how to respond to domestic violence-related calls. I also train new officers on the Kirkland Police Department's DV protocols before they exit their training phase. So every officer is equipped before they go on the road.

I also stay connected with law enforcement advocates in the area.

Other areas that have advocates that sit at the police department are Renton, Tukwila, Woodinville, and Bellevue. Other agencies around the area as well, and that allows me to quickly be able to share cases that may cross cities and allows us to lean on to each other for support. This isn't just beneficial to me in a big way, it's beneficial to other agencies and KPD officers that allows follow up for shared cases. I also keep an open line of communication with the King County Protection Order advocates as I'm able to support domestic violence protection order applications that stem from Kirkland and beyond by providing them quick access to police reports. Interviews often occur before and after arrests. When they occur at our PD, we have a soft room where victims give their account of what happened in a safe and calm environment. I'm able to sit with the victim, and there are also times when I go out to the victim's home or coffee shop or wherever they feel most safe, and I'm just a steady presence when the officer is asking them questions about what happened. On average, it takes seven attempts for a victim to leave their abuser. Because of this, there are often incidents that happen after an arrest is made. When this occurs, I'm able to give a soft hand over to law enforcement, connect them with a safe environment, making reporting protection order violations and other incidents easier. The bulk of my conversations I have surrounding protection orders are about domestic violence protection orders, and those are very specific to domestic violence. But because of the relationships that I've built with officers and detectives at the PD, they also refer to me other people in the community that they encounter that don't have questions about domestic violence related orders. questions about anti-harassment orders or stalking protection orders. So I am able to connect the community with resources and a template on how to apply for those orders. And then I just wanted to quickly highlight the DART program. I actually was a volunteer with DART and became full-time through this. So this is how I even, I never knew that a program like this existed, and I'm happy that we can still continue this. We currently have three volunteers, and we're actively recruiting new volunteers. So we're looking forward to our next class.

So that's the conclusion of our presentation. Again, that's the conclusion of our presentation. The last slide here is an actual email from the victim that we got this week, and it's a victim that Shanice helped. And we put this in here because I think this kind of accentuates the importance of having an advocate that is in the station, someone who is compassionate and is willing to help, but is also somebody who listens to it. And what's unique about this email here is this is a victim who is thanking Shanice, not because The case was adjudicated in her favor, but it was because Shanice listened to her. Her voice was heard with the prosecutor's office and what she wanted ultimately is what the outcome of this case was.

Thank you, Deputy Chief, Lieutenant and Shanice. How long have you been with the city then in this role?

I've been with the city in the full-time position since February of 2025.

Thank you. Your presentation is very sobering, and I'm very grateful for the work that you do. And Kate is back there nodding along with most of your presentation. I'm sure there's a lot of collaboration between all of you. So thank you. Thank you. Council, I know it's hard to shift gears, but any questions, Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, yeah, thank you, Chief, Deputy Chief, Lieutenant Shanice. Also, thanks to Kate and Wah, the KSAR team, too. Two quick questions. curiosity more than anything else, especially on this first question. So I've done a ride along with our regional crisis response agency and our mental health professionals who work there. And one of our stops was victim advocacy and the type of meeting at a coffee shop that you actually described, along with a law enforcement officer from KPD. um can you talk a little bit about the coordination there and any what type of handoffs happened between um your you and and your volunteers and racer yes mental health professionals yeah um and i would actually like to highlight too that one of our mental health professionals actually was also a volunteer advocate with dart so that's a cool full circle moment too

But, yeah, there's a lot of crossover with all areas in the police department, one of those being crossover with mental health resources. Having that team at hands at PD allows, you know, a quick turnaround. Maybe if a call that I'm having is escalating, I'm able to quickly put that into the hands of somebody who could better or that are better equipped to answer questions and refer resources. There's a ton of crossover and really great inter-department training. I've physically walked, actually with this one in particular, I physically walked a mom and her son over to Connections to get him additional resources once he was released from custody. So there's a ton of crossover and I hope I answered your question.

No, and I love hearing how all of the different programs, initiatives, departments are working together to really braid together. the full range of services that we need to address these important issues. Another issue, really, again, more curiosity than anything, but I am curious how early in the process, and this is a question for the officers as well as you, Shanice, is how early in the process do we usually identify whether there are any particularly dangerous weapons in the home where domestic violence is happening? Is that one of the first questions? Happens later on in interviews. I'm curious, and that would include firearms, but other, obviously any seriously dangerous weapons.

I can kick it off and then they'll take over on the broader conversation that happens with officers. But after an arrest is made for any domestic violence related crime, the officers, you know, not only ask the person who is arrested if they have weapons in the home, but they'll also ask the victim. One of the things that judges sign after or at arraignment is a surrender for release of firearms or a non-surrender that they have to sign. So that's that piece. And then I'll let him talk about that.

Yeah, so actually one of the parts of our training packet is, All victims of domestic violence go through a supplemental interview form where we actually talk about prior abuse. And one of the specific questions in there are, are there weapons in the household? Have there been threats? Has there been other types of unreported domestic violence? But we do specifically address that in a written supplemental domestic violence form that actually Shanice then sees typically with the intake process as well. And that information then can get to the prosecutor's office And specifically, I don't know. And we've actually had numerous situations where somebody might claim they don't have a weapon. But through that supplemental interview process that's actually documented, we've been able to show that there actually are weapons in the house and that notice to surrender does get issued by a judge.

Great. I appreciate that. I was just thinking, you know, just knowing about what we sort of know instinctively is the coercive impact that having dangerous weapons in the home has in a domestic violence situation, even if they're never used and never even explicitly threatened to be used. But knowing that there's weapons like that in the home. has a huge impact on the mindset of a victim in that situation. So I appreciate that we're working hard to identify that as a potential risk early in the process. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a quick just clarification question. As we know, domestic violence situations can be very messy and complicated. And I know in both the RACER and KPD-RI alongside John, there's been situations in which it's not clear who initiated or, you know, I know very... basic level was explained to me some of the state law that a lot of states have about what the police officers witness and who needs to be arrested. Sometimes it's not perfect because it's so messy. I think I heard you say, Shanice, that you help all parties involved. So if there's someone who's, there could even be a defendant who's potentially also a victim or a potential defendant who's also a victim of domestic abuse in these more complicated situations. Did I hear that correctly, that you're available to all parties involved or is it just for the victim of when there's charges filed?

Yeah, that's a big question to answer. So it's a case-by-case basis definitely. It's not often that I work, you know, across with a victim, with a defendant, my primary focus is the victim. There are familial cases, like mother-son, father-son, et cetera, that are really hard to navigate. And my goal is to support the victim as best that I can, and sometimes that extends giving resources to the person who caused them harm. it's a gray area and it's not a yes no or this is what i always do but i definitely make sure that the victim is the person who's controlling how their support is continued and then on a side note with your question about specifically victim defendants that is something unfortunately we see too but that also you know My role within the police department has positioned me perfectly to respond to those types of incidents. There have been times, and there's not a lot, but there have been times when defendants are released prior to arraignment because of a victim-defendant situation, and I was able to, you know, work closely with the prosecutors and the officers to really evaluate the situation on a closer level. So it definitely spans a lot of areas. Thank you. Yes, definitely.

Thank you. I'm sorry. I could ask 10 more questions, but we have to go on to CIP. So thank you very much for your time for being here tonight. And thank you, Kate, and also for being here.

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

So, Council, while we're switching, we just want to note that we do note the flickering that's occurring in the screens. We've done that with IT. They're going to check that out. I think it's probably a plug-related issue, but we hope to get that fixed probably before the next Council meeting.

Okay. Thank you, City Manager. We were all going to tell you that. So we are moving on to preliminary 2027-32 capital improvement program review. My question to you is should we test how quickly we can flip over the room and go a little past seven? How are you feeling about that?

Yeah, I think we'll watch and see. Because these are different chunks, we can always break in a certain category and stop and bring back more information. But we might go a little bit late, but we'll see when we get back to 10 till. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so as folks are coming together, this is our first check-in on the CIP study session. You'll be seeing us again in November and then for final action in December. I believe that I'm introducing Veronica Hill as our financial planning supervisor, and she's going to walk us through this with her partners from Public Works.

THANK YOU, CITY MANAGER. GOOD EVENING, MADAM MAYOR, DEPUTY MAYOR, AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL. JUST GOING TO GET RIGHT INTO IT. GOT A LOT TO GO. SO IN THE COLLECTIVE, THE CIP IS A FUNDING PLAN FOR THE 2732 PROGRAM, FUNDING IN THE AMOUNT OF $224 MILLION IS PROPOSED FOR THE EIGHT CIP PROGRAMS.

JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE SO I CAN HEAR YOU.

JULIE CAN'T HEAR YOU. WE CAN.

We're all learning the new systems.

All right. Sorry about that. In some instances, programs are still developing projects and additional updates may be brought back in future sessions. In the continued development of the operating budget, additional changes may also be identified as well. And what am I doing? Why aren't you moving? Sorry. Is that working? Thank you. All right. So on the agenda, we have roughly 44 slides, I believe. So we're going to, again, move as quickly as we can. But we'll first look at the CIP policy focus review. We'll go over a couple of highlighted projects here and then start getting into the CIP summaries by program. So the timeline began in April of this year where Council adopted the CIP priorities resolution. Since then, programs have been working on their projects and including meetings with finance and CMO. We are here today on September 1st for our first study session to review the CIP. We'll return in November and then in December for final adoption. So again, the adoption of the priorities framework was through Resolution R5726. The seven guiding principles were followed by programs as they modified and developed existing and new projects. So how are projects selected? The CIP programs develop plans to establish prioritization and ranking of projects. Plans are updated at various cycles. The preliminary CIP aligns with the priorities identified in those plans. Examples of this work will be provided later in the presentation. In terms of funding sources, The preliminary six-year CIP is based on funding of $224 million allocated across eight program areas. Those are transportation, three utilities of surface water, water and sewer, parks, public safety facilities, and information technology. For transportation, $83 million is proposed for project support. Three funding sources provide the majority of support to projects. Those are REIT at $38 million, street levy at $20 million, and impact fees at $12 million. In addition, transportation unsecured grants and other external funding is represented for the station area at roughly $13 million. And again, there will be additional coverage of that particular category. For the three utilities, primarily their funding is supported through system reinvestment through utility rates and connection fees. Debt is proposed to complete the south reservoir project, as well as the use of reserves. Overall for each utility, surface water is funded at $21 million, water at $33 million, and sewer at $20 million. For parks, $32 million is proposed funding. This includes new additional King County park levy program through 2031 for a total of $8.3 million. Park impact fees maintained at $1.5 million annually. 2027 also includes a project transfer of $2.1 million in support of the Lee Johnson field upgrades and the Peter Kirk pool. Programs supported primarily through sinking funds include public safety at 5.3 million, facilities at 7.7 million, and information technology at 8.2 million. So real estate excise tax is a primary source of funding for transportation and parks, currently programmed at $11 million. However, in 2026 at this point, trends are suggesting slightly more than that. Staff will continue to monitor and will update estimates as needed. REIT is also used to fund maintenance and other priorities such as affordable housing solutions. impact fees provide support to transportation and parks were most recently updated in 2025 Current year-to-date trending, however, is lower than previous years. Given the volatile nature of this particular funding source, increases may yet materialize. Staff, again, are continuing to monitor this for any additional adjustments going forward. The preliminary CIP includes $12 million for transportation, $9 million for parks. the fire impact fees are unprogrammed for the cip however they have been used to focus on apparatus capacity building all right taking a look at a couple of projects i will take on the first one of peter kirkpool The Peterkirk pool will receive the following renovation, repair and improvements. We have the mechanical system upgrade, ADA accessibility upgrades, enlargement of the waiting pool, addition and the addition of family changing rooms. On August 5th, council approved the progressive design build financing structure and the preliminary CIP includes a 1.8 million project transfer in 2027 and additional funding updates are currently in review as well. And at this time, I will pass it on to Jessica to review the Public Works CIP programs.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor and City Council. I'll kick our section off with a review of the South Reservoir replacement. Our current reservoir is about 11.2 million gallon storage tank built in 1971 jointly owned by Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland. This project will be replacing the reservoir with a 15 million gallon concrete reservoir designed and constructed to current seismic standards and international building code. In May we did receive a 30% design and you'll see in the table on the slide the current funding in the CIP is 38.1 million and at 30% design it did jump to 44.7 million dollars. That's an increase of about 6.7 of which Kirkland's portion is 2.9 million. There are several factors due to this increase. A more aggressive inflation factor given the current market. The reservoir cost itself was increased. Updated seismic design from the 21 to 24 building code. For example, requirements for thicker walls, more rebar, increased height of the walls, etc. There's also a refine. We refined the quantity estimation, excuse me, estimation from predesigned to 30% and an increase in mobilization. Uh, you will or Council will receive an update on the utility rates on September 15th and in our proposed scenario there is a $12.5 million debt issuance. A side effort staff has completed in application for the Public Works Board program. This is for $10 million. The intent behind this is there are more favorable loan terms. So it would be an either or combination of should we be successful on that front, we would reduce the debt issuance. I will note that Bellevue and Redmond are kept in the loop on this project and we do give note of updates at the joint board meetings. Any questions on this ready move on?

I see none.

All right. So we will kick off with transportation. There are maps included in your slides for each of these sections. The only reason there's two for transportation is there's just so many projects that we separated by the program. And I will dive right into the slides as we will be talking about each of these projects. So to kick us off, I believe there were some questions about how projects are prioritized and scored and how do they get into the CIP. So on the left-hand side is a list of high-level prioritization criteria that's included in the TSP. um these also have many other components that go beyond these items listed here but just to give an example safety transportation maintenance equity these different items are given a score and ultimately given an overall score for the project as it's ranked in the tsp As far as the CIP selection itself, we have the 20-year fiscally constrained list from the TSP, and that's what makes up our current unfunded list on the transportation CIP. So for selection criteria for which projects we propose to enter the CIP, we look at a number of factors. So project readiness, how accurate is the description? How accurate are the costs? We often do gamble walks where we go out to the sites with the stakeholders. Is it ready to move forward? Are there other components such as utilities, outside coordination, existing equipment, all kinds of different components that we would want to evaluate? There's also the size of the project and the estimated cost versus the projected revenues in the CIP capacity. We also look at efficiency and the balance of the projects. It be may it be that there's other projects in the area and it's an efficiency to do them at the same time, or there's too many projects in the area and we'll come back to that later. So lots of different things that we assess the projects that we present tonight. If Council would like more options that go beyond what we presented, then we'd be happy to bring more options back at the November study session. Thank you, Councillor Pascal.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, my question, and I've asked, this isn't a new question for me, something I've asked in the past, but we've changed, we've fundamentally changed the structure of the CIP where we've gone from a project by project line item to program line item. Safe routes to school, after transportation improvements, safety improvements, so forth. And so the question, and this is a question I get from the community quite a bit, is how do we take that program funding and obligate it to specific projects because the CIP no longer includes those specific projects. They're contained in the plans. It's a long list. so just I understand that this is a criteria this is a selection criteria we're talking a very abstract here walk us through and some examples of how you got from you know these 20 projects to select these two projects that we're going to now now implement that's what I'd like to see I'd like to actually kind of see that how you actually do your you know so to speak. I understand the priorities and the criteria you're using, but bring some transparency to that. That's what I'm looking for.

thank you for the questions um i don't have my name tags though simba do a translation manager with public works um one of the things that we're doing because these are newer programs we're exploring all the projects in the tsb list that relate to each of those programs so for greenways we're looking at the specific greenway projects or for sidewalk funding we're looking at specifically the sidewalk projects in the tsb list and using the tsb criteria similar to this we're taking the top scored and then we're working through similar criteria in terms of with within the program funding is it ready to go are there other utility costs are there relocates that we need to consider is there anything else in terms of project readiness and so very similar process to this will be applying to the programs as well

Yeah, so I guess, I mean, my asks are when you come back, walk us through some of that. I would, or if I'm the only one that has this question, I'd like to maybe we can have a conversation. I'd love to see that. And then two, how can we kind of share that or daylight that with the community and say, hey, we have 750,000 funded for school walk route projects for next year. how can we then say, hey, we've gone through our list. These are the next two projects that we're going to build next year, where we're gonna take that money and we're gonna, how can, before we actually start the design on those, like, how can that be shared? Because that's the question I get from folks. Because we'll make the decision, we'll get 30% through, and then we'll be like, ask for input. And then people are like, why did you do that project as opposed to that other one that is a high priority? That's what I think would be helpful. Because in the past, the CIP would set the actual project. So we'd have that discussion now, and the community could weigh in because they'd see the project list. That's not the case anymore in terms of obligating the money to a specific project. That's what I've been asking for.

