Clyde Hill News: Points communities top WA city rankings
Also: Planning Commission recommends adopting Comp Plan; police report domestic violence arrest
Yarrow Point and Clyde Hill topped a recent article about “Best suburbs of Seattle.” The Stacker.com article also included neighboring Medina at position 14.
Thursday night, the city’s Planning Commission “voted to accept the draft Comprehensive Plan” and recommended it “to the City Council for consideration and adoption,” according to the Administrator’s Weekly Report (link).
More details about next steps around the Comprehensive Plan and what else to expect at next week’s City Council meeting below, after the disclaimer.
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.
Comprehensive Plan
After two years and $260,000 of expenditures, residents can review a draft of the city’s Comprehensive Plan (link).
For context, the Comprehensive Plan is a high-level framework or “roadmap, guiding the city’s growth and development” (link), according to the 113-page document.
State law requires Clyde Hill and many other cities in Washington “to adopt a 20-year Comprehensive Plan every 10 years.” (link)
The plan (link) describes “goals and policies” across several required and recommended “elements” such as Land Use, Housing, and Transportation. For example, here are a goal and policy from the “Housing” element:
Restricting what residents can build: “eleventh hour addition”
The Planning Commission voted to add a new city policy “protecting existing views from impairment caused by new construction” as part of the Natural Environment element in the draft Comprehensive Plan.
The new proposed policy is called out in this draft document (link, pages 8 and 12) from the Planning Commission’s meeting last week.
In a public comment via email, a resident called this an “eleventh hour addition” to the Comprehensive Plan, claiming that “there has been no demand from residents to consider the impact of new construction on views.”
Next steps
City staff will host a “Community Open House to present the draft plan and discuss racially disparate impacts with respect to housing” (link) on June 13th from 6:30 - 8:00pm.
The next week, on June 20th, the city plans an “in-depth review of the draft Comprehensive Plan/ study session with City Council.” According to another city memo:
“Staff recommends submitting the draft plan for comment from outside agencies in late June, and no later than late July.”
It’s not clear how this timeline allows for changes to the plan to reflect any resident or council feedback.
Police blotter for May; other council meeting business
May’s police blotter is available here (link) as part of the city council packet. Police incidents this month included:
An arrest and booking in response to a domestic violence call.
Six assists by Clyde Hill PD to outside agencies (Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond) using the department’s drone.
Eleven reports of mailbox-related incidents.
Other topics also on the agenda at next week’s city council meeting include the following; you can see all the meeting packet material here (link).
Development Regulations
Public discussion of the backlog and slow progress on updating land use related code has been going on for about a year now. The latest document offers some specific options for the city council to consider.
Middle Housing
One specific “development regulation” Clyde Hill needs to update involves “Middle Housing.” Last week’s newsletter (link) offered detail on the issue. The meeting packet offers no additional details at this time.
Budget
A document in the council meeting packet (link) offers details about revising and refining how the “Budget Advisory Committee” (residents who volunteer to provide feedback about the city budget) will work this year.
Transportation Improvement Plan
This plan is the basis for next “year’s budget requests for street and sidewalk improvements.” (link) Basically, it’s the list of planned road repairs and sidewalk improvements (link).
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Dean Hachamovitch