Clyde Hill News: Special meeting this Tuesday for stormwater
City Administration to offer “Stormwater Case Law update” at Feb 22nd meeting
First, our disclaimer:
Disclaimer: while I am a councilmember on the Clyde Hill City Council, I write this newsletter in my capacity as an individual resident. Any opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the position of the City. The information and references here are from public sources. I welcome email responses — and if the topic is about City business I will respond from my City email account.
City Council “Study Session” Meeting on Tuesday
The City published an agenda for a special Tuesday night study session here.
From a resident’s point of view, the most important discussion will involve stormwater. The City Administration’s agenda includes a stormwater case law update you can read here. A slide late in the deck gives a hint at what to expect: “No apparent City duty to act.”
To recycle some of last week’s newsletter on why this matters:
Some Clyde Hill residents near 17th have had more than a year of flooding in their homes as the City has moved very slowly in response to stormwater issues after requesting, receiving approval for, and then declining to use several hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds.
In January, the City responded (link) to resident complaints of backyard flooding and reported 12” of standing water in areas around 84th Ave NE.
In February, residents complained about stormwater flooding around 92nd Ave near Aqua Vista; the City sought and received approval for ~$128K in funds (link) to address these problems.
It’s also worth noting that the City chose to not communicate previous stormwater problems, for example its non-compliance with its permit from the State. Here’s a linkto the State Department of Ecology; this letter was not in any public reports to the City Council or the community.
In contrast to what the current Administration is offering Clyde Hill, here is Medina’s guide to residents (link) about private stormwater systems and Medina’s overall program (link).
After that public discussion on stormwater, “the City Council will meet in executive session to discuss potential litigation.”
This is remarkable because the actual discussion topic of an executive session is supposed to be secret.
The City undermined itself here when the Mayor and City Administrator made very clear at the City Council meeting two weeks ago that they wanted this executive session to discuss stormwater issues. Below, you can hear the City Administrator say “I’d say schedule an executive session then for storm” at the start of this video from the February regular meeting:
This is a good moment to link to a previous issue (link) that detailed another fight that the Administration decided to pick with other residents regarding stormwater repairs. Eventually, the City paid the residents a $55K settlement for damages to their property from stormwater failures in addition to performing the stormwater repairs that the residents expected the City to have done to begin with. You can read the City’s internal memo requesting authorization for the settlement here:
The other topic of interest to residents in this meeting involves an email that the Mayor previously claimed was Attorney Client Privileged communication but that residents can now read here as part of this meeting’s packet. At the regular meeting earlier in February, the Mayor attempted to shut down public discussion of work to address issues in code enforcement consistency and fairness, referring to this email.
As a resident, I invite you to read the email and make sense of the issue. Candidly I remain very confused about the Mayor’s message.
Expectations of fairness in code enforcement
I’ve gotten a surprising number of comments in response to last week’s newsletter. Many of them circled back to resident expectations of fairness and consistency in enforcing land use code.
In this clip, Interim City Attorney Stephen DiJulio explains how the Mayor and Administration choose, on a case by case basis as they see fit, what they want to enforce and how, with no responsibility at all to write down or explain policy or decisions.
At the end of that explanation, the attorney explains the accountability mechanism: “it’s up to the voters to determine whether or not the administrator [the Mayor] of that of that function is... doing his her job:”
As a resident, I believe that residents have a very different set of expectations around consistency and fairness.
Reminder from Clyde Hill Police re schoolbuses
Reminder from Clyde Hill Police in their newsletter this week regarding stopping for school buses, as many schools have transitioned back to in-person classes: “the duty remains on other drivers to pay attention and obey the law to avoid an accident and keep children safe.”
“Aryans only” Clyde Hill, and a new King County law
As yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the executive order resulting in the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, this topic seemed appropriate for this week’s newsletter. The Seattle Times times wrote about the anniversary here.
At least a dozen lots in Clyde Hill were first sold with racial restrictions as part of their deeds. A recent King County law makes it easier for residents to remove such language — details on that below.
The University of Washington’s Segregated Seattle project (link) calls out Clyde Hill:
“Most shocking is the "Aryans only" restriction imposed on a subdivision in Clyde Hill. That racial concept, favored by Adolph Hitler, was written into deeds as late as 1948.”
For example:
The Lake Washington Garden Tracts in particular are called out on the UW project’s Notorious Neighborhoods list (link):
“One of the most unusual of the nearly 500 racial restrictive deeds that we have located covers a five-acre subdivision in Clyde Hill, near Bellevue. Between 1946 and 1948, J. Gordon and Mary Schneidler subdivided and sold more than a dozen lots. Each deed of sale included the following restriction: “This property shall not be resold, leased, rented or occupied except to or by persons of the Aryan race.” The concept of an Aryan race of northern Europeans had been embraced by Adolph Hitler who turned it into a genocidal strategy before and during World War II. By 1946, the full dimensions of the Nazi holocaust were known everywhere. Given that post-war context, it is doubly surprising that the Schneidlers used this language in deed restrictions on properties they sold after the war.”
The City of Clyde Hill’s website (here) mentions the Lake Washington Garden Tracts as well as an early settler named Downey. In this 1940’s map, you can see our modern NE 14th Street also labelled as Downey St:
Back in December, the Seattle Times reported (link) on a new option for homeowners of one of these properties: “King County will allow property owners to formally remove racist language from their property’s chain of title.” That article describes the process as well as how under the new law, “The form home sellers provide to buyers during a sale must also include a disclosure whether there are any covenants or restrictions recorded against the property as a part of the new law.”
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Dean Hachamovitch