I think we'll probably want to discuss a little bit more of, like, in future CIP updates if we want to walk through that process or what's selected, or is that something we just kind of present to you on a regular basis with the CIP?

Yeah, and I'm not asking for a debate on all of that. I'm asking just more for that information to be shared. I don't, I mean, maybe others do, but it's not about debating the projects. It's about kind of, hey, this is how we got there. before we actually start, because if there was something that we saw that was questionable or whatever, you know, the public could weigh in on that. Thank you.

I have a follow-up before we move on. Steven, you just said the project score. Is that, I noticed in the packet, the SAP score, but there was no definition what the SAP score is? Is it the...

The TSB or the SAP score?

It said SAP score, the packet, for some of the transportation projects, and I wasn't familiar with that term.

That might be with the station area plan for SAP. Was it those specific projects?

But it had a score on it. Okay, I don't have the packet with me, so I'll look at it. Thank you. Anybody else have a question on transportation? Okay, go ahead, Jessica. No.

think the sap number was referring to the project identifier in the tsp plan so if you see sap 10 after a number that's what it's referring to that okay other numbers because i thought it was this tsp prioritization criteria so it wasn't clear okay okay thank you oh deputy mayor thank you mayor i did come up with a question i was just trying to figure out how to formulate it um

And, Veronica, we're going to move past transportation next. Is this it on transportation? No, there's more transportation. Okay, well, then let's continue, and I'll ask my question later.

Okay, go ahead, Jessica. Okay. A number of these are more housekeeping in nature that have been in front of council before, so I'll try to go a little more quickly through these. Two new projects, the crack and ice flex parking lot improvements. Council approved funding in March for $365,000. This is the balance needed to complete this project, and we are taking funding from the street preservation parent projects to fund that. Central Way also came before council recently. This is acknowledging the 1.5 million TIB award, as well as the transfer of 1.38 million from the TBD contingency. These are the two new transportation projects that we are proposing for the outer years in 31 and 32. I use the term placeholder only because these are very early conceptual cost estimates and the project will require full scoping and setup to produce an accurate cost estimate. We have six in Northeast 85th Street as well as six in Kirkland Way protected intersections. We're adding 3.5 million in 2031 and then 2.5 million in 2032. These are the only two projects that we're adding in outer years. Based on the criteria described in the slide earlier, these projects aligned with a high TSP score, project readiness, and alignment with the budget availability in the CIP in those years. Any questions on these two?

Deputy Mayor?

This is the best point in which I can ask this question. So this was the question I was going to ask a moment ago. I see these two projects and I think a couple other projects that are intersection related projects. Appreciate seeing these moved up into the funded. I see 2031. I'm like, oh, God. And then I realized 2031 is actually five years from now. But... You know, on one of the previous slides, we don't need to go back, but on one of the previous slides, one of the criteria is sort of land use and growth. And one of the things we've talked a lot about is planning ahead for what we expect. You know, we're doing land use planning, we're doing zoning, we're expecting growth in certain areas, we're expecting, we should be expecting that to have impacts on particularly on intersections and wanting to make sure that we are prioritizing intersections that we suspect, strongly suspect or can model will be problem intersections. So I see this and I think, okay, this is reflecting some of that conversation. Is that fair? This is reflecting some of that conversation you heard, not just from me, but from other members of our council that we want to make sure we're thinking about our future trouble intersections, for lack of a better term, and planning ahead.

Yes, that's correct. And when for specifically like the TSP prioritization, weight was given for the denser areas of Kirkland where we are wanting to plan for more growth.

Great.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, Jessica.

We have two annual projects that

ARE RETURNING TO THE FUNDED CIP THESE WERE THE ANNUAL SIDEWALK MAINTENANCE PROGRAM AT $100,000 A YEAR AND THE SAFER ROUTES TO SCHOOL PROGRAM AT $550,000 A YEAR THE UNDERSTANDING WHEN WE STARTED THE TIB EXCUSE ME TBD WAS THAT THESE WOULD BE REPURPOSED FOR THE SIX YEARS AND THEN THEY WOULD RESUME ANNUAL FUNDING IN 2029 AND THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL SEE IN THIS YEAR'S CIP The second project we have changed the Northeast 128th Street non motorized improvements $986,000 from secured to unsecured. This was a PSRC grant we received in 2024. Part of the I guess negotiating and getting that grant was that we moved the funding up to 2026. And unfortunately we weren't able to meet the obligation requirements. However, we have been in discussion with PSRC and they have encouraged us to reapply when their program opens. Typically it is in even years, but given they are trying to better align their criteria with the new federal administration and so they don't have a program open this year, but will continue to watch that and check in with Curtin Council about applying for federal funds when that is open. I just want to take one moment to talk about the unsecured stationary plan mechanism section of the CIP. This is a section that was added with the 2328 CIP. It's on the funded list, but it's projects that were assumed to be completed through developer funding. However, we do feel that these projects remain a priority despite the development not occurring. In the 2025 to 30 CIP process, we set aside $10 million in funding made up of transportation impact fees and REITs. And the purpose of this was if we determined that any of the projects in this section would need to be built despite development not occurring, that we would have funding to do so. SO I WILL JUMP TO THE NEXT SLIDE. IN WORKING CLOSELY WITH STEPHEN AND HIS TEAM, WE DID A REVIEW OF THE PROJECTS IN THAT CATEGORY AND ARE PROPOSING TO MOVE NMC 10101 SEVENTH AVE NORTHEAST 87th STREET um to the funded list and using some of the funding from that project there's a couple reasons we have one project in the map you can see on the left is the project we're proposing on 7th avenue on the right the red project is the mini roundabout or as we reference it the pickup drop off to the bus rapid transit station So there's some efficiencies we can gain by completing this project at the same time, which is currently in design. They could be better coordinated and reduce future construction impacts. Any questions here? Go ahead. All right. Let's see. So we have 122nd Avenue, Northeast 70th Street. Sorry, this slide is highlighting a few pending external opportunities that we're waiting to get word on. This project is estimated at $6.2 million. We have a grant application to the Highway Safety Improvement Program. for $3.3 million. This application does represent the shortfall on this project. So should we not be successful on this one, we will be returning in November to discuss next steps for this project. The trail connection at Juanita Drive and 132nd, we have submitted a grant application for $200,000 for design through the RCO planning for recreation access grant program. And lastly, we have 98th Ave Northeast bike and pet improvements. This is a TBD project. This grant application also represents an application for the shortfall on the project. Our application is for 450,000. We will find out in November and I will just note that staff is returning on September 15th for a very thorough discussion on all things TBD current status on the program and financials.

Council Member Falcone.

Thank you Madam Mayor. Well thank you for this. This is really helpful. I have a question but before that I just have a couple of comments. I agree with Council Member Paschal's earlier question about having just a little bit more of like walking us through the process of selection. Maybe there's an example like an example like subsection of one of the topics that we could kind of talk through you know how those selections were made that might be helpful just to talk through a practical example. Also just want to mention, I didn't want to interrupt at the time, but thank you for including, it wasn't on the slide, but it was in the memo, an adult size changing table at the Peter Kirk pool improvements. Thank you for that. I know that's something that a little bit of a squeaky wheel and I know it's something we agree with our values of being inclusive and accessible. So I just wanted to thank you very much for including that in the memo. And then my question is, you know, I'm always impressed by the size and complexity of the CIP. There's a lot of projects there. Some of the titles, it's not always clear what we're currently going to be working on, right, for me as a council member, right, and also for the community. Some of these projects, including the trail connection at Juanita Drive and 132nd, I mean, I remember going on walk-alongs even before I was on council, like, you know, a decade or more ago with community members and city staff, as well as during my time on council. And there's a lot of potential projects that have been discussed at that site. And they're all for different things. It could be a school walk route thing. It could be a bridge. It could be an intersection improvement, whether it be a roundabout or a traffic light. It could be a RFB. So just for those listening out there, I know there's a lot of interest in this. I live in the Finnhill neighborhood, so I hear about this intersection a lot. Can you clarify what our plans are with this specific CIP item?

THE TRAIL OR THE CROSSING, I'M SORRY.

The item that's on here that's listed as the trail. I know there are various pieces. I just want folks to understand what we're applying for funding, grant funding specifically for this.

So the project is fully funded. This was an opportunity that we saw that was for a recreation program that funds up to $200,000 for the design. So it was an opportunity for us to go after additional funding to go through to really plan out what that improvement will be. Thank you.

So that's to get, like, from the neighborhood and where there's already a trail up into Juanita Drive. Like, there's the stream there, but it doesn't include a crossing. Is that correct? I just want to make sure that how we're defining a trail, that the community understands what's meant by that.

So the project, as is, will connect the east side, the west side of Juanita Drive to Juanita Drive because we saw a lot of people coming that way. Yeah. There will be a bridge over the creek there that connects from the other side the trail when we get to Juanita Drive. At Juanita Drive, there's another TBD project that will do the crossing of the Juanita Drive. Currently, it is scoped as an RRFB project. And when we do this project, the TBD project will be executed or constructed at the same time as a trade project.

Thank you. And I know there's folks in the Fin Hill Neighborhood Alliance and in the neighborhood who are tracking this because at a recent Fin Hill Neighborhood Alliance morning meeting, it was presented that we may be looking at a lighted intersection there rather than an RRFB. So I just want to manage expectations for the public, right? That that's still being considered. It's currently slotted as an RRFB, but that may or may not be the best.

That's correct. It's still in conversation.

Thank you very much.

All right. And this is my last slide on transportation, just highlighting the two projects. These were two opportunities for funding for recent higher priorities, including the LDS Church Purchase and the Lee Johnson Field Central Way project. So these will be removed from the funded list. Shall I continue on to surface water, please? OK. Alright, here's a map of our funded surface water projects. Thank you, Steve. We have two new surface water projects. The Northeast 106 storm facility improvements. This project is programmed in outer years at $4.2 million. I will give my caveat again that this project does need to be scoped and fully set up so that we can evaluate the actual budget and will come back with adjustments as needed. High woodland stormwater management in year 145th. This moved to the funded list as a result of a grant application. We have several components here. It's estimated at $3 million. We were successful in receiving a $425,000 grant from the Ecology Stormwater Assistance Program. That's for the design phase. We have 2.6 million as unsecured in 2028 for construction. However, we have also submitted a secondary application to a different ecology program for the full scope of the project at $3 million. We applied for that when we didn't think we were successful on the first one and then something shifted and we received funds after all. Excuse me. So we'll see where the college lay and then we might have some adjustments on which funding we receive for that in the long run. All right. For modified projects, this is really just a housekeeping. We're shifting funding from this project to our annual aging and failing program. This is to better coordinate with work that just kicked off this Monday at the Evergreen Hospital. Also, the three projects mentioned below that, no change in bottom line of budget, just changes in timing or allocation between years to help us balance the CIP. Couple external funding updates. Holmes Point Drive. The total project budgets 1.9. We are waiting notification of a King County flood district grant for $500,000. This would be in addition and that would result in us freeing up that project funding of local funding. The Kraken Stormwater Discovery Park. This would be a sub sub project of the Houghton Park and Ride Stormwater Facility. This is a bit more of a funding to provide a fun interaction with the vault and give an education piece to the public where they could interact and learn more about. what it is. This is a pending waterworks grant at $150,000. Really, all of these grants say they'll be notified in fall, so hopefully we'll know at least some of these before the November study session. And lastly, we added two new projects to the surface water unfunded list. The 116 storm improvement project added to the flooding category at 3.1 million. And then the 110th pipe installation. This is for our infrastructure category at $305,000. That's my last slide for surface water. Thank you. Council, any questions? All right. Okay. ALL RIGHT, MOVING ALONG TO WATER. I just want to highlight quickly that the Water System Plan or WSP is currently underway. We've seen glimpses of the CIP portion, but it's not ready yet. So what we have based the CIP on is current priorities based on previous plans and based on the information that we have today. We've done our best to inflate costs, but many of these projects have not gone through a full setup and we expect that we'll have many changes coming forward in future CIPs as the WSP is brought forward. I won't go into too much details about these. These are the four water projects that we are proposing. Supply Station S two for 2.3 million and 2930 emergency normal supply. Well, this is a feasibility study for 500,027. adding an annual water main replacement to the water utilities similar to the aging and failing and surface water. And then lastly, a north reservoir pump station replacement and outlet meter addition 2.2 million in 2030 31. We do have an update on Highlands Improvements 116th Ave. Following the conversion of the pressure zone in April of 24, staff became aware of the pressure issues. Staff or council directed staff on several efforts, including a financial mitigation plan, proposing alternatives, a peer review of those, and then moving forward with the temporary booster station, which is installed and commissioned as of June this year. I will note that there is a full update coming to Council on September 15th, and so the proposed project in the CIP does assume the proposed alternative that will be presented then. The original project budget of $3.3 million. Of that, after these side efforts mentioned before, is about $1.14 million. The replacement estimate is 8.1, resulting in about $7 million added in the CIP in 2027 through 29. And then we have three projects in water that these were really placeholders as we're waiting for the WSP. So we did move these three to the unfunded list pending the, to be reprioritized through the WSP. That's the end of water.

Oh, Deputy Mayor.

thank you madam mayor um so can you go back to the slide on the highlands thank you so when it comes to financial mitigation program previously authorized by uh council is there funding remaining now now that this this the fix is in i'm sorry now that the fix is in place um Is there funding remaining from that financial mitigation program that wasn't used for its original intended purpose, which was, for example, booster pumps at individuals' homes? And how is that being reallocated?

That is actually funded outside the CIP, so I think that's a follow-up. Oh, that's fair.

okay all right i'll follow up with my question separately but what i'm curious about is if there's any opportunities out there for reprogramming that funding for anyone who's been sort of uniquely and made affected by the the installation of the fix so if staff can be can talk to me about that offline i'd appreciate it thank you all right

LESLIE SEWER. THIS IS BASICALLY THE SAME MESSAGING AS THE WATER SEWER PLAN, BUT FOR SEWER, AND WE'LL ANTICIPATE THAT PLAN GETTING DONE OR KICKED OFF NEXT YEAR. WE HAVE NEW PROJECTS FOR SEWER. Moving my pages ahead too far. Missing some slides.

Cassie, it looks like our slide changed.

yeah i might have them that's all right i'll do my best here um we're adding a new project the annual um adding an annual project program to sewer as well also noting that pending the general sewer plan we have placeholders built into the utility rate model to reflect that we'll be adding projects at a later date for those based on that New projects continued. This is a two-phase approach for feasibility study. This is for an I-405 crossing at Northeast 70th to Northeast 68th. This was identified as a high priority in the 2019 GSP. So we'll do the study, which will then inform the improvements of the actual crossing. This is a $10 million placeholder, which absolutely needs to be set up and scoped based on the feasibility study. And the map on the right does show our current existing crossings of I-405 with the Suomi. And then we have two projects that moved to the unfunded list. The Northeast 108 sewer main replacement. We have unfunded this due to moving up higher priorities similar to the sewer main capacity enhancements under I-405. This would be a new crossing and needs to have further evaluation that would be done as part of the general sewer plan.

Just do a time check here. Do you want to wait about, I think, six slides left and a couple of categories as counsel. Want to keep going or do you want to break it?

Continuing. I think everybody wants to finish. Keep going. OK. Did closed captions just suddenly appear?

Yeah.

OK. All right. Continuing with parks.

We're not sure why.

