Clyde Hill News: Who is flooding City Hall with public records requests?
Prop 1 update; also, plans for sustainable budget & addressing administration/police issues
This week’s newsletter focuses on the discussions likely to interest residents at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. For example, here’s a view on the latest city report about who has made Public Records Requests:
If you find this newsletter useful or interesting, please forward it to your Clyde Hill neighbors and friends. Thank you!
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.
Police relations, sustainable budget, and more
Here are some items from Tuesday night’s agenda (available here, link) that are likely to be of particular interest to residents. There are many other items as well; for example, the Mayor will seek authorization for funds to repair some drainage problems, and the City will bring a contract for IT services to the Council for approval.
Administration & Police
Residents can hope to hear specifics from the Mayor and City Administrator about “their plan, the steps they have taken, and the next steps ahead” regarding the many trust problems between the Administration leadership and the police that have come to light over the last few months.
For context on the issues and trust problem, please look at this recap from a few weeks ago: link.
Budget amendment and a sustainable budget
Residents are likely to hear specifics about the “plan for a plan” for a sustainable budget.
For context, last week’s public hearing about the budget confirmed the Administration’s plan to spend ~$450K more than the City will receive in revenue.
Cms Steve Friedman and Bruce Jones were praised for spending 12+ hours in meetings with the Administration to develop a “plan for a plan” for a sustainable budget and some short term improvements for next year’s proposed budget. Several councilmembers were surprised that the plan was not discussed last week.
Because the Administration is on track to spend more in 2022 than is in the budget, the Administration will ask the Council to approve a budget amendment. By law, the City cannot spend more than the approved budget allows.
Police compensation
“The City Council will meet in closed session for the purpose of discussing collective bargaining,” according to the agenda. Clyde Hill engages in collective bargaining with only one entity — the union that represents Clyde Hill police officers.
The Administration’s proposed budget for cost of living salary adjustments for non-union staff is 9.5%. The police contract specifies a much lower number; councilmembers and residents have expressed concern about fairness as well as officer morale and retention. City staff indicated that a discussion of this topic would occur in a closed session at the next City Council meeting (link).
Public Records Requests
The short version:
One Clyde Hill resident (and his lawyers) represent the bulk of public records requests to Clyde Hill.
Residents might care because requests represent costs to the city in terms of staff workload as well as legal costs to review (and possibly redact) responsive documents.
The longer version is… messy.
The Administration started reporting on public records requests (PRRs) a few months ago. The context involved overwhelmed staff and mounting legal bills. (In July, this newsletter reported (link) on the conflicting claims between the Mayor and City Administrator regarding the workload around PRRs.)
The reports are (candidly) less than clear. Last month there was no PRR report. There was a chart involving PRRs that reported numbers that neither I nor the City Administrator could reconcile with previous PRR reports.
This month’s report (link) lists 61 public records requests. Some are from 2021; some 2022 requests are not in this month’s report. So, we are operating on with partial and imperfect data. The previous report include requests through the end of August, so this month’s report is the first update the public has had in two months. Here’s one page to illustrate what you’ll find:
The Good of PRRs
Public records requests are A Good Thing and an important part of how our democracy works. For example, I have filed several public records requests (as a resident) over the last year as part of writing this newsletter. One PRR resulted in awareness that the current City Administrator called a police officer “homeboy” during his probationary period and that there is no written record of the Mayor providing disciplinary feedback.
The second bar in this graph, representing 15 requests, is a roll-up of requests made to the police about police matters. For example, a resident made a request to “please send a copy of case #2022-2539 to me...thanks; my car was stolen and recovered with damage.”
Coming in at #3 with 5 requests on this month’s report is — me, Dean Hachamovitch, followed by a bunch of people with one, two, or three requests.
So who is #1?
With nine PRRs in his own name, another 15 from his / the campaign’s attorney (link), and one from one of his other attorneys, Spencer Nurse is in the #1 slot of public records requests, looking at this month’s PRR report.
For context, Nurse was the #1 contributor to the “No on Clyde Hill Prop 1” campaign:
As some people involved in politics do, Nurse filed a PRR for information about the Clyde Hill resident who initiated the petition that resulted in Clyde Hill Prop 1:
After the co-chair of the Yes on Clyde Hill Prop 1 effort was named, an attorney who appears to work on behalf of the campaign filed a PRR for information about the co-chair:
Full disclosure: this is the same attorney who signed a lengthy complaint about me to the Public Disclosure Commission. A previous special edition covered a related issue (link).
So what?
My decision to look into PRRs came after all the discussion about the workload around them and the additional legal costs that fall on Clyde Hill residents.
I’m choosing to share what I found just as I have shared other analysis in order to inform the community and, ideally, have better discussions about how we can do better as a city.
As stated above, the data currently publicly available appears incomplete. To get a more complete picture, either the Administration would have to share a more comprehensive report or a resident would have to file a public records request to get the full list of PRRs.
Prop 1 at the polls
The most recent update from King County Elections suggests that Clyde Hill residents will not approve Prop 1 to change the form of government from Mayor-Council to Council-Manager.
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Dean Hachamovitch