Clyde Hill News: April Study Session Preview
Budget! Also: Planning Commission to meet next week
Spring is finally, gorgeously here. Here’s a photo I took while walking the dog around the neighborhood in Clyde Hill this week:
From a resident’s point of view, a brief take below on the two public meetings the City has planned for next week.
One more item before our disclaimer: 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.
Study Session
Candidly, there’s a lot of “minutiae and detailed inner workings of a system that are only interesting to, or appreciated by, experts, insiders, and aficionados,” or inside baseball (link), this week.
Budget
The agenda item concerning Clyde Hill’s Budget Process is not inside baseball. You can read the memo here (link). The gist:
There was effectively no discussion of the City’s planned work for 2022 during the budget process or at City Council meetings last year.
There has been little discussion of the City’s practice of running a deficit. Planned expenditures exceeded planned revenue for its 2022, 2021, and 2020 operating (General Fund) budgets. The City’s planned budget was balanced using the General Fund surplus from the previous year.
There has been little discussion of whether the budget is “plan” or “permission.” Historically, the Projects Fund’s budgeted expenditures are never realized.
Title 2
The discussion about Title 2 (referring to Chapter 2 of Clyde Hill’s Municipal Code (link)) is a bit of inside baseball. In Clyde Hill, the appointment of the City Administrator
“by the Mayor is not currently subject to confirmation by the City Council in Clyde Hill. In nearly all the other Mayor-Council cities in King County, this appointment is subject to confirmation by the City Council.” (link)
Council / Planning Commission workflow and calendar.
The context for this discussion is last year’s Flag Code “debacle” (to borrow a description from a January email (link) from the Administration).
In 2021, the City Council directed Staff to prepare a flag code for Clyde Hill and referred the matter to the Planning Commission (link). After a long and contentious public hearing process, the Council voted against what the Planning Commission returned to it. The City (and its residents) expended much time, money, and energy with no apparent result.
One point of view on these events is that the Planning Commission did a great job with what it was asked to do — the Commission was just given poor guidance and direction.1
In public meetings, Cm Friedman has pushed the Administration to provide better guidance to the Planning Commission this time through. In public meetings, the City Administrator has been firm about the guidance already going to the Planning Commission. The item on the agenda is to discuss this matter.
Rules & Guidelines
The Council Rules & Procedures Committee item is very inside baseball. The gist is that “City councils are authorized by statute or charter to determine their own rules and order of business and to establish formal rules for the conduct of council meetings.” (link) Medina has a great one (link). Clyde Hill’s City Council is developing its own.
Planning Commission
Later this week the Planning Commission will hold Public Hearings seeking feedback on five chapters of Clyde Hill’s building code, or Title 17. You can read the packet here (link). Here are the proposed changes to the chapters that will be discussed:
The Planning Commission will also discuss the plans for public participation in the Comprehensive Plan Update. You can read more about that here (link).
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Dean Hachamovitch