Clyde Hill News: Police train for active shooter; also, 3 drivers with outstanding warrants arrested
Also: Preview of Tuesday’s City Council Meeting
First, the view from 14th — this was a good week to enjoy walks in our small city:
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.
Keeping Clyde Hill peaceful and quiet takes a lot of work.
“From a resident point of view” is a key theme when I sit down to write these newsletters. Public safety remains a recurring topic in recent public discussions1 about what residents appreciate and value about living here, so this week’s focus is on the Police Report in this month’s City Council Meeting packet. You can read the original full report here (link).
Training
This month is no different from other months over the past few years in terms of the intense and ongoing training that Clyde Hill Police officers engage in:
All officers, including the Chief and Lieutenant, participated in an active shooter drill training event. This training simulated a situation in which there is an active shooter present in a building, and gave officers an opportunity to train in what to do and how to respond. This is a good opportunity for officers to train and prepare for worst case scenarios in a controlled environment.
This was on top of Officer Fernandez’s 40 hours of training in defensive tactics and the Police Chief and Lieutenant attending the FBI National Academy Associates conference.
Incidents
Looking across the incident report, there were three arrests related to outstanding warrants:
Officer received… [a] Safety alert of a vehicle registered to someone with a warrant. Officers located the vehicle and contacted the driver who had a felony warrant. Warrant confirmed and subject booked into King County Jail without incident. Report for information/documentation purposes.
Officer stopped a vehicle for speeding and during the contact discovered the driver had two warrants. Driver was arrested on their warrant as well as cited for driving with a suspended license. Subject booked into Kirkland Jail without incident. Report for information/documentation purposes.
Officer pulled vehicle over for speeding and found that the driver had two warrants for their arrest. The driver was arrested for their warrant and cited for driving without a suspended license. Driver was booked into Kirkland Jail without incident.
Police also responded to four incidents at schools involving students. Clyde Hill has four schools: Clyde Hill Elementary, Chinook Middle School, Sacred Heart School, and Bellevue Christian High School.
Public safety is important to the community, and the Clyde Hill Police Department’s ongoing commitment to both training as well as day in, day out professionalism is something very easy to take for granted.
City Council Meeting Tuesday Night
Again, from a resident point of view 🙂 here are the topics likely to be of interest to residents at Tuesday night’s City Council Meeting:
Volunteers to write for Voters’ Pamphlet
King County publishes a Local Voters’ Pamphlet that contains information about measures on the ballot. This November, Clyde Hill voters will get to choose their form of government. If you have a clear opinion (either pro or con), please email cityhall@clydehill.org to volunteer to be on the committee working on the voter pamphlet. You can read the City’s posting about this opportunity here (link).
Code Enforcement
The Code Enforcement discussion has been going on since January. Late in June, the Mayor published a memo stating “City Councilmembers have all stated that they believe there is a problem with code enforcement. As Mayor, I do not, and here’s why.”
The discussion will continue Tuesday night.
At a higher level, a memo from two councilmembers offers a roadmap of next steps in the short term related to enforcement issues. Its first suggestion is “writing the [Administration’s] policy down in one place.” (link) Currently, to understand the Administration’s policy, a resident would need to find a January 2022 City Council Meeting presentation, visit the “Neighborhood Matters” page on the City’s website, and also read one of the May 2021 Administrator’s Weekly Reports.
Another document in this section (link) tries to make sense of the larger policy by looking at specific enforcement actions and choices by the Administration. For example, from the document:
In what appears to be a potential proactive enforcement, the City Administrator and Director of Public Works asked staff to follow up with a resident about new, approximately 6" tall plantings in a right of way. The Administration asked the resident about their intention in planting the vegetation.
A theme from the City Council has been “clear policy, readily available, and consistently enforced.” It’s not clear what policy, consistently enforced, results in proactively investigating 6 inch tall plantings.
17th St Stormwater Update
Progress continues on getting designs and permits and, soon, bids on work to address City stormwater drainage pipes so that residents who live near 17th no longer face flooding issues (link).
As a reminder, this problem has been going on for a long time. Here is earlier coverage of this topic from an August 2021 issue of this newsletter (link).
Early in 2022, after the City Council made its position clear, the Administration committed to take up the work. Here are some of the “before” videos, from an Administration presentation about the problem.
City Hall Renovation Update
Staff will provide an update. You can read their memo about this~$475K update here (link). It takes some digging around to find the specifics of the work; briefly, it involves “adding new office space, reconfiguring existing rooms, and providing significant audio-visual improvements in the Council Chambers to continue remote meeting options for members of Council, Staff, and the Public.” (link)
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Dean Hachamovitch
The discussions were at recent Planning Commission and City Council meetings, as part of the process of updating the City’s long-term Comprehensive Plan.