Many of the funding sources for parks are restricted for very specific uses, such as park impact fees must only be used to create capacity and example of an external source of King County conservation futures, which are specific to land acquisitions. uh just taking a look at the projects i'll just highlight a couple dock and shoreline renovations funded at 3.6 million and then there are two projects for parkland acquisitions funded at 17.8 million Also, we have park restroom additions, renovations, and replacements funded at $3.7 million. But also of note, I want to point out that a new reserve category to be developed beyond the current land acquisition reserve. And I'm sorry, I hit a button wrong. Okay. And the update will be provided when we return in November.

Veronica, before you move on. Oh, yes. Councillor Falcom. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Veronica.

My question is related to the Lee-Johnson Field upgrade. There is also a lot of community discussion around various things related to Peter Kirk Park, including things about Lee-Johnson Field. And can you just clarify what we're talking about here with the Lee-Johnson Field upgrades, for those listening at home?

Mark's on a friend.

Hello. Good evening, everybody. For the record, I'm Lynn Swagstrom, the Director of Parks and Community Services. For the Lee Johnson Field project, this is the one that goes along with the Central Way project. And the very specific pieces that would be with Lee Johnson Field is the fencing, but also the underdrain system so we can get the field properly drained and which would be maintained in a higher level at that point. Great. Thank you very much, Lynn.

All right. Oh, what am I doing wrong here? There we go. I just went backwards. It's going backwards. All right, public safety. Public safety includes both fire and police sinking funds to replace and update critical assets. A few projects here are the firefighter personal protective equipment funded at 1.7 million, police equipment replacements funded at 1.3 million, and fire equipment replacements funded at 1.7 million.

Veronica, I hate to interrupt you, but I think you skipped a park slide. Did I?

Oh, I'm sorry. This was the park restroom additions, renovations and replacement at 3.7 million. And then also pointing out that we are going to be creating a new reserve category for land acquisitions. And we'll bring that back to council in the November study session.

Thank you. I just want to make sure no one's got questions.

Okay.

Go ahead, we'll just, we'll make our way. Okay, sorry about that. All right, so you were on public safety. And moving on to facility, we had a question of public safety before you move on.

Thank you very much. This is great. I appreciate highlighting and being, you know, fiscally conservative about making sure we have sinking funds for these two first response departments. A couple of comments and questions around this. I'd like us to think about public safety can mean a lot of things, right? It can mean our first response departments that the community also often thinks of, you know, active transportation, intersection, you know, traffic, transportation improvements. We think of public health, emergency preparedness, kind of all under public safety. So I would like for us to consider changing this from public safety to first response or first responder, first response departments. I think that just is a clearer articulation of what's included under this. Also, as we know, we have a third first response department that's not included here, and that's just because of the nature of the regional collaboration that we have around that, and that's RACER, our Behavioral Health Crisis Responders. And so, although their budget, since it's a little bit different, does include our contribution to RACER, including our contributions to capital sinking funds within RACER for radios and for vehicles and things of that nature, I'd like to make sure that the public, that we're really clear to the public about the inter-budget because our budget is really a demonstration of our operations on our values and I think it's really a communication tool as well. So I would also, in addition to changing the name, like to see us have a sentence or two in there acknowledging our third first response department and then just a note as to where to find the budget that we have. I want to make sure that folks know that we are equally supporting sinking funds and capital needed for the race or crisis responder.

first response department as well thank you thank you all right moving on to facilities facilities sinking funds supports the upkeep maintenance and replacement of city infrastructure specific to general government as identified in the facilities condition assessment process projects proposed are Furnishings and equipment, sorry about that, for $1.6 million. Electrical energy management and lighting systems for $853,000. Moving on to the next slide, we have mechanical and HVAC systems funded at $2.6 million. And our last category is information technology. Information technology projects are funded through the technology sinking fund as well as via interfund transfers from other programs in support of the technology needs to ensure project deliverables. Projects here include on-premises virtual infrastructure replacement, funded at $3.9 million, and network refresh, funded at $3.3 million. And I believe that is the end of my presentation, Madam Mayor, and I will open it for additional questions and discussion.

Thank you, Veronica. Council, any final comments, questions? Council Member Prim?

Thank you so much for this presentation. It's pretty complex. So really impressive to get this all under an hour. One question I had, I wanted to double click on the prioritization criteria for the TSP. I totally agree that it'd be helpful to understand just the grading mechanism and the weight also that's put onto each of these factors that are considered. But in addition to that, also for all the other categories like surface, water, sewer, what is the prioritization criteria? Is it how it's labeled within the plan itself and then that's brought here? Or is there some other mechanism that we're using to actually prioritize those projects? So for me, that would be super helpful. Thank you. Anyone else?

All right, thank you. We will see you soon. All right, that concludes our study session this evening. We'll be back at 7.30 for our regular meeting.

reading this.

Hello, everyone. We are back in session following an overview of domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy programs, a review of the preliminary 2027-2032 capital improvement program. We will start tonight's meeting with honors and proclamations. Deputy Mayor Black will read the proclamations. Some of you may notice that there's changes in chambers. We have new audio visual, beautiful screens. Ooh, that's scary. And we have slid our podium over, and so you will now be speaking next to Deputy City Manager Jim Lopez. So, City Manager, I hand it over to you.

All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. So we'll be proclaiming September 10th through 19th, 2026, as Welcoming Week in Kirkland. We're also in partnership with the Eastside Cities of Bellevue, Issaquah, Redmond, and Sammamish for Eastside Welcoming Week. I want to note for members of the audience and those watching online that there are a list of events for Welcoming Week that are listed in our memo. And here to receive the proclamation tonight is Robin Lin. He is a founder of Kirkland-based investment advisory Lin Global Advisors. He was born in Taiwan. Robin speaks four languages and spent over 14 years living and working in different countries. But he's a 20-plus-year Kirkland resident with teenage twins and his amazing wife, Cha-Cha. And Robin is an active community member involved with the Kirkland Arts Center, STEP Seattle, and the U.S. Shawnegan Board. So welcome, Robin.

Hopefully this is now working. I'm now going to read a proclamation of the city of Kirkland, welcoming week, September 10th through 19th, 2026. Whereas Welcoming America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that leads a movement out of inclusive communities, becoming more prosperous by ensuring everyone belongs. whereas since 2016, the cities of Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, and Sammamish have celebrated Welcoming Week in solidarity on the east side as an opportunity to honor the history, achievements, experiences, and struggles of immigrant and refugee people. And whereas in 2025, the city of Kirkland became the first city in the state of Washington to be certified a welcoming city. A formal designation by Welcoming America for governmental entities that have verified compliance with the welcoming standard framework, reflecting values and commitment to the inclusion of the immigrant community. And whereas the current federal changes are deeply impacting the immigrant and refugee community through individual, institutional, and systemic racism, which stir up fear, anger, and grief, and can result in harmful disparities in education, employment, income, housing, criminal justice, and quality of life. and whereas the city is committed to protecting and serving everyone who resides in, works in, or visits Kirkland without discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, income or economic status, political affiliation, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, or physical, mental, or sensory ability. And whereas there are many ways to celebrate welcoming work in Kirkland and on the east side, including by amplifying the voices and experiences of immigrant people, uplifting them to share their stories, or attending welcoming week events, such as Kirkland's annual City Hall for All on Saturday, September 19th. Now, therefore, Mayor Kelly Curtis, on behalf of the City Council, does hereby proclaim September 10th through the 19th, 2026 as Welcoming Week in Kirkland, Washington, as part of Eastside Welcoming Week and invites the community to engage in opportunities during Welcome Week and beyond to learn, connect across differences and take joint action to achieve a welcoming, equitable and inclusive community.

Wonderful, thank you.

Sorry, not very good at speeches. Mrs. Mayor, council members, I have traveled. I was born in Taiwan, way back when made in Taiwan used to mean cheap and low quality goods. My parents were first generation immigrants. They didn't speak very much English. And we started in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I was about three. My dad was pursuing a master's of architecture. From there, my journey led me to Vancouver, Canada, Houston, Texas, Santa Barbara, Boston for college, then to Japan for my MBA. My first jobs were in Singapore and Malaysia, and later on in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, before returning back to Taiwan to do a startup, at which time I met my wonderful, lovely wife. And then we decided we need to start a family. So I settled on Kirkland.

OK.

It's a good choice, right?

So I've been so fortunate and blessed to be able to travel the world, work all over the world, and see different things. And through my journey, I've come upon two truths that I live by. The first is that humans everywhere and anywhere are the same. It doesn't matter what the mannerisms or cultures are different. We all want respect and recognition. We all love and strive. We all sacrifice and dream. Intelligence and talent are not limited to the West, nor are good and evil. We should never let the color of our skin or an accent or a mannerism cloud our ability to see a true human. Second, in this modern world of 15-second TikToks and inflammatory headlines, it's easy to pass judgment without taking the time to understand, I think. I find that you can't find the truth without perspective. And it's hard to gain perspective if you don't have lived experiences. So I hope that for all of us, we can slow down, take the time to walk in somebody else's shoes, to try new things, travel more, take a look at the world from 100 miles up. I hope that with the world's order evolving, it feels like there's a lot of infighting. The rapid changes are causing uncertainty, fear, and anger. I hope that we can all just practice to be humans and broaden our perspectives and experiences. We can all lead to a greater empathy, greater understanding, and a more harmonious future. This proclamation today is evidence that Kirkland still believes a person can arrive as a stranger and become part of a community. that the measure of a city is not only who was born here, but who becomes compelled to plant a tree so that the next generation can enjoy the shade. Thank you for welcoming me and for providing such a wonderful city for me to build a family and a life. I will do my best to pay it forward.

Thank you.

Turns out you're very good at speeches.

All right. We are now moving on to items for the audience, from the audience. This is a time in our meeting when we normally hear from the public on matters that are not quasi-judicial or otherwise scheduled for a public hearing. This evening, we have both a public hearing and a quasi-judicial matter. The public hearing is item 6A on the Civil Detention Center Code amendments, and the quasi-judicial matter is item 9B on the International Community School Development Plan amendment. Comments on the public hearing item related to the Civil Detention Center Code amendments must wait until the public hearing. We cannot accept any comments, public comments, on the International Community School Development Plan amendment. On all other matters, please limit your remarks to three minutes. We will provide up to a total of 45 minutes from our items from the audience with no more than six speakers on a subject regardless of their position on the subject. To address the council during the items from audience period, please sign up using the online public comment instruction link or the posted QR code in chambers. For those participating by phone, please dial star nine to be recognized to speak. Items from the audience is an important part of our business meeting and we ask that everyone be treated with kindness and respect. Please do not clap or applaud or otherwise openly express your agreement or disagreement with the speaker. When that happens, even when supporting a speaker, it can be disruptive of the meeting and discourage others from sharing a different viewpoint. We discourage people from using obscenities and making personal attacks against others. And we ask that you direct your comments to council, 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. As a reminder, state law does not allow items from the audience to be used for promoting, opposing, or discussing a candidate's campaign or a ballot proposition. Kirkland prides itself on being a respectful, welcoming community. We want everyone to feel like they belong in council chambers expressing their viewpoints. Thank you. City Clerk, who do we have signed up?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We do have seven guests wishing to speak. The first four in this order, Karina O'Malley on site, Britt Heichel virtual, Erin Belmore on site, and Sierra Diaz on site. Karina, please approach the podium in its new location.

Welcome. Thank you. My name is Karina O'Malley. I am a long-time Kirkland resident. And I apologize. I only very, very recently found out that you were going to be looking at a parking ordinance today. The few minutes I've been able to look at the materials concerning this parking ordinance, I have some serious concerns. I would ask you to delay voting on it or just vote it down today because I think there are some serious issues that the entire city of Kirkland should should look at a little bit more one is that you it looks like you're adding recreational vehicles which are vehicles that are more than seven feet wide to the list of things that you just can't park on Kirkland Street at all, ever, anywhere. This doesn't sound to me like this is rooted in safety, because that would be more like, oh, this street, it wouldn't be safe because it's too skinny. This other street, maybe it is safe. So it's not discerning enough, it sounds to me, to be about safety. Sounds more like maybe the unintended consequence will be anybody living in an RV will not be able to live in Kirkland. So it becomes a banishment ordinance that does not allow this particular group of residents of Kirkland to continue living here, which seems like a pretty serious step to take. I noticed in the write-up that there was a lot about giving police tools, because maybe this ordinance isn't actually enforced all the time, but it's a tool that can be used when it's needed. That kind of ordinance really troubles me, because that choice of whether you enforce a law on somebody or not would result in lots of inequity. The write-up said that KPD has only ever impounded a vehicle that was being used as a shelter or housing after the community member had accessed housing. I personally know that to be not true. There was a van that somebody was living in that was parked right in front of my church, and because the tabs were expired, it was impounded with no notice at all. with no conversation with the person who lived in that van. It was just taken. We had to come up with private funds to get it out of the impound and to bring it back to a safe spot so she could continue living in it. And I'm sure there are other examples that I could find because that statement just kind of stunned me. I would hope that would be true. My neighborhood has lots of residents who own our... Karina, I apologize, but you see the red light. I do. I do. Which is why I think we should have more time to discuss. You haven't reached out to RV owners or people that live in vehicles before this is decided. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Britt, who's virtual.

Looks like Britt is online, so we're waiting for her to join us.

Britt, are you there? Go ahead.

Sorry, I was having a little trouble unmuting. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you allowing me to join virtually as well.

We can hardly hear you. Turn up your volume, please.

Can you hear me now?

It's not better.

I apologize. I'm not sure what the volume issue is. Can we turn her up on our end? No. Sorry, there's an issue on that end. I have my volume completely up. It's not working.

Just speak as loud as you can.

Okay. I can do that. All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Regarding a cause that's very near to my heart, I'm a mother of two and a lifelong Washington resident. Like so many women, when my son was born, I made the difficult decision to give up my career working in the nonprofit sector to become a full-time parent as the cost of childcare would have been unsustainable for my family. Parenting is full of challenges and when my son was diagnosed with a speech delay at 18 months, I felt at a loss for how to help him. I knew that it was important for him to have exposure to other kids and was so fortunate to come across the Lake Washington Toddler Group located in Kirkland, a cooperative learning and parenting education program affiliated and supported by LW Tech. After reading glowing review after glowing review, I knew this was the perfect place for my son to develop an important social and communication skills that was also affordable for my single income household. In a world where we are often overwhelmed with so much parenting information and more often than not misinformation, having access to evidence-based inclusive education dispensed by experts is something I will never have the words to fully express my gratitude for. Not only this, but in a society where the roles of stay-at-home parent and caregiver and teacher are often undervalued and overlooked in their importance, the instructors at Lake Washington Toddler Group make us feel nothing but seen, confident, and vital. As many of you are aware, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges has made the grievous error of ending its support of this decades-long program that has been a lifeline for so many families like mine. Severe oversights, misunderstandings, and lack of transparency by the SBCTC resulted in this decision and has devastated many of our early learning communities. There have been numerous attempts to work with the state board on this matter to identify viable solutions, yet it is my perspective that the board and its president, Nate Humphreys, have been unwilling to seriously consider or pursue these avenues. With that, I'm asking for each of you to lend your vocal and consistent support on this issue and use your influence to protect this one-of-a-kind program that thousands and thousands of Washington families past, present, and future have and will continue to depend on. There is nothing comparable to this program for families like mine, and there never will be again. The time to take action and use your power that we have trusted you with is now. And I'm sure you've all heard the phrase, it takes a village, and I'm here to formally invite you to become a part of ours with open arms. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Britt. And just so you know, we were able to turn you up a little bit. So thank you.

Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

All right. Erin?

Hello, how are you guys?

