Clyde Hill News: Administration seeks $35K for consultant to prepare “middle housing ordinance”
Also: Clyde Hill PD to get body cams; property tax limit hike abandoned; gas-powered leaf blowers restrictions considered
Clyde Hill’s administration will seek the city council’s approval to pay $35,000 to a consultant to draft new city laws to permit “middle housing.” Middle housing “refers to those housing types between single-family residences and mid-rise, multi-family development” (link):
The consultant is the same one the administration has paid ~$200,000 so far to work on the city’s troubled Comprehensive Plan project (link).
Additional detail about this topic, possible restrictions on gas-powered leaf blowers, body cameras for Clyde Hill’s police officers, and more, below.
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. City 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.
Troubled outsourcing
The short version: Clyde Hill needs to revise its land use code to permit more than just single family residences in the city in order to comply with new housing laws in Washington State.
How and when the city goes about doing this is on the city council’s agenda next week. The administration is seeking council approval for a $35,000 contract. This contract is with the same firm that has worked on the city’s troubled Comprehensive Plan project for the past few years.
“Don't hate the player; hate the game”
The $35,000 contract to work on this problem conveniently lines up with the $35,000 grant Clyde Hill recently accepted from the Department of Commerce “to support the adoption of local comprehensive plan policies and zoning codes to allow more middle housing in residential neighborhoods.” (link)
Last year, state lawmakers enacted changes that require Clyde Hill and many other Washington cities to permit multiple dwellings on each lot. The city council requested a list of state legislative mandates that Clyde Hill needs to act on; you can see this list here, link.
The specifics of local land use regulations and permitting are up to each city. The state made grant funds available to help cities and towns like Clyde Hill meet the new requirements. Some residents have expressed consternation at what they see as less than effective outsourcing by the administration; for more context, see “Two years, $200K, and no clear plan” (link).
Double dipping?
The newly proposed contract includes $8,750 to do work that appears to have already happened as part of the same consultant’s Comprehensive Plan work:
Over $16,000 of the contract provides public engagement and outreach to the community, including a survey and educational materials. The goals and specifics of the survey and materials are still to be determined. For context, residents noted several concerns with the administration’s most recent community survey: anyone (not just residents) could respond to the survey, and any person could submit multiple survey responses without limit (link). The administration’s response at the time was:
This survey was never intended to be statistically valid and we all need to look at the results, I think, with a certain amount of… grain of salt….
The remaining $10,000 in the contract covers actually drafting the ordinance. There is no information in the packet about why Clyde Hill’s ordinance would need to be any different from the ordinances that Medina, Yarrow Point, or Hunts Point also need to develop.
Consent agenda
In a puzzling move, city administration placed the proposed contract on the “consent agenda.” The consent agenda is typically reserved for items that need no discussion, such as approving meeting minutes or paying uncontroversial bills.
Body cameras for police, and more
Also on the agenda at Tuesday night’s city council meeting:
“Staff recommends that City Council authorize the Chief of Police to purchase Body Worn Cameras for the police officers to wear on duty. The purchase of Body Worn Cameras was approved in the 2024 budget process.” (link)
The draft agenda for the city’s planing retreat is available here, link. Consternation is a nice word for what some residents have expressed to me about the document. I had not seen the agenda before, and I am struggling to make sense of the document. A previous newsletter (link) has some additional context.
The city’s plans for a storm water utility continue to move forward: “Staff recommends that City Council authorize the Mayor to execute the Inter Local Agreement with King County for utility billing services” (link). The actual proposed “Stormwater Utility Rate Structure” will “be provided on 2/12/24.”
The council will consider some recommendations from its Land Use Committee (link), including whether “residents can expect that what they read in the municipal code will be enforced, and any policies enforced will be written and publicly available.”
Whether Clyde Hill should consider limits on “Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers” (link) is also on the agenda. Medina and Kirkland, among other nearby communities, have acted on resident feedback about the noise of gas-powered equipment and put forward plans to phase them out.
Whether “keeping of fowl” in Clyde Hill should remain against the law is on the agenda (link). Some residents asked the city to reconsider this restriction and follow other cities in permitting chickens (but not “roosters, ducks, geese, turkeys, or other domestic or wild fowls”).
Property tax hike limit; other state laws
“Washington’s cap on annual property tax increases will stay the way it is, for now,” according to MyNorthwest (link). This newsletter recently wrote about the proposal to raise the limit on property tax increases (link). State lawmakers have abandoned that effort, at least for this legislative term. “My neighbors changed my mind,” said one of the bill’s co-sponsors, according to The Seattle Times (link).
Another proposed bill that was also recently abandoned involved overriding local regulations about minimum lot sizes in Clyde Hill and other cities (link).
Other bills that state lawmakers are still considering include one that would “require every city and town in the state to permit the operation of a neighborhood cafe in a residential zone” (link). Another bill that would require local authorities to permit boardinghouses (now known as “co-living” or “micro-apartments” or “single room occupancy”), HB 1998, passed the House, 96-0, on February 7, according to the Sightline Institute (link).
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Dean Hachamovitch