Council Retreat - March 2nd 2024

Agenda:

- Chief Myers presents the annual report on crime in Woodinville

- Council to vote on transferring $169K to the affordable housing organizations ARCH

- Councilmember requested agenda item (no details) “Increasing Community Engagement”

- Update on activity in Olympia

Councilmember Evans self-presented the item she requested about "Increasing Community Engagement" then before any discussion could start, made a motion to setup a subcommittee.  This locks out other councilmembers not in her group from having any voice in the debate.  

Councilmember Best-Campbell spoke out against this trend during the meeting: 

https://youtu.be/uyZcRiPGpM0

--- Commentary ---

Having watched this council struggle at making decisions in public it seems they are like children with a new toy:  Subcommittees  

For reference this is the second subcommittee created this calendar year alone.  For comparison in the past ten years there have been seven total subcommittees: three during COVID and one in 2021;  now three by this council majority in 6 months.  They have  discovered this parliamentary trick to block real debate and essentially write the laws without a full debate or public input.  

Subcommittees are especially prone to OPMA violations as the any one of the three members communicating with non-member creates a quorum (voting majority).  Given that both subcommittees are structured with two members that live across the street from other non-members the violations will be trivial to hide from the public.  

Prediction for this "Community Engagement" and the "Short-Term Rental Regulations"  subcommittees created in the past month:   A full decision will return to full council with no explanation as to how they were reached.   Input from other councilmembers will be ignored and the proposal will pass (with minimal debate) without any changed permitted.  The vote will be Evans, Randolph, Arndt, Edwards, and Millman, rubber-stamping their own pre-planned policy. 

Agenda item #7:  Initial version of the city's NERTS draft-EIS was reviewed and councilmembers gave their feedback.  The entire council discussion was only 16 minutes long, see the video at: https://youtu.be/Pv62x1bUFQ8

This letter and all community feedback on the NERTS draft EIS are being collected on OneWoodinville's NERTS EIS page.  A final version should be reviewed at the April 2nd Council meeting allowing one more cycle of improvements before the April 9th deadline.  

Agenda Item #9 Community Grant applications were debated for a full hour.  This was an agenda item to address $25k total city funds that are generally to go to events open to all.  After much push the majority of councilmembers found a way to allocated $10k to the Woodinville Rep theater group - who charge for participation and attendance.  Further councilmember Evans hypocritically argued they couldn't buy a sponsorship to Homeward Pet's 5k fundraiser "that would support their business", while ignoring that the Woodinville Rep will use the money to pay a part time bookkeeper.  

The staff agenda packet: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/woodinville/fcc9f6aad456cfb600d5acbeef96c2740.pdf

Full council meeting video with key timestamps in the description at: https://youtu.be/WMwD8aQpCnk

Public comments included many small businesses from the area being discussed telling their stories and asking the Council to reconsider the plan:  https://youtu.be/P2TtUVjIxl4

Rezone of "General Business" area: Discuss alternatives to show affordable housing capacity for 2044 GMA plan

    Staff presented an overview of the new GMA housing affordability targets (previously discussed in the January 9th meeting).  The Department of Commerce implemented 2023 laws by assigning target numbers of affordable housing units to certain AMI levels.  King County then divided these values per-city based on historical affordability and set targets for showing "capacity".  In this context capacity does not mean affordable units must be produced, only that zoning support the chance for developers to build such units.

    Staff offered five proposals that demonstrate "capacity" in all-or-nothing approaches.  The provided material lacked details on the calculations and offered only extremes implying the entire capacity would be delivered in just one method.  

    Council discussed the options asking many clarifying questions.  One key aspect of the analysis was that existing zones that allow residential construction have an established history of affordable housing creation.  This means that unless council changes the zoning in a substantive way (greatly increasing density or actually requiring affordable unit creation) those areas will not provide more "capacity" to the affordable unit targets.  The staff pushed a new residential zoning for GB to avoid this by claiming the new zone with no history will produce a much higher percentage of affordability than previous residential zones.  Staff was clear this is a paperwork exercise and developers would still decide if they wanted to create affordable units or not. 

At the conclusion of the discussion council sent the matter to the Planning Commission for analysis and to provide a recommendation.

As background the area primarily being discussed for rezone is often referred to as simply "GB" and includes small businesses and light industrial such as: McLendon's Hardware, Homeward Pets, several automotive repair businesses, 522 Taproom, Moltenworks glass studio, a gym, Crown Bees, Cloth Tattoo embroidery, and Jam Academy music school.

Prioritizing projects for the upcoming budget (e.g. 2025-2026)

   Staff provided a brief overview of the Capital Improvement Projects selection processe and how they will be seeking additional Council input in coming meetings.  No specific projects were discussed at this time - just a process overview.

Deferred to a future meeting due to the late hour:  

-- Sign Code update, debate and executive session