Here again to discuss non-permitted, unenforced work that was done at 404 4th Avenue, Kirkland, Washington, Park 54 Condo Association. Lack of emails being returned in 100% or answers from council and staff. It's been very frustrating. And I... I got an interesting email the other day that you guys wanted to come out and do a walkthrough of the property, which I think we're pretty premature on until we have all these answers and we can have the ability to assess what's going on. I don't even have answers from a May 1st meeting on what's required a permit and what doesn't. I mean, I don't know if the city inspectors understand what requires a permit and what doesn't at this point. I want this behind me more so than anybody else, but I can't do so until I have all the facts. The city attorney emailed my attorney today wanting to meet and or have a phone conversation to have a reasonable resolution. I think we're pretty premature on that. There's no way to have a resolution until I have the facts, answers, and responses to the emails and questions. Once we have those, absolutely want this in my rearview mirror as much as anybody else so hopefully you guys can start moving forward and producing these things that I've asked for and then we can have those conversations thank you I hope you guys are all well and have a great trip home anybody want to answer anything right now that I presented to you or do we want to be in silence like we have since I've asked you

We don't traditionally respond to public comment, but we have received your email.

Okay. Well, hopefully you'll start responding to them, huh? Be nice. Have a great night.

Thank you.

city clerk who do we have next thank you we do have sierra diaz on site alex timmerman on site aaron hamilton on site and alicia reese on site thank you sarah come on up nope alex it's not your turn

Good evening, City Council. My name is Sierra Diaz, and I am a parent enrolled at Lake Washington Toddler Group, same as Britt. It is a nonprofit co-op preschool here in our community of Kirkland, and for over 45 years, our school has provided valuable parent education to the Eastside community. The reason I'm standing before you today is because the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges has now determined that our program is no longer contributing to workforce outcomes despite the available parent education certificate available through our affiliation with LWTech, thus stripping us of all vital, I apologize, of vital state funding along with over 90 other similar programs across the state. We, a school serving over 200 families and caregivers annually are at risk of closure and at the same time are being priced out of our home here in Kirkland. We desperately need assistance both by your voice and by your help in potentially securing funding or finding an affordable home here in Kirkland. I'm aware that the city recently purchased a 3.28 acre property with the intent of repurposing it as a community center and hub of services. A lease or space there would be an amazing opportunity for our school to continue serving our families here in the community, but also create a greater impact. We would love for you to come by and see the power of the work being done by our teachers, our staff, and our families. and what it would be like if the city invests not only in its children, but its caregivers and parents too. I know like Britt, this program and this school has significantly impacted my life as I've been able to pursue a higher education and parent education certificate through this, but also my own near three-year-old like Britt, her speech has absolutely exploded. Her developmental delays have practically disappeared and we found a community where I felt alone after recently moving with no support system. I'm asking you once again to please consider supporting us loudly and actively. Thank you. I yield my time.

Thank you, Sierra. And it would be helpful if you sent us an email. Thank you. Are our technical problems figured out? I don't need to recess. All right. Alex?

My name is Alex Zimmerman. I'm president of Stand Up America. So today, nine months, what is baby supposed to be boring? And I talk about this for nine months about my right to King Country Housing Authority, half my apartment. I'm low income. I disabled man. I old man. So I belong to group number one priority. And I start complain about this too. Ah, King Country Commissioner Neil Black, but you told me you cannot answer personal. So my question right now to all yours, seven people, why for nine months you cannot answer my question? I don't understand. To me, you do not look like you are schizophrenic. You know what I mean? But you are schizophrenic? For nine months you cannot answer? What is this? When you stop enacting like a bandit, damn Nazi fascist, it's exactly who you are. So right now the situation comes closer. First, I complain about King Country Housing Authority and auditor office. When you don't give me answer for another couple of weeks, I will bring you all in court. Totally. It's my constitutional right to have answer from you for situation what is very important. Because to me this look like a pure discriminatory by income, by disability. What is another? Income, disability. I need a little bit of thinking. What is more? Income, disability, and status. What are the houses? It's very important, guys, and I don't understand. I can show you nine months ago why I don't do this, because you will defend for my money, for people's money. When you will defend personally, I can do this five times per week, no problem. This is a problem that we have. You are acting like an ordinary bandit, a criminal, a crook. It's so important that the country housing authority spends $100 million for a dozen thousand not legal immigrants. American citizens like me don't have this right, and I've been fighting with them for 20 years. So I come to you because I want to know what you all are. Give me answer by your rules. And nothing happened. So situation right now very simple. Assume this like my ultimatum. You know what this mean? And I bring this case to court when I stand in life no matter what. And what this will be. Because this unique situation in absurd by definition. You understand about what I'm talking? And exactly because you're deminazi fascist. Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up slave and happy cow. Trump order, typical, you know what this mean? Only for American citizens.

Your time is up. Thank you. Aaron.

Hello. I saw the line item for... Suicide Prevention Month, and this is obviously a very important topic for me. And I liked at the beginning of talking about perspective, and I, shocking to nobody, bring a very unique perspective to this topic. There's a group of people that constantly fall through the cracks when it comes to mental health. And I happen to be part of those people where we don't really have anyone to call. We don't have any place to go. I can't morally call 988 because they decided to pick funding over trans lives, and that's just not something I can work with anymore, and they've not been helpful. If I know that there's not a co-responder MHP on duty, I am not going to call 911, because I know how that decision tree goes, where officers are trained to come and determine are you safe or are you not safe. If you are safe, they leave. If you're not safe, they take you to either a hospital or crisis connections. And with how we are treated, people are treated with mental health in hospitals and crisis connections, Those are locations that we can't go because we feel like we're prisoners and they treat us like prisoners and this has been one of the biggest issues that I've had with the system is that we get put into this intake special colored clothing so they know that we're mental health and we're in isolation, we're under observation, and we're treated like prisoners. And now when I say that, and I've actually toured a jail thoroughly, I can actually confidently say prisoners are treated better than people that coming into the hospital or into crisis connections for mental health. And I was told Crisis Connections was a different place. It was the state's opportunity to start brand new from the ground up, which in the mental health world is very rare. And I had countless officers say, Aaron, this is the perfect place for you to go when you're in crisis. They say they don't put you in special colored scrubs. You can just go there, feel safe, get what you need to do, and leave. And when I went there, it was the exact opposite of what they told me. They're just doing the exact same thing as we've been doing for decades. something needs to change and this was the opportunity to change that and they didn't and in conclusion just wanted to make sure that my struggles with mental health doesn't have anything to do with being transgendered it has everything to do with my brain injury and how people treat the transgender community thank you thank you aaron all right our last is alicia

Good evening, Mayor Curtis and members of the council. My name is Alicia Ruiz, and I'm here on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, Seattle, King, and Kittitas counties to urge you to reject Ordinance 4937 regarding the affordable housing fee. Before Habitat, I represented master builders in Seattle for nearly five years, giving me a unique perspective from both sides of this issue. And that perspective is exactly why I know this ordinance targets the wrong problem. Let's be honest. After what this ordinance actually does, raising the exemption threshold from 2,000 to 2,500 square feet doesn't rescue struggling projects. It removes $2,500 from a project that, by your own staff data, is often selling for over $1 million. A $7,500 fee is not what kills a townhome development. It's a rounding error. Do you want to know what actually drives up costs and slows down building in Kirkland? It's the permitting process itself. Kirkland is one of the more difficult and expensive jurisdictions to build in, not because of this fee, but because of how long projects sit in review, how many rounds of revisions and reinspections they go through, and how much uncertainty builders carry from application to final occupancy. Each month the project sits in permitting is a month of carrying costs, financing costs, and lost opportunity. All of this is inside your own department's control and none of it is addressed by this ordinance. If this council is serious about lowering the cost of building in Kirkland, you have far more effective levers to pull inside your own permitting process than this fee represents. And that's the real cost of this ordinance. It cuts the very funding this city needs to build the homes it says it wants. You can't call affordable housing a priority while voting to defund it. This ordinance says one thing and does the opposite. I'd ask you to picture Orchard Gardens, Habitat's current project in Bellevue. 25 homes, three bedroom, two bathroom, projected to sell in the 360,000s. That's what affordable homeownership looks like. That is what this fee at its current threshold helps to make possible. That is what Kirkland families need more of, not less. Bottom line is that you can't have affordable housing without a revenue stream to build it. Thank you.

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

This concludes our speaker's list.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. We are now going to move on to our public hearing, which is on the Civil Detention Center Code Amendments. I will now open the public hearing. City Manager.

Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. So before we get in the public hearing, I'm, oh, there he is. We're going to give an overview of the code amendments from our senior planner, David Barnes. We'll make the presentation.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Council. Glad to be here tonight to give a short presentation that'll help for the public hearing and your consideration of Ordinance 04947.

Can you speak a little bit louder, please?

Alex, don't interrupt, but let's... There's a disruption in the audience.

Thank you.

Okay, let's give a little background to the situation so everybody can understand what's happening. Back in December 2025, federal notice was released for the Pacific Northwest area that was discussing new or expanded civil detention facilities. As you can imagine, that kind of set off a lot of cities, counties, and concerns in the community. Some neighboring jurisdictions in King County, for example, and other cities have adopted temporary moratoria that would not allow applications for new civil detention facilities. The city, as you know, adopted Resolution 5729. And as part of that, the city manager was authorized to have staff look into should Kirkland consider a moratorium as well. And so staff did evaluate that on the regulatory context and the impacts of moratorium. And just from the get-go, Kirkland's goal was not to have any civil detention centers in Kirkland. So to understand, I'm just gonna explain really quickly, privately operated detention centers, those are operated by a private entity, not federal, not government. And those kinds of facilities are not allowed uses in the Kirkland zoning code. We have a code that is unique and I'm glad for it. It's prohibition by omission and some cities have not been so lucky to have that kind of code set up. The other type of civil detention centers are government operated. Our existing definition of government facility describes a use consisting of services, facilities operated by any level of government, and that means local, state, and federal. So a government facility is an allowed use in the Kirkland Zoning Code. in a government or publicly operated civil detention facility would be, based on that definition, allowed under the current definition. There are various federal laws and statutes that effectively preempt state and local regulations from prohibiting government-operated civil detention centers. Nonetheless, if an application was received, I have learned that we would likely challenge any kind of government operated civil detention facility with a NEPA appeal or any other legal means that we had at our disposal. And there is local president, there is president for that happening in the United States at this point. So we evaluated the moratorium in the region, and that was a really unique experience. I think, you know, kind of standing back and seeing what others have done gave us some real perspective there that we might not have had if we had have jumped ahead and just established a moratorium early on in the process. We examined the federal laws and practices, obviously reviewed our city zoning code, and we also considered um the risk for detention center sighting because um the uh the notice that came from the federal government back in 2025 said it was looking for sighting that would be very close to an airport so um in looking at all these things staff determined that a moratorium was not needed for private detention facilities as i already mentioned they're they're already prohibited A moratorium on federally operated detention center facilities may not be effective in prohibiting its use due to federal preemption. But we did note that clarification of the government facility definition would be useful. And the council felt that way, too, after hearing the presentation. We did not pursue the moratorium, as you know. And we were given direction to pursue targeted code amendments that would express our preference for prohibiting civil detention facilities, others than those considered essential public facilities under state law. So we were essentially asked to provide not a temporary fix, which is what a moratorium would have achieved, but a permanent fix, and that is what we've pursued. I also want to let you know that besides the legal hearing notice that we provided and posted on the city's website and so forth, we did conduct two meetings that were helped and coordinated by Eastside for All. on January 27th and August 4th to discuss the city's approach. We had received a letter previously asking us why we were not pursuing a moratorium. And so it was a perfect opportunity to explain why and educate not only those that were concerned about it, but also to help inform some local governments attended some of those meetings too. So that was actually contributing to their efforts to help them decide what they might do. So that was a good thing that we did. We really did express our city's opposition to civil detention facilities, so they were very thankful for that. And we did explain the current government facilities definition and spent some time describing why and how we could use a code amendment to kind of solve this issue. and we ended up sending the draft code amendment language. And in addition to sending it, we also translated it to over nearly 12 languages, some of which we have not done before. So I think that was speaking to that larger group of folks on the east side that speak more languages than we just normally provide for in Kirkland. So I was glad for that, and hopefully we'll hear from some immigrant community members later. So what we decided to do with revising the definition of government facility was make it clear that government facilities not include civil detention facilities unless such facilities or public facilities are required by Washington state law. So we need to make that clear. We added this language that's underlined in the government facility definition and That makes it so that in many places in the city where a government facility is in allowed use, it would now exclude these civil detention facilities that are required by law, that we're required to have. So the staff recommendation at this point is we conduct a public hearing, which we're doing. and consider public comment. And following this public hearing, discuss and deliberate on the code amendments and consider adoption of Ordinance 4947. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Council, any comments for staff or questions for staff? All right. Good job. Thank you for doing that extra outreach to the community and the translations too. City Clerk, do we have anyone signed up to testify?

Yes, Madam Mayor, we have two guests wishing to speak on the matter. Guillermo Rivera joining us virtually, and Alex Timmerman on site.

Thank you. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that you must limit your remarks to three minutes. And during that time, you are limited to speaking only on the topic of the public hearing, which is the Civil Detention Center Code Amendment. So let's go ahead and transfer Guillermo. There you are. Welcome.

Thank you. Dear mayor and council members, my name is Guillermo Rivera, and I'm the community organizer with Eastside for All. Since 2019, we have convened Safe Heaven, a coalition of more than 35 organizations and over 170 community members across the Eastside. Together, we collaborate, share resources, and advocate on issues affecting immigrants and refugee communities. Tonight, I'm here to thank you for collaborating with Save Heaven and for making an effort to gather community input and provide translations for the communities most impacted by the Civil Detention Center Code Amendment Ordinance 04947. Like David mentioned, CD staff included David Barnes, Erika Mascorro, and David Lasso meet with Safe Heaven twice, one with our core team, and the second time with a large group of community members. They present the different options and propose changes, and most importantly, took the time to listen to our feedback and answer our questions. Our communities really appreciate this approach to engagement. Having enough time, more than three minutes, to ask questions, share concerns, and have meaningful conversations make a big difference. Thank you for taking the time to do this. We hope there will be more opportunities in the future for community-based organizations and the immigrant and refugee communities more impacted by policies to have a voice in the process. Thank you again for your hard work and commitment to community engagement and your willingness to collaborate with us. We look forward to continue this partnership and we encourage you to take this as an example that you can do in other code amendments that you want to make. And don't vote until you listen to the people that are more affected by this will be listening and they will tell you what they are thinking of. So I encourage you to postpone any other votes that you have in any case and do the same thing that you did with us. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Guillermo, and thank you for helping facilitate those meetings, too. We appreciate it.

No, thank you. Thank you.

All right, Alex. Thank you. And I will remind you, you need to speak to the public hearing, which is on the Civil Detention Center Code amendments.

Yeah, absolutely. I know.

I may be stupid, but sometimes I understand what I'm doing. Not exactly every day.

Okay, my name Alex Zimmerman, I'm president of Stand Up America. I read this. I read this. What is your right? And I love this. I love because we don't, oh, we have only immigrant. We don't have more. Not legal aliens or something like this. State Washington government talking about people who don't have a green card. You know what it means. So we forgot about this. It's number one. One second.

I'm going to give you a few more seconds to speak about the code of conduct.

Yeah, I will speak. This is exactly what they're doing. So you right now, one concentrate, everything is look like a concentration camp. And I give you my experience. 40 year ago, I was arrested. I spent in Bellevue, it's not nowhere, in jail, in Bellevue, in police department, two hours. And they prosecute me. Right now, why is it doing? For the last few years, because I have seven times they prosecute me, they arrest me like a half dozen policemen.

Alex, you're trying my patience. You are not speaking to the code amendments.

No, I'm talking about money. What is you spend? You're acting like a concentration camp.

Thank you, Alex. You are excused.

No, you don't give me chance to speak. No, you don't give me chance to speak. It's a bad idea.

Alex, you are not speaking to the code amendments.

Madam Mayor, we do have one additional guest wishing to speak on the matter, Lisa Berenson.

Thank you. Lisa? Thank you, Council.

My name is Lisa Berenson.

Help her with that podium.

Oh, yeah, that would help.

