Clyde Hill News: May City Council Meeting Preview
Expect another long meeting
First, a photo from my travels last week… in honor of Mother’s Day, pizza from the place I used to go to as a kid with my mom:
I offer this as apology and explanation for the light newsletter coverage over the last week or so. The Pacific Northwest is stunning in its beauty — and the best pizza is in the Bronx.
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.
Tomorrow night, the City will hold its regular City Council Meeting. You can see the full agenda here (link).
From a resident’s point of view, here’s what to expect:
Hybrid (in-person & remote) Meetings
The gist of Ordinance #982 is to enable Clyde Hill to continue remote access to meetings as Washington State transitions back to in-person meetings.
Previously, a State emergency ordinance required public meetings to be held remotely. With that emergency proclamation recently rescinded, Clyde Hill’s meetings would have been “in person only” because Clyde Hill’s Municipal Code “does not explicitly empower meetings to be held in a hybrid-fashion (providing for a physical meeting location but enabling remote attendance and participation).” (link)
The Council will vote on changing the Municipal Code to enable remote access to meetings to continue as meetings return to being in person.
Changes to Plan for Comprehensive Plan
The plan for this plan might be changing, again.
This is important, so I’m mentioning it up front here — and there is enough material that I’m writing about it in detail below.
One motivation to pay attention here: the Mayor and Administration asked for and received approval for $100K for this year to hire an outside consultant to lead this work. (The latest budget snapshot is over $162K, looking out past the end of the year. This appears to be the first public notice of increased cost.) (link)
As part of the previous plan to deliver the Comprehensive Plan, the Planning Commission reviewed five chapters of Clyde Hill’s building code including 17.48 (link) about pools. These chapters are heading back to the City Council on Tuesday.
If this is confusing to you, then you are tracking it perfectly.
Budget
For the last few years, the City’s expenditures have exceeded its revenue. Also, for the last few years of budget planning, there has been no public discussion of the City’s plan for what work will happen during the year ahead. (Details in this Council memo from April, link.)
This discussion is supposed to be about dates and process for next year’s budget. It’s possible that the discussion might touch on the issues above as well.
17th St Stormwater
The Administration has shared a rough timeline for these repairs. My understanding is that the publication of this document was the first that affected residents have heard of the timelines. (link)
And the rest…
Discussion re WSDOT Lid negotiations. This one is a bit of a mystery based on the included public documents. All that the public can tell is that the Points Communities (Clyde Hill, Yarrow Point, Hunts Point, and Medina) agreed in 2016 to hire a negotiator to represent them all in discussions with Washington’s Department of Transportation regarding maintenance agreements for facilities related to 520 (ex the bus stop at 92nd Ave and 520). We will all find out more tomorrow.
Facilities. Following the recent presentation from Bellevue Fire about the new fire station, the City has provided multiple options for a parking lot on 24th for the space between the fire station to come and City Hall. Not clear why this is being discussed on Tuesday given that all this work is far off in the future. (link)
Minutes from the May 25, 2021 Special City Council Meeting about the Flag Code. These are summary notes (minutes) from a meeting about a year ago. They were not made public until now. This meeting is notable because it appears to be the last public discussion of the Flag Code “debacle” (the Administration’s term) last year. (link)
Your Tax Dollars at Work: The Comprehensive Plan Plan
Cities in Washington need to update their Comprehensive Plan about every eight years. Clyde Hill’s most recent plan is from 2015 (link). As the City writes in its most recent memo about its Comprehensive Plan update (link):
Work on the Comprehensive Plan Update will also have a direct bearing on work needing to be performed on the Land Use Code. This is a direct result of the State requirement that the two documents cannot be out of alignment. This means that once their Comprehensive Plans have been updated, every city in the State will need to review and, where needed, amend their Land Use Codes. These two processes are not small in scope, nor are they optional.
Going into 2021, the City Administration planned for a review of its Land Use Codes (also known as Title 17) by the Planning Commission. Title 17 had not been reviewed in some time; the goal was to get a “head start” on the Comprehensive Plan. The Planning Commission, however, did not meet again after its April 2021 session involving the Flag Code. This was Plan 1. Clearly, it didn’t happen.
Going into 2022, the City Administration had the same plan, just a year later, with no Flag Code, and with additional detail about the sequence of chapters in Title 17. The Administration expressed urgency in reconfirming a sitting Planning Commissioner (because there was so much work for the Planning Commission to do) and in hiring a consultant to lead the Comprehensive Plan effort. That was Plan 2.
The consultant is now under contract. The City has paid it about $25,000 so far. There’s a ten page scope of work document (link). The Planning Commission reviewed its first Title 17 Chapters in April.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Administration will provide an update and discussion. It’s not clear, from the public materials, if the Title 17 work will continue as previously planned or if that work will be scaled back or put on hold as the Comprehensive Plan work proceeds. We will find out.
Part of delivering the comprehensive plan is public participation. The Administration does not have much of a system in place today to do this in Clyde Hill. The outside consultant has delivered a 16 page document (link) about how listening to Clyde Hill residents will work. The consultant and Administration will present the plan to the Council on Tuesday.
Public participation is a great goal. Some bits of the plan remain, to me as a resident, confusing. For example, I’m not sure what it means to
Actively seek out and engage community groups and populations that are historically under-represented in traditional planning processes
here in Clyde Hill. Other than people who served on the Planning Commission or City Council, I’m not sure who has been represented in the planning process historically.
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Dean Hachamovitch