May and June News Stories from 2023

Public comment topics (ordered here by number of speakers on each topic, most to least)

• Requests for a rainbow crosswalk art work in Woodinville

• Against the Council to joining the Friends of Sammamish Valley lawsuit 

⁃ Site selection for NERTS, due in early 2024, was mentioned multiple times as the primary risk to the valley

• For the Council to join the Friends of Sammamish Valley lawsuit.

• Concern for access/safety of pedestrians crossing rainbow crosswalks (particularly mentioning those with visual issues or Parkinson’s symptoms that make walking across such items hard) 

• Councilmember Taylor confirmed the city has already met required growth in both housing and jobs growth targets until 2044 as set by the county’s growth management board.  As the next twenty year growth target will be defined in 12 to 18 months in the future he suggested we not rezoning ahead of that.  Overachieving just raises the bar set when the 2054 targets are created.  

• Councilmember Best-Campbell confirmed with staff that the commercial businesses (McLendon’s, Haight Carpet, etc) are unlikely to find a place in the proposed Mixed-Use zone.  City planning director agreed that he has never seen a commercial on-bottom, housing on-top model in practice.  He also stated that likely this area would become another set of retail storefronts like the Woodin Creek project.  Best-Campbell voiced concern that the City needs commercial spaces and businesses like those to bring in (and keep local) businesses visitors that are not purely hospitality.  

• Councilmember Arndt on seeing that the project would lead to the HWY202/175st intersection downgrading to “F” status (on a scale of A-F) lamented that she had to drive that way to reach downtown and was concerned how the traffic would be mitigated.

• Councimember/Mayor Mike Millman was notably quiet on the topic of the rezone ( See investigative post on https://www.facebook.com/groups/onewoodinville ).  He instead repeated praise for the East-rail bike corridor, bragging about its potential for commuting to Bellevue.

• Coucilmember Michelle Evans was focused on tax revenue and wanted to increase density of business and taxes from the area.

City staff will continue research on possible impacts and mitigations based on the points raised.  The next stages are expected to be formal votes in early 2024 for an update of the City’s Comprehensive Plan document by August 2024.  

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• Councilmember Best-Campbell asked staff to include an overnight storage fee in any future regulation to avoid parking-lots or park-grounds being permanently cluttered by vendors (Councilmembers Evans, Taylor and Arndt agreed this was important).

• Best-Campbell also asked City Staff to itemize how many local businesses out of all applications have been received in the last five years.  The answer is that zero local businesses have requested a vending permit, and only “1-2” requests have been made at all.

• Councilmember/mayor Mike Millman pushed for the vending program, claiming the residents of WoodinCreek (where he lives) don’t have enough recreation options.  His comments about using city funds to support the vendors was shot-down by City Staff (finance director) reminding him it would be illegal to use Parks Funds for private businesses.

• Eventual vote on the resolution was 6-1 with Best-Campbell voicing opposition based on a desire to keep parks open and non-commercial.

Following the vote, all external committees are now staffed by the same block of four councilmembers: Millman, Randolph, Arndt, or (Michelle)Evans 

• Ziply Fiber owes the city $60,000 in fines for failing to complete the build out of cable-tv infrastructure.  That contract will end in September and they will disconnect the 31 households that purchased the Cable services.  The council debated how much to trust Ziply’s claim they would expand Internet access if the fines were forgiven and city code changed to allow a cheaper fiber installation method.  

• Ziply has specifically stated they will not commit to expanding fiber to all households in Woodinville.

• Council voted to reject the proposed settlement (particularly the cheap, unproven installation method) and directed Staff to continue negotiations or collections.

Replacing the city inspector’s truck

• The “indefinite” delay on a hybrid vehicle ordered in February means the city needs to purchase either a $45k gasoline only truck or a $72k F150-Lightning.  

• Debate centered on the charging infrastructure - although the chargers were budgeted for in the 2023-2024 biennium they are too expensive and unavailable at this time.  City Staff proposes a trickle charger is used for the EV at this time.

• Council agreed 7-0 to exceed the budget for this vehicle (~$7200 over budget).  

• In a voting statement Best-Campbell reminded council that they have exceeded budget on multiple recent projects (at least ~250k already) and that the Green Partners Development agreement forced the city to spend 4.8M on a roundabout - also not in the budget.  Although City of Woodinville has reserves, these were accumulated over 20 years of careful spending and are now being tapped frequently.

 Executive Session (presumably on the topic of the Friends of Sammamish Valley lawsuit against King County)

• In the July 21st meeting this session was requested after public comments asking the city to join in the lawsuit.  

• The deadline for signing onto the lawsuit was stated to be September 11, 2023. 

• The Council took no vote after the executive session

• The next Council meeting is after the deadline - thus a majority of the seven councilmembers chose not to join the suit.  As this was an executive session, the deliberations, logic, and voting position behind the choice are unknown.