Yeah, I'm so short. So code amendments will help only to a certain extent. I'm talking from experience where I have actually designed prison compounds in the state of Washington. I'm also very familiar with the Tacoma Detention Center that's going on right now. So code amendments are gonna go so far. But the thing that needs to be addressed is in the code amendments, you've gotta make it crystal clear that anything that the federal government wants to build, It's got to be inclusive with all the other types of detention centers because we all know what's going on down in Tacoma. We know that ICE is putting people in there. We know that there are other prisoners in there who are citizens who have committed crimes. And they're all in the same place. And I can tell you from, I mean, I've designed these places. If the American public knew what the design and what goes on in these prisons and the privileges that these prisoners have, the American public would be outraged because they actually have better lifestyle and better benefits than the American people do. But my point about the amendment, the code amendments, you got to tighten the code amendments, because the federal government is going to do whatever they want anyway. So the code amendment that is being proposed, it's not tight enough. It's really not. That's all I have to say.

Thank you. All right. City Clerk, anyone else?

No other guests wishing to speak.

All right. The public hearing is now closed. The council will consider all public comments on the issue, including those submitted in writing. We are now going to move on to consent calendar. Before we have a motion, I'd like to ask Deputy Mayor Black to, oh, thank you, David. We'll see you again. I would like to ask Deputy Mayor Black to present the auditive accounts and to highlight the proclamations we have on consent.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We had payroll August 7th in the amount of $8,635,240.77 and payroll August 24th in the amount of $9,553,344.95 and bills in the amount of $13,511,645.01. As part of tonight's consent calendar, the Mayor, on behalf of the Council, will be proclaiming three proclamations. The first is proclaiming September as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. This observance raises awareness, promotes hope, and encourages compassionate conversations about mental health and suicide prevention. This proclamation recognizes those affected by suicide and those working to connect people with support and resources. The Mayor will also be proclaiming September as National Recovery Month, honoring people recovering from mental health and substance use challenges, and recognizing the families, professionals, and advocates who support them. The proclamation also reaffirms Kirkland's commitment to reducing stigma and supporting access to treatment and recovery resources. Finally, the Mayor will be proclaiming September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. honoring children fighting cancer, celebrating survivors, remembering those lost, and supporting their families. The proclamation also recognizes progress in childhood cancer survival and the importance of equitable access to care. Additional information and resources related to each of these topics are included in the staff memos accompanying tonight's agenda.

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

So moved.

It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, second by Council Member Falcone to approve the consent calendar. Are there any questions, comments, or corrections to the consent calendar? All right. Seeing none, the questions on the motion to approve the consent calendar. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Consent calendar is approved 7-0. All right. We are moving on to our first business item. In our regular business agenda, our first item of business is on the potential. Welcome back, David. You should have stayed here. Our first item of our business is on the potential adoption of Civil Detention Center Code amendments. City Manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So, as you know, Senior Planner David Barnes is here. I gave you a pretty good overview. I'm here to answer questions about the ordinance, and we're looking for a council action tonight.

Here we are. So yeah, we're at the part of the business agenda where you would consider a proposed ordinance 04947. And just as a reminder, this ordinance would express the city's preference to prohibit civil detention facilities other than protected by the Washington State Administrative Code listed here. So yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Council. Any comments? Questions? Deputy Mayor?

Madam Mayor, will you entertain a motion?

I would.

I'll move adoption of Ordinance 04947.

It's been moved by Deputy Mayor Black, seconded by Council Mayor Falcone to move Ordinance 4947. Is there any further discussion, Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to briefly speak in support of the motion. What I really like about what the City of Kirkland is doing is that we are doing in a matter of just a few weeks what other cities are putting off for over a year. I really appreciate the work the staff has done to quickly expeditiously both do the research that has gone into this ordinance and also the community outreach that has gone into this and we've done it in a reasonable time frame and what we're doing is we're taking permanent action where for good or bad a lot of our peer cities and neighboring cities are basically putting off for a year or or over a year now um analyzing um and they're going to come to a lot of same conclusions our staff quickly came to and our council quickly came to so um i i like that we are demonstrating that we care for the affected communities um and that we're able to quickly uh take uh permit action on this matter thanks thank you councilman falcon thank you madam mayor i just want to um thank you thank you david thank you staff for working on this um erica and others and team

As Deputy Mayor Black said, we recognize that this was a lot of work in a short period of time and a pivot, you know, based on council feedback at the last meeting. So thank you so much for acting so quickly. And also a huge thank you to all the community members who advocated for this, who didn't give up, who kept reaching out to us until we have this meeting tonight. So thank you to them. I want them to know that they're making a difference by advocating for their communities. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Questions on the motion to approve Ordinance 4947? City Clerk, will you please call the roll?

On that motion, Council Member Tim Chisholm?

Yes.

Council Member Arnold? Yes. Council Member Prem? Yes. Council Member Falcone? Yes. Council Member Paschall?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Black? Yes. Mayor Curtis?

Yes. Ordinance 4947 is approved 7-0. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, David.

Thank you.

all right we are now moving on to our second business item 9b which is on the international community school development plan amendment and i am going to call on our city attorney to make opening remarks thank you mayor curtis

I'm going to read from the lovely script you've heard before. This item for council consideration of the international community school development plan amendment is a closed record quasi judicial matter based on the recommendation of the hearing examiner and the factual record developed before the hearing examiner. This means the council will not be receiving any new testimony or evidence this evening. Here's the format the council has established for this matter. Senior planner Tony Leavitt will make a staff presentation and is available to answer questions from the council. Thereafter, the council may take this matter under advisement before taking action and voting on the process to be permit application for an amended master plan, either tonight or at a subsequent council meeting. If the council wishes to vote on the resolution this evening, council will need to suspend its rules to allow for that. When the council acts on the application and the recommendation of the hearing examiner, you have three options. You can grant the application, modify and grant the application, or deny the application. If the council were to conclude that it cannot make a decision because the record compiled before the hearing examiner is incomplete or inadequate with respect to the permit application, council can remand the matter to the hearing examiner for supplementary findings and conclusions on identified issues. It is the council's intention that this matter be fair both in appearance and in fact and that it be conducted impartially. With those intentions in mind, I have a few questions to ask in order to provide a clear record. First, I would like to ask the council whether any council member has had any third party communications with proponents or opponents of this application. Seeing none, I'll ask the next question. I would like to ask whether any council member received or exchanged any written correspondence with community members who are not the proponents or opponents of the application. Seeing none, I'll ask the last question. I'd like to ask whether any council member believes they have prejudged this matter, cannot remain impartial, or has an interest whereby they stand to gain or lose by a decision either way.

Thank you Madam Mayor. Well thank you City Attorney for that. I would like to explicitly respond no to this question but also provide some information for full transparency. One of my children attends the Community Elementary School or CES which is co-located on the same campus as the International Community School or ICS. Notably, CES and ICS have separate parking lots and respective drop-off pickup areas. And students from CES do not have an increased likelihood of attending ICS than students from any other schools. As indicated in my earlier silence in response to your questions, I have not had any communication with anyone involved or interested in this proposal. So I can confidently say that I have not prejudged this matter. And I just wanted to be fully transparent. As I mentioned, I can remain impartial and I do not have an interest whereby I stand to gain or lose by a decision either way. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. We discussed this matter earlier before and determined recusal was not necessary in this circumstance. And thank you, Mayor Curtis. Those are all my remarks.

Thank you, City Attorney, and thank you, Councilmember Falcone. We are ready to proceed.

engage your microphone please press press the button in front of you there we go red green please go good evening mayor deputy mayor and council members i have a brief nine slide presentation to go over the proposed application the public comments that we received staff's review of the proposal and the recommendation of the city's hearing examiner Here is a vicinity map showing the International Community School Community Elementary School campus located at 11133 Northeast 65th Street within the Central Houghton neighborhood. With this proposal, Lake Washington is requesting approval of a master plan amendment to increase the ICS enrollments maximum from 445 students to 545 students. The CES student enrollments will remain at 70 students. The total campus maximum enrollment is currently 515 students and the proposal would increase the enrollment to 615 students. No new buildings or building additions are being proposed with this application. The project includes improvements to the main parking lot to increase the size of the onsite passenger loading area and address safety issues. The site plan on the right shows the existing campus, including adjoining streets, parking lots, and the loading area. During the initial comment period, staff received a total of 18 emails regarding the proposal. I'm gonna go over some of the issues that were raised in those comment letters and how city staff and the applicant responded to those comments. First off, multiple neighbors raised concerns about the vehicle backups on neighboring streets during the morning drop-off and afternoon pickup times, and the need to expand the drop-off area. After reviewing the concerns, the district proposed to increase the size of loading area, installing additional signage and additional pavement markings to help with the traffic flow. This was reviewed and approved by the city. A neighbor was concerned about the parking for staff and students, that it was not adequate on site. We did do a parking demand study and determined that there was, in fact, adequate parking on site for the campus. Third item, neighbors requested the Lake Washington School District increase bus service to the campus and provide bus passes to the student staff. As far as the city is concerned, we reviewed the project and it did not require any traffic mitigation, so the city could not require additional bus service. As part of their response, the district provided information on existing bus service. The campus currently has district provided shuttle bus services to the site. They come from different parts of the district. And also, it provides metro bus passes to students. Currently, there's some metro bus routes that are not next to this campus, but are located on 68th and 108th. The district, again, revaluates each shuttle bus service each year based on student demand and determines whether or not they need to increase that based on where the students are living and coming from. Multiple comments raised concerns about traffic impacts on the neighboring streets that would occur with the proposed enrollment increase. City staff looked at this and determined the proposal did not require traffic mitigation again. Finally, multiple neighbors raised concerns about vehicles not stopping as they exit the main parking lot onto Northeast 65th Street, speeding in the neighborhood, and drivers not stopping for pedestrians. To address the stopping, a new flashing stop sign is being installed at the main entrance to the campus to address this concern. Staff also provided information to the public regarding the city's school zone safety program that we are currently working on. And again, the final comment also raised concerns about pedestrian safety on the 111th between 60 and 60 seconds. We looked into this and provided information on the Public Works Department's Neighborhood Safety Program project and also the Safer Routes to School Action Plan. I'll provide a brief overview of the main development regulations staff reviewed for the proposal. The first one is parking. Again, we looked at this and found that the parking demand was being met by the campus and they would not have to provide any additional spaces. The total campus needed, based on this demand study, was 88 parking stalls and the campus has 145 stalls. Uh, however, to address any potential future needs, um, as part of the transportation and parking management plan, the city's transportation engineer is requiring that the applicant collect parking utilization data for the first three years starting in 2027 to substantiate the parking demand and makes make appropriate changes to ensure that no parking spills onto neighboring streets. The zoning code requires that the city determine the appropriate size of a loading area on a case-by-case basis, and that the area be designed to minimize impacts on neighboring residential uses. The applicant prepared a Q&A analysis for the site that looked at passenger loading area within the main parking lot access from Northeast 60th Street. Additionally, the applicant proposed improvements to the loading area. I'll highlight these improvements on the next slide. The city's transportation engineer reviewed the queuing analysis and the proposed improvements and recommended approval subject to conditions. Some of the non-site improvement conditions included that the school district staff be out there to direct parents to the new loading area. Also, they will be providing a brochure at the beginning of the school year to make sure that people know how to drop off and pick up their children. Use of police officers during the first week of school to ensure compliance with traffic laws around the campus and requirement to address traffic impacts if issues are not resolved. Just as far as the loading area improvements are concerned, first is the, again, installation of a do not block intersection sign at the 65th Street entrance to the pickup and drop off area. Installing the flashing stop sign for the lane exiting the main parking lot to 65th Street. Beneath the sign is the installation of a cross traffic does not stop sign to ensure that they yield to any vehicles coming down 65th. Restriping the existing crosswalk at Northeast 65th entrance to comply with public work requirements. This would basically increase the width of that crosswalk. New pavement markings to direct on-site traffic and to ensure the driveway enters not blocked by waiting cars. Extend and restripe the load and unload curb lane into student parking area parking lot area and along the east side of the existing exiting lane in the main parking lot and finally stripe a new crosswalk within the main parking lot to allow safe crossing to the new east load and unload area. So that is highlighted on this slide. So the hearing examiner held the public hearing for the project on July 15th. At the hearing staff, the applicant presented materials for the hearing examiner's consideration. One member of the public testified at the hearing. Their testimony included concerns about transportation impacts and included a question regarding the loading area improvements. The applicant's traffic engineer and the city staff provided a response to the questions at the hearing. On July 23rd, the hearing examiner issued a recommendation for approval subject to the following conditions. Compliance with the transportation and parking management plan requirements. The site plan improvements including loading area signage and circulation improvements. Payment of traffic and payment of traffic impact fees. No challenges to the hearing examiner recommendation were submitted. So tonight, staff recommends that the city council consider the hearing examiner's recommendation for the application and take one of the following decision actions. First would be to grant the application as recommended by the hearing examiner. Second would be to modify and grant the application. Finally, the last option would be to deny the application. the council also could direct the application be considered at a reopening of the hearing and as long as the specific issues to be considered at the hearing are outlined in lieu of the options above the council can suspend the rule to vote on the matter at the next meeting instead vote on the application during tonight's meeting staff's recommendation is that the city council grant the application as recommended by the hearing examiner by adopting the resolution that is attached to the packet during tonight's hearing And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Tony.

Thank you.

Council, any questions? All right. This is Council Member Paschal.

Yeah, thanks for the detail summary of the proposal. You know, a number of the comments that were received were related to traffic impacts in the neighborhood. And it sounds like those are existing today with the current enrollment. And so the proposal looks like it it modifies like on-site um circulation and parking and stuff to address those off-site impacts so i just wanted to be clear does is it staff's uh feeling that those that on-site mitigation would prevent that off-site uh those off-site impacts from occurring in the future

yeah that based on the review by the city's uh transportation division um it was included that these improvements obviously will they're they're expanding the the length of that uh that drop-off area um so that's that's the first key and the second is just making sure um also to another option on the table too is if issues come up um is to reallocate some of the staff parking um for visitors so there's also additional parking in the center of the let me actually go back back to that. So near the staff visitor parking lot, that that could be opened up for more visitors as well. So there's, there's, we, our feeling is that they've added enough basically loading and unloading areas, capacity to beat the, you know,

to minimize the impacts but if there continues to be any issues um that we do have some different mechanisms to kind of help yeah so the improvements um accommodate the increased enrollment but also address the existing issues that they're seeing today yeah correct thank you thank you anyone else

Oh, what? I do. Thank you. The matter's now closed. The attorney's giving me a look. Thank you. All right. Council Mayor Falcone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move to suspend Council Rule 3.23 so that council may vote tonight on this process to be application.

Second.

It's been moved by Council Mayor Falcone, seconded by Deputy Mayor to suspend Council Rule 3.23 so that we may vote this evening. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. You want to continue?

I would love to. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move that we adopt Resolution R5744, a resolution of the City of Kirkland approving an amendment to the International Community School, ICS, slash Community Elementary School, CES, Campus Master Plan as applied for in the Planning and Building Department file number, it's there, and setting forth conditions to which such permit shall be subject.

Second. Second.

It's been moved by Council Mayor Falcone, seconded by Deputy Mayor Black to approve Resolution 5744. Is there any discussion?

Council Mayor Falcone. Thank you, Madam Mayor. May I comment on a thought on the resolution? Sure. That's appropriate. Okay. I just want to say I know that in our school district in general, Lake Washington School District, there are long wait lists for choice schools. And there are students who, you know, brains work differently and they learn differently. And so these choice schools are really great for students who need something a little bit different than the traditional classroom. And because of that, I support this because there'd be more opportunity for more students to get to experience a school that their family thinks is the best fit for them. So I believe it's also an equity issue as well to be able to increase the enrollment. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions on the motion to approve Resolution 5744? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Tony. Council, I expect the next business item to take a minute. So I'm going to call a very short break. We are going to come back at 8.50.

OK. All right.

We are back from a very short break. And we are moving on to 9C, which is potential adoption of zoning amendments regarding affordable housing requirements in low density zones. City manager.

