May and June News Stories from 2023

In Spring 2023, HB1110 passed in the WA legislature and was signed into law on May 8th.  It overrides city zoning and forces the option of duplexes on all Woodinville lots regardless of sewer services.  

Each year, Woodinville City Council takes part in a day of lobbying in  Olympia to advocate for the City's priorities (as approved by council  vote).  For the first time ever, this council limited the delegation size to only three members; all neighboring cities send their full councils.  

Mike Millman, James Randolph, and Sarah Arndt met legislators but failed to speak to the city's top priority - local zoning control and an HB1110  exemption for areas on septic.  Other councilmembers, excluded from the lobbying trip were frustrated at both Olympia and the Council delegation. [Video ]

Planning Commission resumes review of the "Green Partners" development agreement on May 24th @ 7pm in City Hall.  "Green Partners" is the billionaire backed LLC redeveloping ~20 acres of downtown Woodinville including the land where Molbak's store is currently located.

A "Developer Agreement" (or DA) like this is the legal contract allowing the developer to have additional height (up to 75 feet on the eastern portion of the site) and profit enhancing changed beyond the standard building code.  

In theory the developer is providing back at least 1% of the total project value as "public benefits" to the City.  In practice the list of those benefits and calculation of the value is always a matter of negotiation. 

Current benefits to the developer include the ability to locking (vest) to current building code for ten years and that the city will spend ~4.5M (70% of total cost) on a new road that enables Green Partners to build out the site.  

Details on what the DA will offer to the City remain unclear.  The agreement will heavily depend on a new MFTE (multi-family tax exemption) ordinance that council continues to debate.  MFTEs laws usually grant the land owner year os waived property tax for defining a % (state laws says 20%+) of the rental units as affordable.  

The claimed benefits in the DA cite 120 affordable units (less than 10% of the projected 1210 total rental units).  The loophole being exploited is that the units will be limited to just two of the five building phases (so that they are over 20% per phase) - meaning the developer will have 3 pure market-price phases.  Additional benefits to the City remain undetermined.

After meeting update:  

Staff and Mike Millman (who attended and spoke in both public comments and the Public hearing) leaned HARD on Planning Commission to just pass the agreement despite a large unknowns around affordability.   

[Background: Council is still actively debating the MFTE that is referenced in the agreement, so Planning Commission can not know what they actually recommended.]

There were minor changes to add a requirement for LEED certification (vs optional) and a change ~5000 sqft of open-space to be a community garden, but the agreement is now only pending a Council vote.

Agenda has two business items:

#7 - Council to evaluate new options for trestle (rail-road bridge) replacement.  At previous meeting proposed design was disliked by all councilmembers (“ugly”, “rust colored”, “like the Berlin Wall”). 

#8 - Council to debate (maybe vote on) a 12 year tax wavier asked for by Green Partners (the billionaire backed LLC redeveloping Molbak’s property).  They propose to build affordable units in only two of their five phases creating just 9.9% affordable of total units (despite state law requiring 20% affordable for such a tax break).  

Agenda packet: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/woodinville/409bc46b1f4d434fc58fa1f42e3f33540.pdf

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Meetings are streamed on the City website and TV, Comcast channel 21.

Public Comments (three minutes each) are accepted in person at the start and end of the meeting.  Virtual comments can be made via pre-registration (see the city’s webpage for instructions).

Additionally the Council always accepts email at: citycouncil@ci.woodinville.wa.us

Summary:     ["JusttheVotes" in 4 minutes]

     Council gave a 12yr, ~$24 Million residential property tax exemption  (the highest possible) to Green Partners LLC for the minimum possible number of affordable units. Also no Community Gardens, that 5000 sqft  couldn't be fit into the 150,000 required open space. 

