Clyde Hill City Council Meeting Preview
A resident's guide to what's on the agenda for the city meeting this month (that you might want to ask about or offer an opinion on)
Read on to find out if you are one of the residents that the city is going to stick with responsibility for infrastructure that the city previously thought it was going to take care of.
Short version: the monthly City Council meeting happens this Tuesday 10 August at 7p. Having a speaking part is easy — see below.
Dean
What this mail is about
Below are some of the topics that this month’s city meeting will cover. If you care about any of these, this city meeting is A Place to Provide Feedback… in the absence of better mechanisms from the city for us as residents to engage them.
If you can’t find the meeting link online, tell me and I will mail it to you. That itself is feedback to them. Here’s a link to this month’s ~119 page agenda and content so you can see all the topics: https://clydehill.civicweb.net/document/15673?splitscreen=true&attachmenturl=%2Fdocument%2F15656
The newsletter I just sent out last week had a section about city meetings; I repeat that section at the end of this mail for your convenience. It includes some additional topics you could ask about if nothing from the following list holds appeal.
I’m ordering these based on what I think might be of interest to people who live here:
9.1. Discussion re: the 2021 Capital Stormwater Project.
It appears that the city is about to surprise a bunch of residents with news that the residents, not the city, are responsible for fixes that the city believes are necessary to stormwater facilities around NE 17th St and NE 17th Pl.
As the city writes, the city determined there’s a problem that needs fixing with a stormwater facility. It worked on this for eight (8) months. Suddenly, “an error was identified” — there are no stormwater easements for these facilities. The city now considers these facilities “private facilities despite the fact that they are connected to the City’s stormwater system because they lack stormwater easements.”
The city now claims “as the City does not appear to be obligated to maintain them, Staff will be abandoning this project and notifying impacted residents unless otherwise instructed by Council.”
8.2. Stormwater Utility Feasibility & Rate Study
It appears we may have a new utility bill as the city has paid a consultant for analysis of funding and rate policies for a stormwater program. The rates might be a function of lot size and what facilities you have on your lot already: “the unique character of Clyde Hill residential development may warrant a more granular approach, for example distinguishing among small, medium, large, etc. single-family residential impervious footprints.”
10.4. Police/Fire Report
This is really good news! “Significant progress was made towards WASPC accreditation as we prepare for the final level of review.… The goal is to be State Accredited by the fall of 2021.”
9.3. Paying for engineering to enable a bid for road improvement work
The city approved a Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) at the previous meeting, immediately after having a public hearing on it, which occurred a few days after the plan was made available to the public on a dark corner of the city’s website.
This motion is to fund ~$43K to turn that into a plan in order to get bids to do the work in the future.
The formal name for this item is “Consideration of a motion to authorize the Mayor to sign a Task Order with KPG to perform design engineering regarding the City’s 2022 TIP roadwork.”
10.1. Transparency
The administrator’s report for August 6, 2021 is now available as part of this monthly meeting. The formal name for this item is “Administrator's & Public Works Report.”
Please note that the city still has not published this report, or the July 30 report, or the July 16 report on its site.
A great question to ask here is “What is stopping the city from being transparent and publishing these reports consistently and in a timely manner?”
9.2. Pay for engineering to create an actual stormwater plan
The city seeks funding to develop, with experts, a plan regarding stormwater management. Not delivering a plan will (according to city) result in enforcement action by the WA State Department of Ecology.
There’s no mention here, or at previous city meetings, about the city’s missed deadlines, iteration on issues from WA State Department of Ecology on other plans, or non-compliance issues on other plans.
The formal name for this item is “Consideration of a motion to authorize the Mayor to sign a Task Order with KPG to generate scoping material for the City's Stormwater Management Action Plan.”
Unknowns
Section 6, “REPORT ON MEETINGS AND REGIONAL ITEMS OF INTEREST TO CLYDE HILL,” has very little written material. You have to listen to those reports and come back next month if you have questions or comments.
8.1 Clyde Hill Traffic Program: no idea what will happen here. No material to go off of. Listen and come back next month if you have questions or comments.
Repeat: About City Meetings
One way to think about the meeting is as a business meeting between staff (who run the City) and Council (who set policy, pass laws, and approve budget matters). There is strict, formal ritual (Robert’s Rules of Order and all that). Council discussion takes place at the Council meetings; discussion with residents takes place prior to and after meetings — Council meetings aren’t community roundtables.
For residents, the meeting is almost entirely listening and watching — except for the
“Opportunity for brief comments to the City Council about items not on the agenda for a Public Hearing…. PLEASE LIMIT YOUR RESPONSE TO 3 MINUTES PER PERSON; COMMENTS SHOULD BE MADE IN A RESPECTFUL FASHION)
NOTE TO MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC: Members of the public may only speak herein or during Public Hearings (Section 7).”
That is the opportunity you have to actually be heard and on the record. City staff can be non-responsive or refuse to meet with you; council members aren’t obligated to respond or meet with you… some of them for sure are awesome and very responsive! (There is a separate process to actually get on the agenda; I’ll write about that in a another post.)
The rest of the meeting is reports from other meetings, reports from departments within the city, and the council voting on motions. If you have a question or something doesn’t make sense to you, call or send mail later. That’s just how it works now.
The reports typically include meetings with Sound Cities Association, Metropolitan Solid Waste Management Advisory Committee, Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish Watershed, North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency (the 911 response center); departments in the city include police, finance, building permits, and public works; and motions include authorization to pay the bills and pursue planning or plans.
I strongly recommend trying this out. My first city meeting I was the only member of the public and took the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has been doing this work of keeping the city running.
If you are looking for more substantive things to ask about:
The issues that residents raise in this part of the meeting… what expectations should residents have for follow-up, and how are these issues tracked?
Meetings online are convenient especially for residents who are traveling. Is the city committed to keeping online access to meetings after pandemic restrictions are lifted?
The question at last month’s meeting about keeping a few chickens seems to have been interpreted as keeping any number of ducks, geese, or other fowl and even breeding them — is a household keeping three chickens (as compared to three dogs or three bee colonies) that complicated or contentious an issue?
The packet for the July 2021 City Council had an item, "Develop Tent City Ordinance.” In email, the city’s response about this item was that “There is no info on tent city ordinance.” That just doesn’t make sense. Please explain how a “tent city ordinance” mention got into the documents and what that ordinance might be about. (This appeared on packet page 83, “Workload 07-21,” as part of list of city projects.)
Some residents live near houses that have been unoccupied for some time. Is the city aware of issues that neighbors of these houses have and does the city track these problems?
Really, ask about anything you actually care about: the redevelopment of a lot near you that removed a half-dozen trees — are there any requirements on replacing them? Your personal experience with cars speeding on 92nd — what information is the city operating from that indicates to them that it’s actually all right?