Okay, thank you Madam Mayor. So this is a item that was postponed after a tie or tabled and then referred to this meeting for discussion possible action. Here to walk you through the ordinance itself is our Director of Planning and Building, Adam Weinstein. And we do know we have some potential amendments which he's also prepared to bring up if they're offered.

you city manager good evening mayor curtis deputy mayor black and council members i just have about 10 slides tonight i'll say that two of them are proposed amendments from council as the city manager mentioned so i'm going to call this eight slides and really all i want to do with these slides is highlight some of the data that you've considered throughout the process including in the latest council packet And apologies that we keep showing you this chart over and over and over again. It's our housing need for 2019 to 2044, but it's sort of our north star here. It's really why we're considering this ordinance in the first place. It shows that we need housing in all income brackets. But the biggest need, 80% of the total need, or about 10,444 units, is for housing that is affordable to households making less than 50% of the median income. And that's the housing that almost always requires some sort of public funding. And so the generation of that funding is the primary intent of the ordinance that is in front of you tonight. Ah, okay, this is a two-part slide. So just as a reminder, these are our guiding principles in designing these new affordable housing requirements. First, eliminate some of those perverse incentives to build single-family housing instead of multifamily housing by leveling the playing field across our lower density and medium and high density districts. that's one two is capitalizing on our opportunity to generate new affordable housing fees and that only can happen when we do rezoning and then the third sort of governing principle or guiding principle is don't mess with middle housing we have a good track record on middle housing and it's really the type of housing the type of ownership housing in the community today that is really entry level This is an older chart right here from our June 2026 work. It shows the average size of townhomes across all of our zoning districts where townhomes are allowed. And I just want to make two key points here. One is that, as you can see from this chart, the average size for townhouses hovers in the mid-2000 square foot range. across all these zoning districts. The second point I want to make is that not a lot of townhomes can tend to get built in our lower density zones for a variety of reasons. I won't really go into them here, but height allowances, floor area ratio allowances, lot coverage allowances are among the reasons that not a lot of townhouses get built in these lower density zones. However, that could change in the future with code amendments. If we were to experience more enthusiasm for townhome construction in our lower density zones, we would probably expect the townhouses that got built to be fairly modest in size, such that they wouldn't accrue a significant affordable housing fee under either a 2000 square foot or a 2500 square foot threshold. So for instance, assuming a $15 per square foot fee and a 2,000 square foot threshold, the average townhome built in a lower density zone based on the data shown on the slide would only have a fee of about $6,675 or probably less than a monthly mortgage payment for the townhouse. All right, and now this slide is the data provided in your latest memo, and it shows average and median single-family house sizes with and without ADUs. And I also wanna make just a couple of points here about the data on the slide. First, whether you're building a new single-family house with or without an ADU, the average or median size of that single-family house is going to be well over a 3,000-square-foot threshold. Basically, what developers are doing is they're trying to maximize the use of their floor area ratio on these lots. So they're building an ADU and a single family house, or just a really big single family house. Related to that point is that in the aggregate, there's really not a lot of new single family houses getting built in the 2,000 to 3,000 square foot range. i think again the philosophy i think on the developer side is is is a little bit binary in nature it's you know either build as many middle housing units as you can um or build the bigger the biggest single family house that can be accommodated on the lot there's not really a lot in between those middle housing units and um and the big single family house which is why you're not seeing a lot in the two thousand to three thousand square foot range And so what that means is that the new fee, whether it's set at 2,000 square feet or 2,500 square feet will primarily affect larger, more expensive homes. This chart here just illustrates some different scenarios and revenue collection from this new affordable housing fee. And what you see here is that on this chart, the first two rows show the $15 fee imposed on new housing units in lower density zones with either a 2,000 square foot or 2,500 square foot exemption. And then the third row shows an alternate approach, which is a $20 fee and a 2,500 square foot exemption. And so the key point here is that if you were to increase the fee to $20 a square foot, you can generate about the same revenue for affordable housing under a 2,500 square foot scenario, 2,500 square foot exemption scenario as you would with a $15 fee under a 2,000 square foot scenario. And this is again, the subject of an amendment proposed by two council members, which I'll get to in about a minute. And then this slide here with a photo of just a typical single family house illustrates the actual fee implications of those three scenarios that I talked about on that previous slide for a newly built single family house. So again, this house is a little less than 4,400 square feet. It's selling for $2.8 million. So even under a $20 a square foot fee and a 2,500 square foot exemption scenario, the affordable housing fee that would be generated, again, under that scenario is a little less than 1.3% of the asking price. You know, fairly modest in the context of even other affordable housing fees that we impose in other zoning districts. All right. Oops. With that, we'll get to the two council member amendments. If it sounds good to the mayor, I'll just briefly go through each of the amendments and then hand it back in case the sponsors want to discuss.

Okay, thank you.

Sure. Um, so this is just the first amendment. This is from council member council members prim and falcon. Um, what this amendment would do is increase the per square foot fee from $15 to $20 and increase the exemption threshold from 2000 square feet to 2500 square feet. 2500 square feet is already reflected in this ordinance. And with that, I'll pass it back to the mayor for if the sponsors want to discuss.

Councilmember Prim and Falcone, do you want to talk about your amendment now or do you want to wait until it's on the table?

Either way. I can do now. Okay. Go ahead. Now? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for this information and thanks for all of the data that you provided. Extremely helpful. I know it's a lot of work, so I really appreciate it. I have two primary goals with supporting the 2500 square foot threshold, but increasing the per square footage fee from $15 to $20 per square foot. Number one, I do not wanna hinder the development of middle housing in low density zones, which includes homes that are under 2,500 square feet. And number two, I wanna ensure that we have adequate contributions towards affordable housing that is so desperately needed in our community. First, I wanna talk about why increasing the threshold of affordability requirements to 2,500 will help ensure we are not hindering the development of middle housing. When I think about middle housing, middle housing is cottages for sure, but it is also townhouses and smaller single-family homes. Data provided by the planning staff shows that the average size townhomes built in low density zones is around 2,400 square feet. And the average size of townhomes that are built in medium density zones are around, again, 2,400 to 2,500 square feet. And these are exactly the types of homes that I would like to incentivize in Kirkland. Setting a threshold requiring affordability fees to homes above 2,000 square feet may create a disincentive for builders to construct this kind of middle housing. At a time when housing supply really is one of the biggest challenges for us, I really don't want to create additional barriers for that kind of housing. There's also a really important point that we need to keep in mind when we're discussing this whole 2,000 versus 2,500 square foot threshold. Those numbers include unfinished areas, such as garages and attics. So when we talk about increasing the threshold to 2,500 square feet, we are not necessarily talking about a 2,500 square foot space of living space. In reality, we're talking about a house with living space with around 2,100 to 2,200 square feet. And to me, 2,100 to 2,200 square feet is clearly within the range of what I would consider as middle housing. If we want to create more opportunities for moderately sized homes that are naturally more affordable than 3,000 plus square foot homes that dominate new construction today, as shown in the packet, then I believe we need to make sure our policies do not unnecessarily discourage that kind of development. Further, I wanna point out that the new data provided by the staff reinforced my belief that we are not doing enough to encourage the development of middle housing in Kirkland. And this is backed by hard data. The staff's housing analysis specifically said, and they excluded cottages, of the 104 single family homes built in low density areas between May, 2024 and December, 2025, only two homes were between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet out of 104. Out of 104, only five homes were between 2,500 and 3,000 square feet. The remaining 97 homes out of the 104 homes or 93% of the total number of homes were larger than 3,000 square feet. To me, that data makes an important point. The vast majority of new homes being built in Kirkland today are well over 3,000 square feet. We are not seeing enough smaller homes, more moderately sized homes being built. That suggests we need to do more to incentivize this type of housing that can provide a greater range of options for more families to be able to afford a home. I completely understand the counter argument that we could keep the threshold at 2,000 feet, which really means 1,700 square feet, by the way, of livable space for now, and then revisit it in two years if we find that it is discouraging the construction of middle housing. However, in my opinion, waiting two years may be too late. I would rather take steps now to avoid creating a potential disincentive to building moderately sized homes than wait two years to see whether the policy has had unintended consequences and then try to correct them after the fact. Given the data we've already seen about the types and sizes of homes being built in Kirkland today, I believe there's enough reason to act proactively rather than reactively. If our goal is to encourage more middle housing and a broader range of housing options, we should create a policy in a way that supports that goal from the beginning. Now, going to the second issue of the actual fee amount, I completely understand that raising the exemption level does reduce the revenue generated for critically needed affordable housing. I've heard the public's comments on this loud and clear. The goal of this amendment is to recover a similar amount of revenue for affordable housing by increasing the fee from $15 per square foot to $20 per square foot starting at 2,500 square feet. When these funds are invested, as we all know, Through ARCH, every dollar, we typically get to leverage $10 in regional, state, and federal monies. So these dollars are very valuable. And I want to make sure that we're capturing those in an appropriate way. It is also important to recognize that for builders of larger homes, the difference required affordable housing contribution is not that significant. between the prior approved ordinance of the 2,000 square foot and the 2,500 square feet threshold. So for an example, a 4,500 square foot home, the difference between the previously approved policy and the new policy, if we were to include the $20 per square foot for a, again, a 4,500 square foot house would be $2,500.

total that's it so i don't think we're asking for for much by by doing this um and i hope that the council will support passing this amendment thank you um you spoke to the general motion and i was hoping that you were just going to speak to this particular amendment we're fine but any further comments let's uh keep them to the current amendment so council member falcone did i see you raise your hand yes thank you madam mayor

I guess I first have just a kind of procedural question about, um, so we tabled this, do we need to untable? So do we need to make another motion for the ordinance or is that already on the table?

Yeah, you have the, you should bring, you brought it up from back table, but so the motion has already been made to approve the ordinance as it was. So you could move into amendments rather than have somebody move the ordinance.

Okay. but you're just looking for comments on the amendment right now.

Yes, we have made a motion. Okay. But sorry, just to be, just to make it clear for the record, you should sort of note that you're taking back up the motion to approve the ordinance before you make amendments on it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you. So speak to this amendment and then we'll go to the other amendment and then we'll take it back up.

Thank you. I will try to, it's, I'll do my best. It's hard because they're so intertwined. I will do my best, but I think there is some overlap in that. I will come back to you. I want to start by saying, just generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of taxing housing to help us address the housing crisis. I just want to say that. It seems a little counterintuitive, but I also want to acknowledge that we have very limited tools, right? And this is the situation we're in. So just want to acknowledge that because then there's all kinds of opinions on this. And I think that I just want to make that clear. You know, well-spoken, Councilmember Prem. I agree with, you know, what she said. I also, I have three goals that this helps address. To provide revenue for income-restricted affordable housing. To encourage more missing middle housing and discourage larger housing from being built. but also to bring some fairness and balance to the revenue streams that we have for affordable housing, income restricted housing in our city. Currently our smallest and most naturally occurring more affordable, I don't know, some of them are not so affordable, but relatively speaking to the larger single family homes, bear the weight of providing revenue and building income restricted housing in our city. And it's only fair that that development of single family homes and especially larger single family homes also contribute to that to address that issue. You know, I agree with some of the earlier comments about permitting and improving the process there, so I don't think that this is the sole solution. I do think that increasing the fee along with the 2,500 square feet threshold change as was outlined in the memo and as Council Member Prem said, will provide us a very similar level of revenue. I've actually, you know, a couple months ago when I first proposed this, actually wanted to increase it even more for very large homes. So I do have a question as well for staff in that if this is adopted tonight, do we have the ability to come back in the future and raise the per square footage fee if we determine that we want to further disincentivize very large homes or further encourage missing middle housing and raise more revenue for income restricted housing.

I can take that, Council Member Falcone. Yeah, so the existing ordinance would allow us to make adjustments, relatively minor adjustments to the fees. We could certainly lower the fee easily. I think if we're talking about a substantial increase to the fee, we want to look at other development allowances that we would provide in doing that.

Okay. Thank you. So, that is an option in the future. I just want to mention to folks out there, I know I've had a lot of conversations over the past couple months with stakeholders about that option. And this feels like a compromise between the two, right? One step to try to at least get back to where we were in revenue generation last year in the ordinance that we passed. I do hope though, as was mentioned, that this is not, like in the grand scheme of things, this is not the biggest issue and the biggest impact on housing affordability it is something it's a piece of the puzzle we need lots of different pieces of the puzzle um to be able to do this but i i do hope that um in the future like was mentioned we have fewer restrictions on missing middle housing that like you mentioned with townhomes with other things i know the planning commission is going to be looking at optimizing missing middle housing i i you know i agree that townhomes are what i um fall under what i would define as missing middle housing as well And also that we would, you know, look at having a smoother, quicker and more transparent permitting process as well. I know we have talked about looking at that. Like I said about like taxing housing in general, this is something that is on the planning work program for the planning commission. So I know they'll be looking at. all of the type of inclusionary zoning and fee and lose and MFTEs citywide. So that's another conversation to come in the future as far as how we feel about taxing housing for building affordable housing. So that's another one to come. And so I obviously do support this since I'm one of the authors of it. And I appreciate the answer to the question that we could potentially raise the fee in the future if we felt like that was what was best for our community. Thank you.

thank you all right i'm going to open this up to general comments because they're happening anyway um i'm going to call on councilman arnold but councilman prim you had a clarification madam mayor point of order should you i think you should probably bring the matter back on or or note that the matter is back on the table feel free no i don't think it's for me i think it's for the residing officer to note that the motion is on i will note that we are responding to ordinance 4937 which was taken off the table

Do you mind if I jump in?

HELP ME HERE.

A QUESTION BEFORE COUNCIL'S ON THE MOTION TO APPROVE ORDINANCE 4937, WHICH WAS MOVED BY COUNCILMEMBER JOHN TIMCHISOM, SECONDED BY COUNCILMEMBER FALCON.

THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. WE ARE NOW ADDRESSING THE MOTION. I'M GOING TO GO TO COUNCILMEMBER ARNOLD, AND THEN I'LL CALL ON YOU.

MAY I ASK A PROCEDURAL QUESTION? SURE. HAS THIS AMENDMENT BEEN MOVED?

IT HAS NOT.

Sorry, has this amendment been moved forward? No.

OK. Go ahead, Council Mayor Arnold.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the recognition on how these issues are intertwined. As we're looking at this, I start with a general preference that said, I don't think we need to take action, but I respect what I am hearing from my fellow council members on wanting to make some changes. I've come to a different conclusion looking at the data, and I appreciate the chance as we've looked at this for some more information that staff has provided. That said, I also really do appreciate Councilmember Pram and Councilmember Falcone coming forward with this to say, not only are they moving the threshold, but making sure we're still generating the revenue. So while my overall preference would be not needing to take action on 4937, I do support this amendment. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Tim Chisholm?

Thank you. So procedurally, this amendment came to us this morning and we got feedback from the master builders on Monday. I would have appreciated if we had more advanced notice with this amendment because I think our stakeholders that have been working with us on this since June would have appreciated having an opportunity to give feedback on this. From a substantive perspective, I don't support this amendment because I don't think that trying to surgically increase the taxes on this type of housing won't affect a lot of other typologies. And so I won't be supporting this amendment. Thank you.

Anyone else? Councilman Paschall.

Thank you. So I think I've been clear from the beginning that I don't support more fees on housing. That's why I wasn't able to support this fee when we passed it in 2025. As I said then, a building at home already costs $75,000 in fees. that doesn't include the carrying and the financing costs that builders incur. So, um, you know, increasing the fee additionally, isn't something that I'm, um, wanting to do. Uh, I do, I do also, um, share the concerns of council member Tim Chisholm, uh, When we are considering putting permanent fees on housing or increasing permanent fees on housing and that's introduced without public review or stakeholder input on the day of the meeting, I just don't feel like that's the way that we should be doing business. Um, now if this had been put out publicly for the 20, the 15 to $20, um, and we had some, some input, I, I might feel differently about that. But I just really believe that when we're looking at taxes or fees or increases like that that are permanent in nature, that we need to give it its due public process and transparency and allow for that discussion. So for those reasons, I'm not going to be able to support the amendment.

Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Arnold, and then I'll go to Council Member Falcone.

