Clyde Hill News This Week #3

An experiment in distilling information from the city's weekly Administrator’s Report

Welcome to the third issue of what is slowly evolving into a weekly newsletter about what’s going on and how things work in the City of Clyde Hill. The premise — distilling information from the city’s weekly Administrator’s Report — relies on the city posting that report:

The city has not yet posted last week’s much less this week’s, so I’m going ahead with other content. This week: anti-police graffiti, your invitation to next week’s city meeting, roadwork, and a storm water update.

Context: A Feedback Loop

Over the last year, I've worked to get a better understanding of what the city does as well as how and why. I’m trying to distill this information and make city government easier to understand and interact with. The whole point is to get a feedback loop started. So, please tell me what you think. Below, I emphasize calls to action like this. In general, my understanding is that cityhall@clydehill.org is the starting point of choice for interaction with the city.

As a reminder to new readers, I’m running for Clyde Hill City Council because after the last year of learning and engaging on these topics, I really want to help City government get better at informing and listening to residents. We all win when that happens.

King County is still processing and counting ballots for the August 3 primary. Looks like the November ballot will have me and John Schwanger (link). While it’s not clear what the final numbers are, it is super clear (link) that every vote counts.

Thank you!

Dean Hachamovitch
www.votefordeanh.com

Anti-Police Graffiti

Short version: city not doing much at all about anti-police graffiti… by design.

Here’s a photo from July 27th on 96th Ave NE near Chinook Middle School of a utility box with ‘ACAB’ and other graffiti:

I sent the photo in email to the city and heard this back:

A few thoughts:

1. City government should be about more than ritual. They performed the ritual of doing the minimum: sending email and recording that they’ve done what’s required.

2. This example is not isolated or unique. An example from last week: performing ritual (sending out a few postcards, posting on the website) rather than actually reaching out and communicating effectively to residents. An example from the week before: performing ritual (tell a resident they will consider feedback, then send internal memo saying ‘we are doing nothing because the last time we did anything it was contentious’).

3. No, this is not a tragedy or crisis. I think it does not reflects well on our city.

For what it’s worth, I asked a few questions in response:

1. What are the city’s expectations for when PSE addresses the graffiti? What is the city’s recourse if PSE doesn’t address in a timely way? (not yet answered)

2. What are the penalties if some resident goes ahead and paints over the graffiti? (asking for clarification because the answer was a lot of “might be”’s)

Please consider telling the city how you want it to respond to public graffiti not on city property as well as reporting graffiti to see if this experience was just a bad week or the expected baseline.

August Meeting

Short version: monthly City Council meeting on Tuesday 10 August at 7p. Information packets are not yet available. Meeting link here, meeting information here. Having a speaking part is easy — see below.

One way to think about the meeting is as a business meeting between staff (who run the City) and Council (who set policy, pass laws, and approve budget matters). There is strict, formal ritual (Robert’s Rules of Order and all that). Council discussion takes place at the Council meetings; discussion with residents takes place prior to and after meetings — Council meetings aren’t community roundtables.

For residents, the meeting is almost entirely listening and watching — except for the

Opportunity for brief comments to the City Council about items not on the agenda for a Public Hearing…. PLEASE LIMIT YOUR RESPONSE TO 3 MINUTES PER PERSON; COMMENTS SHOULD BE MADE IN A RESPECTFUL FASHION)
NOTE TO MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC: Members of the public may only speak herein or during Public Hearings (Section 7).

That is the opportunity you have to actually be heard and on the record. City staff can be non-responsive or refuse to meet with you; council members aren’t obligated to respond or meet with you… some of them for sure are awesome and very responsive!

The rest of the meeting is reports from other meetings, reports from departments within the city, and the council voting on motions. If you have a question or something doesn’t make sense to you, call or send mail later. That’s just how it works now.

The reports typically include meetings with Sound Cities Association, Metropolitan Solid Waste Management Advisory Committee, Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish Watershed, North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency (the 911 response center); departments in the city include police, finance, building permits, and public works; and motions include authorization to pay the bills and pursue planning or plans.

I strongly recommend trying this out. My first city meeting I was the only member of the public and took the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has been doing this work of keeping the city running.

If you are looking for more substantive things to ask about:

1. The issues that residents raise in this part of the meeting… what expectations should residents have for follow-up, and how are these issues tracked?

2. Meetings online are convenient especially for residents who are traveling. Is the city committed to keeping online access to meetings after pandemic restrictions are lifted?

3. The question at last month’s meeting about keeping a few chickens seems to have been interpreted as keeping any number of ducks, geese, or other fowl and even breeding them — is a household keeping three chickens (as compared to three dogs or three bee colonies) that complicated or contentious an issue?

4. The packet for the July 2021 City Council had an item, "Develop Tent City Ordinance.” In email, the city’s response about this item was that “There is no info on tent city ordinance.” That just doesn’t make sense. Please explain how a “tent city ordinance” mention got into the documents and what that ordinance might be about. (This appeared on packet page 83, “Workload 07-21,” as part of list of city projects.)

5. Some residents live near houses that have been unoccupied for some time. Is the city aware of issues that neighbors of these houses have and does the city track these problems?

Really, ask about anything you actually care about: the redevelopment of a lot near you that removed a half-dozen trees — are there any requirements on replacing them? Your personal experience with cars speeding on 92nd — what information is the city operating from that indicates to them that it’s actually all right?

Transparency

This section of the meeting is also your chance to comment on what the city is going to discuss later in the meeting. The good news is that the city typically posts Council Meeting packets sometime on Friday afternoon — you have all of Saturday Sunday Monday and part of Tuesday to read through a few hundred pages to see if there’s anything you care about :(

By the way, try to find the information for attending this meeting and the council packets on your own. This is not yet easy :(

Roadwork

If you found just the right spot on the city’s website, you will already know that

“Starting Monday, August 9th, there will be overlays performed in the following locations:

18th St between 94th Ave and 98th Ave
25th Pl Cul De Sac
Northeast Clyde Hill (see attached)”

Stormwater Management, Part 2

Short version: I made a mistake about a date / typo. Also, the City didn’t share any of the problems with the ecology plan publicly.

Context. Last week’s newsletter reported that “the plan Clyde Hill submitted to the Washington State Department of Ecology was non-compliant… on issues of communication with residents in the community.” I think that counts as irony.

(As a reminder about why we (as residents) care: without proper drainage, stormwater can flood and damage homes and yards. Without proper care, what we let wash into stormwater can damage or destroy fish and wildlife habitat. We don’t want the run-off from washing cars, or dog waste, to go back into nature untreated along stormwater. City of Seattle has a nice write-up here.)

My mistake. I wrote “Here’s the letter that accompanied the revised (after state feedback) report. This letter is dated May 2021; I believe the 2020 in the letter body is a typo.” Turns out that the 2020 in the letter is correct; I have voicemail from a State Department of Ecology person that “it is a little confusing” and that the information in the report is for the previous year. Sorry about that.

Transparency. I couldn’t find reference to any problems or non-compliance with the stormwater plan in the monthly council meeting notes or the Administrator’s weekly reports. For example, the May 11 Public Works report (from this packet) is about the tennis courts and repairs to the public works shop and the Administrator report doesn’t mention it either.

We may have another update on this glamorous topic because I ran across the following and no, the sections referred to as “below” in this document aren’t in the document. 🤦

Lots more documents here

I’d like you to consider how understanding and patient the City would be with you if your filings with them had these issues.