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Woodinville P&R is in danger
Without Council approval, Mike Millman (council seat #4) has been meeting with King County officials planning for City of Woodinville to buy the P&R. Any reduction in P&R land reduces future transit options. Lack of transparency is undemocratic.
Non-public meetings have been occurring for months (since at least March). Internal emails reveal advancing plans to convert the Park & Ride land into an apartment complex with a bus stop - "transit oriented development".
A Woodinville land purchase does not increase bus service. Actually it significantly risks King County Metro schedulers seeing the site as just a bus-stop. Recent history shows Metro already does not value Woodinville: 2 of 4 recent route closures were in our City.
The Park & Ride at least forces Metro to include Woodinville on some routes. Without this P&R the city will become even more isolated from the transit network.
Spread the word: Woodinville's Park and Ride is Threatened.
Comment from a regular commuter (pseudonym "M")
The Woodinville Park and Ride: An Important Transportation Resource
Situated right next to town center, surrounded by existing housing, and just a 10 minute walk from the new housing developments, the Woodinville Park and Ride is a vital transportation resource for Woodinville residents, visitors, and commuters alike.
As Woodinville embraces growth and town center shifts to a more dense, pedestrian-focused area, congestion along NE 175th St worsens - both residents and visitors deserve an effective transit solution to reduce congestion and equitably serve mobility needs. The Woodinville Park and Ride is strategically located to play that role if invested in properly. For example, pre-pandemic usage data showed that the Woodinville P&R helped remove ~600 vehicles from the road each day. And, of course, this does not account for the nearby riders who arrive by foot.
Despite this, routes like the 931 which carried some 200 riders per day between intra-Woodinville locations and connected them with the most popular destination from Woodinville (Redmond, according to Sound Transit data*) have been permanently cut leaving a patchwork of rush-hour commuter routes like the 311 and 522 to move people locally between the downtown retail area and other parts of Woodinville. At the same time, those same routes face unprecedented highs in over capacity trips and lows in on-time performance. These failures in service push more people to solo commute, adding to the congestion, and further marginalizing those without that option.
Just as Woodinville plans for additional housing capacity to handle growth, the city must also consider and invest in mobility options to complement that growth and the Woodinville Park and Ride is paramount to that plan. Fortunately, and after much fanfare, the P&R is the pivotal component connecting Woodinville to high capacity transit as part of the upcoming Sound Transit BRT project. However, that connection is threatened. Lets speak up and engage the city to prioritize investing in the P&R as part of a transit solution in Woodinville.
*slide 24: https://woodinville.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=11&clip_id=1679&meta_id=160013
Screenshot of King County Metro performance dashboard for the 311 route provided by "M"
How it might go down
Without public discussions the exact plan won't be known until Millman and his block of councilmembers arrange a "surprise" new agenda item.
OneWoodinville has reviewed state law and predictions two "how to" scenarios. In Washington State, government agencies (eg. WSDOT owns P&R land) can not gift/sell land for less than its value.
Woodinville Park & Ride's land value alone is over $15 Million, leaving two possibilities:
- City of Woodinville pays ~$15 Million to buy the land outright
- WSDOT declares the land "surplus" and uses RCW 39.33.015 to dispose of it at below market value.
RCW 39.33.015 has a catch, it only allows property transfers for affordable housing. Meaning the complex would have ZERO commercial/retail producing no sales tax. Also via MFTE the developer would pay ZERO property tax for up to 12 years.
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Regardless of the "how" our city loses current and/or future $$$.
Declining Service
Woodinville has never been considered important to King County Metro.
More the recent route terminations and COVID bus-stop closures are part a long term trend with service only decreasing. Analyzing historical bus schedules OneWoodinville found that over a decade frequency and duration to downtown Seattle got worse, even as Woodinville's population increased. Routes to Bellevue, Redmond, and Duvall all take over an hour and multiple connections.
Metro is particularly under-serving those who chose to live in Timberridge, Beaumont, Chateaux Woods, Greenbrier, Woodinville Heights, etc to be near the P&R for transit.
Why is Millman doing this?
Without public debate his motivation is unknown so the following can only be a guess.
Mike Millman is known to be close friends with developers and builders and has a history of shady meetings related to surprise changes in city policy.
During the past year, in a series of fast-tracked contracts (Aug2022, April2023, and June2023) he pushed the city to give away its ability to enforce new parking or building standards on three huge downtown developments (totaling 1600 future apartments). Those contracts have already cost the City of Woodinville budget more than $6 Million. That is before from any P&R purchase.
So one possibility is that via this P&R deal Millman is setting up for a developer to cash-in on construction and rents (including government subsidies).
In light of this Park & Ride scheme, Mike's opposition to increasing affordability requirements for waived property tax (known as MFTE) seems very suspicious.
Violation(s)
Why did Millman say "we" in that email? Was he claiming to represent the city or city council?
No public vote (or even discussion) about buying the P&R site has occur, but he had these meetings and sent that email. His "we are very interested" and "we should...make a joint proposal to the State" read as speaking for Woodinville's official policy.
Woodinville City Council rules bar councilmembers representing their own opinion as the City's unless a public vote has defined that as official Policy. Without a prior vote his meetings and emails are a violation. This Council and Millman are very familiar with that rule [hear Mike read the rule aloud]
Of course he could claim to have had Council approval informally. Except that would be a breach of Washington State law: the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA). Violations of OPMA assign personal liability plus all attorneys fees to all members taking action (including just debate) on City business outside of a public meeting.
Mike Millman can not set City policy by himself and has clearly violated the rules of the City Council.
The remaining question is did his voting block (James Randolph, Sarah Arndt, and Michelle Evans) also break the OPMA law?
Paraphrasing the classic question: "who knew what, and when?"
The story of the emails
This plan only came to out due to a review of Public Records by OneWoodinville. Through an unrelated request, an email between Mike Millman and King County from March 2023 was disclosed. In that was a discussion of the "successful meeting" about purchasing the Park and Ride and offering Mike Millman help from County Councilmember Sarah Perry.
The emails displayed are from a follow-up request to King County corroborating the previous hint from Woodinville's disclosure.
Want to read the full PRR response yourself?
Millman has a history of failing to release public records, thus a double-check with the County email system was warranted.
Washington State's Public Records Act (PRA) is a Watergate era citizen initiative: RCW 42.56.030
This P&R scheme is proof of that the PRA was a good idea then and remains necessary now.