Yes. Thank you. To the concerns about transparency, I would note page 708 of our packet does introduce this as a possibility. The packet was released on Friday, and the master builders did have adequate opportunity to comment on that alternative scenario that was presented, but did not in what we received. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Falcone?

I had the same comment.

Thank you.

All right. Anyone else? All right. Before we move forward, I think we're going to, I'm going to take a motion on this amendment and then we'll go from there. Deputy Mayor, did you have?

No, I was just going to say I do have comments, but I want, I think it makes sense for the amendment to be on the table.

Right.

Okay. I will note that staff had talked about getting

at least presenting the other amendment because we've got two amendments but we're gonna we're gonna deal one minimum at a time yes i'm perfectly fine with that i'll thank you yes i decided i didn't like adam's suggestion so uh councilman uh both council member falcone and i moved to amend ordinance 0493 at e page 715 line 107 by deleting the phrase 15 per square foot and inserting in its place the phrase 20 per square foot second

This has been moved by Councilmember Prem, seconded by Councilmember Falcone, to move forward the amendment that changes the $15 per square foot to $20 per square foot. Is there any further comments? Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think I have to make my comments now. It seems most germane. And given how I think some of the vote on this amendment may go, I think my comments are even more important. So I want to say I appreciate Kirkland's thoughtful approach to this affordable housing fee. None of our neighboring peer cities have taken more time to weigh this issue, have taken more testimony or listened more carefully to our housing production partners, including our affordable housing providers. have collected more information or more current information, created a more meaningful exception in the form of the 2,000 square foot exclusion or proposed a simpler or more modest fee in the form of the $15 per square foot. I want to thank my colleagues and staff for their work and their thoughtful proposals and comments over what has actually been 16 months. In particular, I want to thank our planning staff for their professional guidance and their efforts to fill in the knowledge gaps with data. The council has repeatedly been faced with a battle of anecdotes and very little concrete data. It has been our professional planning staff who has filled in the gaps with data. And admittedly, that's their job as I look at Adam, but they've done it well and I really appreciate it. My objectives with this policy are one, to ensure the responsibility to assist in the production of affordable housing doesn't continue to fall disproportionately on multifamily housing. Number two, create more funding for affordable housing in Kirkland. Number three, foster construction of the greater mix of smaller homes Kirkland needs over the next 20 years. four ensure that kirkland's fees are less than and no more complex than our neighboring peer cities and five leave ourselves flexibility legally speaking to make favorable adjustments in the future and that includes not having to figure out additional development allowances with those five goals in mind i know where i come out we should stick with our decision from june 2025 and set the exclusion at 2 000 square foot not 2 500 square foot Now I will say, we might consider increasing the flat fee to $20 per square foot. If we took Redmond as the clearest comparison, Kirkland would offer a 2,000 square foot exclusion that Redmond doesn't offer, and a $20 fee that is still 2 thirds of Redmond's fee. And a 2,000 square foot exclusion and a $20 fee are both decisions that we could reverse. If real data suggested the need for a reversal, meaning later we could increase to 2,500 square foot and as our director said, easily reduce to $15 per square foot. We created the square footage exclusion, we reduced the fee, we simplified the fee, and we delayed the implementation, all in response to concerns from advocates and our desire to make the best decision based on the best data. Current data simply doesn't support moving to 2,500 square feet. If there's a change that can't be reversed, like the move to 2500, the burden of proving the necessity of the change is borne by the proponents of the change, by at least the proponents of the evidence. In my judgment, that burden hasn't been met. Anecdotal evidence is insufficient, and the data, at best, is inconclusive. For example, the average size of a home is irrelevant when builders in Kirkland clearly have no product that is actually average size. The most meaningful evidence we've seen from our professional staff is that middle housing and single-family housing construction in Kirkland are plugging along. If there's a slowdown, it's in multi-family housing, which is completely unaffected by this policy. So I will not be supporting the ordinance or the proposed amendment to increase the fee to $20. Even though I might be able to support a fee increase to $20, even though I appreciate the thoughtfulness, and I really, really do appreciate the thoughtfulness that has gone into the Council, Council Member Prim, Council Member Falcone, and the staff's proposing something of a compromise, my position is that we should stick to the substance of the policy we adopted in 2025. We've heard from more than one leading affordable housing organization who agrees. Now, there is one more amendment that we're gonna talk about. And I will, I'm gonna go ahead and address it now. Because, hey, we're just out there.

No, please don't. Let's wait till the next amendment. Okay, go ahead.

So there is one amendment being proposed tonight that I will support because I do want to see it codified in this policy. Regardless of our votes on square footage or the amount of the fee amount, which are the amendment that's before us, that amendment's the deletion of the language revisiting the policy all over again in 2028. We do ourselves and our businesses no favors with that kind of language. As I've said many times before, it sends mixed signals and it creates uncertainty. So uncertainty is not good for business, and it doesn't help housing producers make sound, informed decisions. To the extent we can create certainty for partners in producing housing, we should do so. So thanks to everyone who has worked on this policy, and that concludes my full set of remarks.

All right. Thank you. All right. The questions on the motion to amend Ordinance 4937 to increase the square footage fee to $20. City Clerk, I suspect we're going to need to do a voice vote on this.

If you're ready, let's put on that amendment. Council Member Tim Chisholm?

No.

Council Member Arnold?

Yes.

Council Member Prim?

Yes.

Council Member Falcone? Yes. Council Member Paschal?

No.

Deputy Mayor Black?

No.

Mayor Curtis?

Yes. Amendment carries 4-3. Adam, back to you.

Thanks for the discussion. I do want to recognize too, Scott Guder, who's our senior planner behind us, was really responsible for the bulk of the data analysis. Just want to give credit where credit is due. He did a great job with that. So again, I think Deputy Mayor gave a really good preamble to this amendment, but it's an amendment from Mayor Curtis, Council Member Prem. It would basically eliminate the need to bring back a separate report to Council in 2028, evaluating the impacts of the new fee in favor of other check-ins through sort of the normal city process, like our budget check-in, for instance, or our quarterly development report. I'll hand it back to the Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Prem. move to uh i move to remove the section d as shown on the screen thank you it's been moved by councilman prem second by councilman falcone to delete section d of ordinance 4937 um any discussion councilman

Yeah, just a quick comment on why I moved to do this. As Deputy Mayor Black mentioned, I think we've been discussing this for over two years, and I think it's time to put the issue to rest and provide the building community some certainty on where we are. Staff, as Adam mentioned, staff will be providing quarterly development services, reports to council. So this will be tracked regularly. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Thank you.

Anyone else? All right questions on the motion to amend ordinance 40 or 49 37 to delete section D City clerk, let's do a voice vote again Councilmember Tim Chisholm.

Yes Councilmember Arnold. Yes Councilmember Prem. Yes Councilmember Falcone. Yes Councilmember Paschal. Yes Deputy Mayor Black. Yes Mayor Curtis

Yes. Thank you. Motion carries 7-0. All right. The question is on the amended Ordinance 4937. Is there any further discussion?

City Clerk. On the motion to adopt Ordinance 04937 as amended, Council Member Tim Chisholm. Yes. Council Member Arnold.

No.

Council Member Prem. Yes. Council Member Falcone? Yes. Council Member Paschal?

No.

Deputy Mayor Black?

No.

Mayor Curtis? No.

Motion fails 3-4. All right. Thank you, everyone. We voted on the amended motion. So it failed. So now we go back to the original motion, which was made in June 2025, which is 2,000 square feet at $15 a square foot. So to wrap up, this was two years of effort with the community and with our planning department and our planning commission. So I want to thank everybody for all the work that they put into it. Sometimes things are complicated and hard, and it takes us time. So thank you.

I think we're all a little surprised where we ended up.

Okay, we are going to move on to 9D, which is Revised Parking Enforcement Code Amendments. City Manager.

All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So this is a topic that was talked about at one of the last council meetings. Council members had some suggestions for changes. So this is a revised parking code amendment attempting to address the concerns that were raised by the council. Once again, here to give the presentation is Lieutenant Troy Canofla from the Police Department and our Assistant State Attorney Ryan Gompertz.

Welcome back.

Thank you and good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, council members. I'll give it a second for the presentation. Thank you, folks. Thank you all for your feedback to our last presentation at the July 21st meeting. Tonight, we're pleased to present for your review the revised Ordinance 4946, incorporating your input on addressing abandoned vehicles, impound procedures, and RV parking. Before we get into those revisions, we just wanted to address that in reviewing the discussion from July 21st, we identified five priorities for how we should go about revising the proposed language. In the interest of time, I won't repeat them for you here, but we hope that you'll agree that these track the feedback that we received from council. And in advance of addressing those revisions, we also wanted to take a moment to highlight how these priorities are reflected in KPD's existing practices across the city. And for that, I'll turn over to Lieutenant Canafla.

So in our KPD process, obviously communication first. We recognize that communication is the best solution, the best way to come to any kind of positive solution when you're working through any issue whatsoever. Our enforcement is based on community complaints. Again, we had over 600 abandoned vehicle complaints in 2025, and we're probably gonna have close to the same in 2026. When we receive an abandoned vehicle complaint, it starts with direct communication and problem solving. That's the immediate first step. We contact all the parties that are involved, including the reporting party, to find out what their concerns are so we can address those, and then the responsible party for the vehicle or the RV. To come to the best resolution, our intent is always to try and avoid impoundment if at all possible. We connect and collaborate with services wherever we can to help people out, to resolve the issue, to try and avoid impoundment. In the event of an unhoused resident, we start our outreach program. The HART team is activated, obviously. And the goal of that is for people to transition to permanent or supportive housing, stable housing. And lastly, of course, formal enforcement is the tool of our last resort. And that's part of this proposed amendment. So to kind of put this in a case study here, most people are familiar with Northeast 126 Place. that happened during the pandemic, actually prior to that. So we had an RV encampment there developed during the pandemic. KPD worked with Heart Team and other city staff to designate appropriate parking areas to move people that were willing to work with the city with the goal moving toward permanent or supportive housing. Those who agreed to work with the city's Homeless Outreach Program were allowed to move to the designated areas and they were connected with supportive services and eventually permanent housing. All residents who accepted city assistance ultimately entered stable housing, which I think is a great success story, leading to the reopening of the designated areas and clearing the streets. The photo on the bottom half is one of the designated areas. This one was actually taken a little bit after there were more RVs to start with, but some had already been moved out because they had found permanent supportive housing. And so the RVs were moved on. So how this plays out is, For those, of all those up on the Northeast 126th Street when it started, everybody was contacted, identified those that wanted to work with the city's outreach program, those that had no interest in working with the city's outreach program. And then when the day came to move those wanting to work in the designated areas, everybody was given notice of that date and time to do that. The ones that did not want to work with the city chose to move on from the street. And some of them moved out of the city and no more further complaints of their vehicles being parked were there. But some just moved to other neighborhoods in the city and then the complaints of the abandoned vehicles just seemed to continue. That's for those people, unhoused residents that are living in their vehicles. So they would be contacted, there'd be another report of abandoned vehicle, they'd be contacted again, outreach services offered again, advised of the ordinance on the abandoned vehicle, given another 72 hours to move, they would again move to another neighborhood in the city and the whole process would start all over again. For those that, in the city as well, not just for unhoused residents, but for those that just have RVs, recreational use, not living in them, oftentimes they're parked on city streets or roadways or public areas as a place of storage. They're not being used on a regular basis. They're not being lived in. And they're being parked on city streets for storage. And the same thing occurs. An officer will go, contact them, find out why it's there, try and find a resolution. Ultimately, they'll move it just to another neighborhood or another street or even just across the street. and often times you'll have the same complainant calling back, say well I called about it abandoned, you guys marked it, now it's across the street and it's still there. And the whole process starts all over again with our policy the way it is. So they ask for, to add it in as a civil infraction, is to address those egregious violations where they just keep moving from one place to another and there's no other process to resolve the continued complaint, the continued violation of it.

So our goal was to ensure that the amendments to the code tracked how the city engages with and serves the greater Kirkland community. Turning to the revisions, there are four major changes that we'd like to highlight. The first is the 1240.020 subsection A. This is in response to concerns about timely owner notification. The proposed ordinance codifies KPD's policy of contacting the registered owner of a vehicle at the time it is tagged as abandoned. This gives owners a minimum of 72 hours notice that their vehicle is at risk of impound and an opportunity, of course, to move the vehicle. But more than that, it also opens the communication channel with KPD. In the event there's a special circumstance or situation where further enforcement can be adjusted or avoided, the communication can begin up to 72 hours before impound is even possible. next we'd like to turn to subsection b in response to the request that we codify compassion and discretion for circumstances where the city is dealing with unhoused community members we chose to take revisions to the proposed ordinance that now expressly gives flexibility to postpone or halt enforcement to allow for that outreach connection to supportive services consistent again with existing KPD practice. This also supports the city's practice of avoiding impound when vehicles service shelter, just affording officers that extra discretion that's now supported by our code. As in the previous section, the revised amendments expressly directs that enforcement will follow city policy, as you'll see here in subsection D as well. This helps the code empower the kind of compassionate practice and successful outreach that we heard about from Lieutenant Canofla, while also standardizing this across enforcement cases. And lastly, the changes to the RV section in chapter 1245. The biggest change here is to the definition in subsection A2. This was based on council feedback regarding focusing on the size and the safety concerns and eliminating any reference to living quarters or potential use for habitation as a source of enforcement. The definition's been reworked to set a minimum width of seven feet, which we drew from the commercial classifications discussed at the last council meeting. That was the minimum width of the smallest commercial class RV. This ensures the focus is on visibility, obstructing traffic flow, or other safety issues that the vehicle may be causing, and it also makes it an objective standard, addressing Council's feedback on ensuring consistent approaches across enforcement cases. Council also previously shared feedback about avoiding enforcement against other vehicles that may be better addressed through other chapters, actions, or unintentionally caught under these definitions. So for that reason, we kept some reference to the vehicle's use for recreational camping or travel. This is consistent with how RVs are defined elsewhere in Washington law. And most importantly, these acknowledge a recreational use without any reference to living quarters or habitation. And as a broader structural change, you'll see that this section's also been incorporated into the existing trailer prohibition for clarity and consistency, rather than having its own subsection, as you might have seen in our previous proposal. In summary, we've made revisions to the proposed changes for the impound process, as well as definitions for RVs as a prohibited large vehicle. Those are the sections you see up there. The proposed ordinance also amends KMC 1240, 010, and 030, which are unchanged from the original staff proposal on July 21st. Based on this, staff recommends the Council adopt Ordinance 4946. Thank you.

Council, questions for the Lieutenant and Ryan?

