Two important City of Kirkland surveys are open right now, giving us a great opportunity to push for a more walkable and vibrant city:

First, the City is gathering input on Neighborhood Stores & Services Code Amendments to allow small-scale commercial uses (like corner stores and neighborhood cafes) in residential areas, alongside updates for home-based businesses. Bringing everyday amenities closer to where people live is critical for creating complete, walkable communities. Take the survey by September 18th!

Second, the City has launched its biennial Community Survey, open through August 31st, which directly informs City Council's priorities as they prepare the 2027–2028 biennial budget.

Take a few minutes to complete both and ensure our shared vision for sustainable, connected, and human-scale growth is reflected in Kirkland’s planning!

Tool Library

City staff presented the city’s progress on setting up a tool library in Kirkland. After some discussion, the council directed staff to pursue an agreement between the city and the Eastside Tool Collective to open the tool library at the Former Firestation 27, which is currently underused but will likely be needed by the city eventually. The vote was 5-2 with Mayor Curtis, Deputy Mayor Black, and Councilmembers Arnold, Falcone, and Prem voting yes and Councilmembers Pascal and Tymczyszyn voting no.

The City had previously encouraged interested community members to connect and work together at the March 31st information gathering session at City Hall. Nonetheless, Councilmembers Pascal and Tymczyszyn objected on the basis that the city had received a single proposal. Deputy Mayor Black addressed those comments saying: “We don’t always have the benefit of multiple RFPs. With EasTrail, with the [Kirkland] Community Foundation, they were the organizations that stepped forward to deliver on the goals and objectives to deliver community benefits… sometimes you do just get one response and when that happens you evaluate that response on its merits.”

While she was voicing support for community members volunteering their time to get the tool library going, Councilmember Tymczyszyn interrupted Mayor Curtis to express his frustration at the Mayor speaking last, despite that being the City Council’s normal procedure.

Housing on Faith Owned Land

Staff presented the proposed zoning updates that would allow for more homes to be built on properties owned by Faith organizations if more affordable housing is provided than a typical development. Staff was seeking feedback on the overall approach before the Planning Commission holds a public hearing on August 27th.

All Councilmembers who spoke on the topic were supportive of staff’s approach, which primarily works by allowing the development standards of the “next zone up” to be used, i.e. by applying medium density zoning to low density zone parcels. Most faith-owned properties are in either low or medium density zones, and these zones frequently border each other.

Staff proposed allowing different mixes of affordability targets for units, and allowing extra height for projects that provide more affordable units than strictly required. The exact numbers for this have not been determined, but Councilmembers were generally in favor of the ideas.

BLOXHUB Visioning in Totem Lake

Staff presented an overview of the outreach and visioning work that BLOXHUB performed in partnership with the City and the local community in the Totem Lake Southern Industrial Subarea. Most of the discussion was focused on what the city should do next. The City’s most recent Comprehensive Plan calls for a full Subarea Plan to be developed. While BLOXHUB’s work did support some of the goals of the Subarea Plan, a lot of questions remain to be answered, and this requires time and money.

Councilmember Pascal, who was the primary advocate of the Subarea Plan concept, expressed support for the process to continue as planned. Responding to a letter than Council received, he pressed Planning and Building Director Weinstein to confirm that the City Council had not directed Staff to limit where housing might be allowed here. The original Community Amendment Request in the area asked for permission to build 1,200 homes on five parcels. The City was working towards considering this, and even extending a zoning change to more parcels, but then the focus changed to developing a Subarea Plan. While housing has not been formally ruled out anywhere in the Subarea, much of the discussion from Councilmembers (including Pascal in particular) has been focused on preserving the commercial and industrial capacity of the neighborhood. Preserving other uses will absolutely limit how much housing can be built, though balance is possible.

Councilmember Prem asked what would speed up or extend the timeline. It will largely come down to the location and level of housing the City Council wants to allow, according to Director Weinstein. Deputy Mayor Black and Mayor Curtis expressed support for continuing on the full sub area plan, calling for a thorough approach to planning the future of this area.

Councilmember Arnold, on the other hand, called for a more narrowed scope, asking for the City to decide where to allow housing and then focus on those places. Councilmember Falcone supported breaking up the work into smaller parts as well.

It’s notable that Councilmember Tymczyszyn did not make any comments. In the past, he has stressed the importance of working with developers so that housing gets built this decade, rather than developing plans that look nice on paper. The re-zoning process for the Michael’s and Goodwill sites in Juanita (which were prompted by property owners) is a recent example of something he supported. The City’s work in the Southern Industrial Subarea was also prompted by a rezoning request from property owners, and yet no zoning changes have been made since the process started in 2022. The Subarea Plan process is currently expected to take all of 2027, and it’s unknown how much it will actually focus on housing supply.

Legislative Request Memos (LRMs)

Deputy Mayor Black and Councilmembers Arnold and Pascal proposed an LRM asking the city to explore options for allowing a shared micromobility program for e-scooters, e-gliders, and e-bikes (like Lime bikes) within Kirkland because neighboring cities including Bothell, Woodinville, Redmond, and Bellevue all already have or are starting to allow Lime bikes.

Councilmember Prem proposed an LRM asking staff to provide options for requiring use of bike helmets when riding a bike, e-bike, e-scooter or similar vehicle, citing national statistics showing large increases in emergency room visits for e-bike and e-scooter related injuries among children from 2023 to 2026.

Councilmembers Falcone and Pascal proposed an LRM in response to community feedback which would explore two code amendments within the Holmes Point Overlay. The first would expand the ability to remove trees (to a level similar to what’s allowed elsewhere in the city). The second would adjust lot splitting regulations to facilitate middle housing development.

Urban Forestry Management Plan

Staff will present more information about the update to the Urban Forest Management Plan. The discussion will be focused on the results of a recent survey on the topic, and answering some questions from City Council and the Planning Commission.

The outcome of this discussion and plan is likely to be high level, because this is a policy document rather than an implementation plan. At the start of the update, the City Council set the scope to be a relatively small update focusing on incorporating updated data, science, and conditions.

You can read the staff memo here for the full list of policy recommendations and answers to questions.

Do you know what to do if you see ICE in our community? Indivisible Eastside has partnered with other groups to develop training for this, and will be hosting an in-person training in Kirkland for the first time next week.

Wednesday, August 12
7 – 8:30pm
Register for address:
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleeastside/event/982569/

Join Liveable Kirkland in a conversation about our city’s present and future! We have an active community on Discord and Facebook and we’d love it if you joined in too : )

(And if you add a picture you took to #photos on Discord it might get featured in next week’s issue!)