All votes taken were 5-2, splitting as follows:

• Mike Millman, James Randolph, Sarah Arndt, Michelle Evans, and  Lester Rubstello 
• Rachel Best-Campbell and Al Taylor 

From the the analysis files posted above, it is known that a base 10% of all units with the 12 year MFTE to Green Partners LLC  would have created 185 affordable units not the 128 resulted from the meeting  (57 fewer).

Key portions of the meeting:

     Green Partners LLC was given a time slot at the start of the meeting to pitch themselves.  This is unusual as normally “Special Presentations” are from other government agencies giving updates important to Woodinville.   Councilmember Rachel Best-Campbell made a motion to re-order the agenda so that Green Partners LLC would present after the staff report.  The motion was rejected by other councilmembers (voice vote only, unclear who voted how).

Public comments summary:

     Two in favor of more affordability (Alex Campbell and Shengquan Liang); Two regarding improved bridge designs (Steve Yabrof and Kevin Stadler); One in favor of Green Partners LLC (head of chamber of commerce); One in favor of Steve Yabrof being re-appointed to Planning Commission (Gary Harris)

Multi-Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) ordinance

      MFTE allows a Developer to pay zero residential property tax for a given number of year on the entire building where MFTE is approved.

     The ordinance as proposed was:

• 8 Year MFTE now requiring only 10% of units (decreased from 12%) be affordable at a 50%AMI (decreased from 65%)
• 12 Year MFTE options was created with first 10% at 65%AMI and second 10% at 85% AMI for a total of 20% of units (state law requires a 20% minimum for 12 years)

     Councilmember Rachel Best-Campbell made a motion to amend the minimum level of affordability for an 8 year MFTE to 15% of units (an increase from 10%).  This was voted down 5-2: https://youtu.be/3bCG_H72pNk

     Councilmember Rachel Best-Campbell made a second motion to amend the ordinance to set a base 10% affordability in all new downtown construction.  This was rejected on a technicality because was more than a taxation change (which is all that MFTE is).   

     Council did not take up Al Taylor's suggestion to delay for a comprehensive affordable housing plan including base land-use requirements.

Green Partners LLC Development Agreement

     The agreement involves a five phase development with 75 foot height along the eastern sides (phase 1) which will include a new Molbak's store space.  Phase 1 will have zero affordable units.  Other phases will be built across the 19 acre site.  An extension of the Garden Way will complete the grid-road north/south and interior roads will also be built.  As part of the grid-road connection the city is committed fund 80% of a round-about on the south end.  This is a ~$4.8 million dollar charge to the city budget and will be deducted on the developer's schedule not the city's.

   Green Partners LLC pushed for the 12 year MFTE to be created in order to exempt all residential property tax from phase 2 & 3.  These will be the only phases with any affordability.  That tax waiver is expected to be ~$24 Million dollars over the twelve years.  As the analysis above shows that will will boost Green Partners LLC profits over market-rate rent by $150,000 per month for all 12 years.

    Although a community garden requirement was added by the Planning Commission - this was completely removed before Council received the draft agreement.  The claimed reasoning was that Green Partners LLC could not find 5000 contiguous square feet for it.  This despite the Phase 5 being completely unplanned at this time.  Note that per city development code a project of this size is required to have ~150,000 square feet of publicly available open space.   In place of the rejected community garden, Molbak's will create a "demonstration garden" to sell more plants to customers.

     The Green Partners LLC development agreement passed in a 5-2 vote. Same split as the MFTE vote.

Planning Commission Appointment

    Two planning commission seats were up for re-appointment.  In a last minute surprise the applicant running against Vice-Chair Steve Yabrof backed out.  Thus council re-appointed Mr. Yabrof.  

Climate Action Plan

    The final acceptance of the City's initial Climate Action Plan was votes on unanimously.  The report is mostly off-the-shelf statistics and estimates of Woodinville's climate impact and the suggested actions are primarily show-votes to "sign on" and "support" County, State, and Federal programs.  The reason for this report was to complete required actions for receiving grant money (to fund creating the report).