Any comments? Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for being here tonight and bringing back. I really appreciate the revisions based on council feedback from the last meeting, so thank you for taking the time to do that. Thank you also to Chief St. Jean and City Attorney and City Manager for being willing to discuss a little bit more detail with me, some of the nuances of these proposed edits, just so I understood it a little bit more. I'm still struggling with with this ordinance and specifically the section that I'm struggling with is the addition of the prohibition of RVs on our streets Going into our last meeting both in the memo and in the briefing as well as an answer to my questions The focus on the intent of this was sight line safety right that we don't want large vehicles to block people's views if they're turning and they can't see vehicles coming or pedestrians or bicyclists and And that's how it was framed and presented to the public as well to counsel on the public. And, you know, and then we tonight in the briefing, it talks more about why we include RVs. Right. And it seems to me and it may seem to the public that some of that is that we want to ban folks who are community members who are living in their RVs from being able to live in our city. And that concerns me for multiple reasons. You know, I'm concerned that the public wasn't aware, as we heard testimony earlier tonight from a community member who's very engaged on these issues and very aware of these issues in our community, who wasn't aware that we were talking about this, either the last time we talked about it or tonight, that it was the very last minute that she found out that this discussion was happening. And this is banning RVs and folks who need their RVs in order to live and sleep and exist in our city is a pretty big policy discussion and one that I would really like the community to engage with us on. Um, we have, I know, you know, as was, um, we talked earlier tonight with, um, I talked with the police chief about how we do hear from a lot of folks who complain, whether it's their neighbors, um, you know, RV that they're not living in it, but they use it for just recreational purposes. Um, or whether it's folks who have folks living in their RVs on our streets. That's who we hear from most frequently and I think that's pretty typical and doesn't necessarily represent the views of our community as a whole. There are folks in this community that I have heard from when I've alerted them to this discussion that they have concerns about this and there are folks who do not want us to ban folks living in RVs on our streets. So my concern is that we haven't given the community notice that we're going to be having this discussion. I think it was just it wasn't really clear in the memos or the agendas that that's what we're going to be talking about as part of this ordinance. So I will not be supporting this ordinance tonight. I would prefer that we actually take the time to engage the public and be more thoughtful about this. I think the other the other items in the ordinance, I do support and understand why we're doing that. But this particular one, is, from my perspective, a pretty big deal. And I would like to hear from folks. I did try to work to find some sort of amendment that might work, but I don't think there's something that would really work. And and allow me to support this ordinance tonight. Another concern that I have that I've addressed at the last meeting as well is that there's an overlap in the width of full size vans and of smaller RVs. Right. And the seven foot width. Yes, it captures all the RVs. We kind of went on a smaller width in order to include all RVs. But there are a lot of full-size vans that also are wider than seven feet. So we're talking about folks who may use a full-size van to have a wheelchair accessibility family member. It could be folks who have a large family. It could be folks who, you know, have a full size van for their house painter or their landscaper or something in our community. And they may live in our community and work in our community. And we're now because we can't tell from the outside. Right. An officer can't tell whether it's a sleeper camper van. Right. Because there's also camper vans that are that would. be banned based on the language in here, right? That the primary intended use is for recreational camping, right? And so without that, there are gonna be folks who can use this and complain about their neighbors, complain about their neighbors who have work being done on their home. And this is gonna impact some of our residents who are some of our most vulnerable residents. So I have that concern as well as the discussion around whether we're okay or whether we wanna ban allowing people to live in rvs in our community so with all of that said i will not be supporting the ordinance tonight and i urge my fellow council members to for us to take the time to actually do this well thank you anyone else councilman arnold um thank you uh

As I look at the definition under two, where it's the combination of recreational vehicle and exceeds seven feet in width, I look at that and say that is focused on the safety aspects of it versus anybody in a camper van or a conversion van. I do agree we need to have further community conversation about people living in their vehicles on the street and how we respond to that. That discussion is anticipated in the homelessness action plan. I think this particular set of work that we're doing tonight is about just clarifying RVs that are larger in width and how we deal with those. There is some protections under how The department responds in facilitating the owner's relocation and connection to services. To that end, given the public comment that we have heard, In the case of the person parking on the street near the safe parking at the United Methodist Church, do you have any comment on what happened in that circumstance that came up during public comment?

I would need more details on what occurred there to look into it and find the incident and dig deeper into it. Okay. But I'd be happy to do that.

If there was a case where a faith-based organization or community organization was aware of somebody that was in that situation, how would you recommend they deal with it to not have this or to be able to get the flexibility versus this being enforced?

Let me answer that, Lieutenant. Thank you, Council Member Arnold. As this is a very complicated issue, obviously, and multifaceted, right? The incident at the Safe Park area, definitely we'll look into it. Need some more details and we'll follow up with Ms. O'Malley on that. Now, you know, as this process has matured, you know, I would hope that we're in better contact with our faith-based providers, that we have the HEART team up and running, that we would be in that communication, as Lieutenant Canofla talked about, and that we would work with that person to try to find a... good solution for everyone involved and you know be able to eventually get them off of the street right and into stable housing or some help or into a safe park something like that but um i don't know when exactly that occurred so um would just need a little more information. But I'm comfortable saying now that we have all the processes in place that we would be able to, you know, start with communication and use the Kirkland model that we've been successful with and having a more successful outcome.

Thank you, Chief.

Yeah.

Yes, for Pascal.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the additional work on this. And, you know, I think kind of taking to heart some of the comments you heard last meeting. You know, I came into this really kind of reflecting that I thought the language added language kind of strike that right balance between addressing some legitimate concerns about abandoned and stored vehicles in the public right away, but really also emphasizing Kirkland's outreach first approach and The way that I read the code was that impoundment was a last resort. That's how you tried to write it without actually saying those couple words and actually requiring that the police contact the owner before taking any step and then giving flexibility that such a step could be postponed. Um, because there's going to be situations out there at times, um, that are gonna be individual in nature that, that you need to have that flexibility. And, um, as I read it though, as I read the memo again, um, what I found, uh, it just made me very proud of the police department because, um, you said something in there that. KPD hasn't impounded a vehicle being used as a shelter or housing while someone was still in need of housing. That's what at least was stated in the memo. I thought that was pretty remarkable because it really demonstrates that we have a policy and procedures that really try to result in those just outcomes. So I'm prepared to support this amendment. I mean, it's not amendment, sorry. Ordinance tonight. But I also understand if there's more work. But if the work, I guess... If we just have fundamental differences of whether we support the ordinance or not, I guess I'm just kind of wondering what the additional work would accomplish. So that would be my only I'd want to have a better idea of really what are we going to be at the same place or is it really going to result in something that more of us can live with? Thank you.

Councillor Tim Chisholm.

Thank you. You know, I think a lot of this comes down to officer discretion and discretion used by the heart team. And I think we've built about the most compassionate police force, the most compassionate heart team, and the most compassionate city government we can. we've done i i really appreciate miss o'malley's comments um and concern about the ordinance i will be supporting the ordinance but that's because i think our police department and our heart team is one of the most ethical and compassionate org organizations i've i've worked with and i've seen and i think that i just ultimately have to trust that they'll make good decisions And if there's concerns in individual instances, let us know. We can discuss it. But I will be supporting this ordinance because the quality of police force and our team that we have, I think, is up for making those decisions. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. obviously this is a really challenging issue. Um, and I appreciate the, the thoughtfulness that we've all, um, both staff and my colleagues on the council have spent on this issue. And, um, ultimately I will be supporting the ordinance and, you know, partly for some of the well-taken, um, reasons, uh, suggested or mentioned by some of my colleagues. I, it really does remind me or does, yeah, it reminds me, um, Just how proud I am of what we've built in the city of Kirkland along the lines of what Councilmember Tim Chisholm was saying, our heart program, our homelessness action resolution or action plan. We're building all this. so that we can have a compassionate human-centric approach to people living without homes in our community. I will share one other thought I've had in connection with this, and it's one of those things that maybe sort of is uniquely important to me, but it's kind of the consistency, the intellectual consistency of our existing statute. So we have a longstanding ban on boats, boat trailers, camping trailers, house trailers, utility trailers. I have a little bit of a hard time talking to one of my neighbors about why a boat trailer that is a large vehicle parked in the right of way as a safety issue needs to be removed. But if somebody pulls up with a Class A RV and parks it there, it doesn't. So there's just this... I get it, it's a little technical, but it's just how can we really be consistent in banning these other types of recreational vehicles, trailers, and whatnot? And at the same time say, but it's fine to pull a Class A RV up and park it in the right of way, and it's not part of our ordinance. I just think there is some fundamental level of this, which is just having an internally consistent policy on large vehicles and its type being parked on our streets. So that added to everything that has already been said. I'll be supporting this ordinance. Thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Prim.

Yeah, I will also be supporting this ordinance. I do think generally that the proposed ordinance has addressed a lot of the comments that we had last time, but I do want to definitely follow up on Ms. O'Malley's comments that she made and would appreciate like a response specifically addressing those things. and to ensure that if there are things that we need to fix, that we do that quickly. But thank you.

Just a tough one. I do sincerely appreciate the improvements that were made. You took our comments to heart, and this is a better product. I'm still struggling a little bit with, are we talking about abandoned vehicles or exclusive of vehicles where people are living in them? Um, but I don't have an elegant solution for that. And it's, it's really what you've heard from the comments, particularly from council member Tim Chisholm and deputy mayor black, that this is, this is not a black and white issue. There's a lot of gray area in here and that we have put in processes and procedures and people to, uh, to provide compassionate care and to provide solutions. So. I'm going to vote in favor of this ordinance and put trust in our systems. I don't think it's the perfect ordinance, but I honestly don't have solutions on how to make it better. And again, I appreciate that you took to heart. little pun there, our feedback and improved it. So thank you. Council, I will take a motion. Council Member Paschal.

You can call me. I'll move Ordinance 4946. Second.

It's been moved by Council Member Paschal, second by Deputy Mayor Black to move forward Ordinance 4946. Any further discussion? City Clerk.

On that motion, Council Member Tim Chisholm.

Yes.

Council Member Arnold. Yes. Council Member Prem. Yes. That's a yes. Great. That's a yes. Council Member Falcone. No. Council Member Paschal. Yes. Deputy Mayor Black.

Yes.

Mayor Curtis. Yes.

Ordinance passes 6-1. Thank you, everyone. All right. We are moving on to council reports. And I will start with the deputy mayor.

Nothing to report.

Thank you. Council member Paschal.

It was summer break. Nothing to report.

Council Mayor Falcone.

I'm just going to highlight one really fun upcoming event, and that is the Pride Across the Bridge annual Pride event happening this Saturday at Marina Park. You'll have two of your leaders in the room will be in the dunk tank. Deputy City Manager Jim Lopez will be there 2.30, I think. And I will be there, I forget, 4, 4.30, something like that as well. So it'll be a lot of fun. And for any community members who, you know, want to dunk one of their elected officials, go at it because it raises money for a good cause. Thank you.

Council Member Prim. Nothing to report. Council Member Arnold.

I have three things to report. I had the opportunity to meet with our federal lobbyists this month where we discussed the current federal budget. Some of our previous advocacy where we had sent a letter in on federal budget process changes. And they noted that both those changes were on hold and they anticipated this week, which happened I think yesterday or today, a continuing resolution on the budget which freezes the federal budget in its current process. They also discussed the possibility of potential future advocacy around an earmarks process next year, especially if Congress changes hands, maybe something that we want to think about within the legislative committee. Secondly, the State Building Code Council is driving towards its adoption of 2024 codes with final action anticipated by the end of the year. We've been holding weekly two-hour work sessions through August and will continue through September to consider public comments received and develop recommendations for final language. I've been taking the lead on the embodied carbon Appendix that is part of the 2024 codes. This will be an optional appendix that cities can adopt to track and reduce the global warming potential from building materials in commercial buildings. And I'm pleased to announce we came to consensus today on language at the SBCC. So that will be part of our final package this fall. And then finally, the SBCC has been directed as part of the governor's emergency proclamation regarding wildfires in Spokane and elsewhere to identify barriers for the quick rebuilding of the hundreds of destroyed homes. A special SBCC committee is meeting weekly to respond to that. i asked kirkland staff to brainstorm how we as a city would respond after a major disaster in our city say a seismic event and rebuild homes at scale really appreciate the work of the planning director faro marshall and building officials some of the ideas that they came up with and helped me with i've put in for consideration have been well received as we're looking at that thank you

Thank you for your work on that.

I know it's been time-consuming over our recess, but it's important councilmember Tim Chisholm I would echo councilmember Falcone's Announcement about the pride across the bridge celebration the TDC funded that Event with I forget how much money you volunteering for the dunk tank. I I Have not I have not But I think the public likes and respects me and probably would never want to do that. But I haven't been asked. Maybe I will go to the dunk tank. I don't know. But I'll certainly be at that event. It sounds like a fun time.

Great.

But our TDC did significantly assist that event this year. And we all vote yeah. That's all.

Thank you. I have nothing to report. So city manager.

Okay, thank you. So, Cassie, would you be so kind as we have a very short presentation I mentioned. In the memo you had on consent, there was the turn-back agreement with WSDOT, and included in that there was a graphic, but as I mentioned, I was going to say at our city manager report that we are working with WSDOT to make some improvements to the 132nd square roundabouts, and I just wanted to briefly highlight those. It's just three slides, and then see if Kelsey has any questions. So, Cassie, do you want the next slide, please? So once the roundabouts were put in place, our team, our local Kirkland traffic team, began to assess the traffic impacts and some of the collision data that we had. There we go, thank you. We noted that there was a higher elevated amount of crashes. Fortunately, people do slow down enough that they're not injury crashes, but all the side swipes and so forth. And our staff brought that to WSDOT, and WSDOT concurred that that issue was higher than it should be. WSDOT agreed that there should be some countermeasures made, and since this is a WSDOT facility, they'd be paying for it. They reached an agreement with us to go ahead and design and implement those, and WSDOT will pay for those. And then we worked quickly to get those in place as soon as we can, so our goal is to have them done by later this fall. So next slide includes the graphic. The main issue that we discovered was people were entering the roundabouts at a high speed. There's a little bit of a straightaway in each of those, and they're particularly concerned about their intersection with the crosswalks. And so the main change, in addition to some of the restriping, is that there'll be speed cushions at some of the key locations that will force cars to slow down before they enter into the roundabout area.

uh we are in the process of putting those in place and we hope to have those done by probably late october early november i think the last slide is just the timeline and i'm happy to answer any questions that council has so councilman falco thank you madam mayor well thank you um city manager i really appreciate the collaboration with watchdot and thank you to watchdot for doing what i think is the right thing you know to to pay for this and to work with us on the design as well so thank you for leading on that i really appreciate that My question is looking at the picture that you just showed, was there any consideration to also some sort of calming measures for those exiting the highway? I hear from a lot of folks that that is where people are already going high speeds and they just kind of zip into there. That's also my personal experience, but I have heard from a lot of community members that that's a pretty big concern in these roundabouts. Was that looked at? Like what could be, I don't know what would be appropriate, if speed bumps would be appropriate for folks exiting the highway or if there was another measure that would be more appropriate. But I would like us to at least consider that. Maybe we already have. Could you touch on that?

I will admit that tonight with the people we have, I don't have the answer to that question, but I'll get that answer to you quickly. So we'll have something for you tomorrow about whether that was looked at, which I think it may have been, and whether or not there is a proposal.

Okay, I would like us to look at that again, like pretty closely, because I hear about it enough that even if we've already talked about it, it may be worth.

So we're talking about coming down south, coming off.

Yeah, coming off the highway and entering the roundabout. Yeah, thank you.

Anyone else?

Chancellor Paschal.

Yeah, thanks for this. And thanks to staff and WSDOT. I just hope that we continue to monitor and kind of see if we see like really favorable results. This is pretty unique. I can't think of an interchange where there's speed humps in Washington. So this is kind of like almost like a first thing, really. And it's quite remarkable. So it'd be cool to show that it's working.

We continue to lead. Absolutely. Watch it carefully.

I would also note that the logical question some of you asked in my council calls was, what about 85th roundabouts? So two things the staff brought up. One is we're going to also closely monitor those as well. And if anything like this develops, we'll also work with WSDOT to do measures. And I'm going to give you the non-technical term. I was told the WSDOT angles in 85th make you turn sooner, so you actually slow down coming into those roundabouts more so than you do at 132nd. So that is the end of my technical understanding so but obviously that project's not finished yet and but we will be also monitoring it very carefully if we think something needs to be done well we'll work with wash dot to do that as well i've been directing concerns and complaints to council member pascal's cell phone any final questions on this on this

Okay.

Thank you. And then I don't have any other reports, just a calendar update or any calendar reports.

Councillor Falcone. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanted to share with my colleagues and staff that I will be joining our next meeting virtually. I will be in Vancouver, BC on a housing innovations tour with the Housing Development Consortium. So I will be, my understanding is that the agenda allows us, they also accommodated this last year, that there's just a social event at night so I can still fully do my duties working on the tour as well as join the meeting probably for my hotel room that evening. So I just want to give you a heads up.

That's why we invested this awesome new technology. Yeah, it's amazing.

I can't wait to help test it out.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Paschal.

Yeah, and that reminded me that I will be missing the next meeting. So hopefully there won't be any tie votes.

Yeah. We won't do that again.

Yeah.

All right. Anyone else? Okay.

That's all I have, Madam Mayor.

All right.

Thank you, everyone. We are adjourned.

Thank you, Cassie.