It rained, hailed, and snowed yesterday! And then finally turned into a lovely sunny afternoon 😃

Lots of families came out to downtown Kirkland and braved the elements for an hour or two to compete in our scavenger hunt. The fastest time logged was 31 minutes by Team Karaman ⏱, while the average was 65 minutes. Check out some photos from the event below:

We’ve made the photo clues public for anyone who was interested in the scavenger hunt but wasn’t able to make it to the event (or was scared off by the weather). There won’t be stamp cards or prizes of course, but it’s still a fun way to explore downtown 🚶.

Sound Transit is navigating a critical phase in determining what the future of light rail will look like. Following announced cost overruns of around $35 billion for the long-range plan, the agency is reassessing how to deliver the transit system voters approved while facing real financial and logistical challenges. Although Seattle and the Eastside will finally be connected by light rail, decisions will need to be made by Sound Transit Board members concerning the 4-line from Kirkland to Issaquah and system expansion as a whole.

Come learn what is on the table and ask questions to King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci and Redmond Mayor Angela Birney. The event will be a hybrid town hall with a brief presentation from Sound Transit on the Enterprise Initiative, a structured Q&A, and then an open Q&A.

(RSVP requested here)

We’re hosting another cleanup 🧹 event for the roads we’ve adopted in Juanita and Kingsgate! Mark your calendars 📆 , details and sign up coming soon!

Below are some highlighted items from the agenda of the next City Council meeting. You can read the full meeting materials here.

To share your thoughts with the City Council about any of these topics, send an email to [email protected]. You can also sign up to speak during Items from the Audience (in-person or remotely) via this link. Sign-ups open at 7PM on the day of the meeting.

85th St BRT Station and ST3 Update

Council will receive a report on the status of the I-405 / NE 85th Street inline BRT Station and Interchange Project and Sound Transit 3 project delivery. Key topics will include: 

Board/Commission Recruitment Updates

Following city council direction at their recent retreat, Staff is presenting several changes to the procedures for selecting members of Boards and Commissions. The largest change is regarding how the Interview Selection Committee functions. The ISC is responsible for reviewing all applicants for a position (including incumbents before recruitment starts) and picking 3 people per position to be interviewed by the full city council in an open meeting. 

Today, the ISC for each year is picked by a random lot drawing. This had led to some councilmembers serving on the ISC more than others. The new method will establish a 7 year cycle, with each council seat being on the committee 3 times per cycle using the “Fano plane rotation model”. The proposed cycle is:

The Council will consider more changes in the future, such as establishing a Charter for the Planning Commission, standardizing Youth Member requirements, term lengths, and expectations for service.

The City Council will be voting to take an interim action to adopt the above ISC changes and some updates to the application form, with a formal update to policy documents coming later. This is so the process is established in time for the ISC to recommend re-appointments for the April 7th meeting. Recruitment for vacancies will run from April 8th to April 29th.

School Zone Signs

The City Council will receive an update on the city’s School Zone Signing Project which will expand school zone areas, install new flashing beacons, and extend the time where school zone speed limits are in effect. As part of the presentation, staff are asking for council approval to extend a temporary transportation engineer position through 2026 at the cost of ~$101k. Based on Council’s feedback on Tuesday, staff will bring funding requests forward as part of the bi-annual budget process this year.

LRM: AI Tools for Permitting

The Council will discuss a Legislative Request Memo submitted by Councilmember Prem regarding implementing AI tools to speed up the permit review process. 

Option 1, which is the staff recommendation, would be to maintain current permit review processes. However, there is a work item on the Planning Work Program that will look into this further. Timeline would depend on where the city council places it on the schedule.

Option 2 would put a placeholder budget item for implementing an AI tool in the 2027-28 budget. Option 3 would be to engage the eCityGov Alliance on this issue. Kirkland is a founding member of the Alliance, which is a group of Puget Sound cities founded to collaborate on various technologies for cities. Option 4 would be to launch a smaller scope pilot project, soon.

LRM: AI Tools for Traffic (ITS)

At the February 17th, 2026 city council meeting, Council Member Prem requested a Legislative Request Memo (LRM) asking the city to explore using AI with the city’s traffic signal operations to enhance traffic flow and safety. Staff are proposing three options as their response to the LRM:

SB 5184 Implementation

The Planning Commission discussed the Early Action Ordinance for complying with SB 5184 parking requirements. A Public Hearing was held, but no oral comments were made during the meeting. The Commission did receive some written comments before the meeting.

In Staff’s recommendation, the ordinance would have added a new requirement that when a building provides more residential parking than is required, the parking must be made available on a first come first serve basis to all tenants. Parking spaces would be equally available for tenants of market rate and affordable units, but tenants of an affordable unit would pay a rate no higher than 50% of the average market price of parking at the site.

Commissioners Rozmyn, Reusser and Nolan expressed concerns that this policy would lead to building management “playing games” to get around this requirement. Parking spaces are very expensive to build (60 to 100 thousand dollars), so getting 50% less from some spaces would be challenging. It could lead to higher financing costs as well. The Commission voted unanimously to strike this language from the recommendation.

After that edit, the Commission voted unanimously to adopt Option 2 of the proposed Ordinance. This means that Commercial uses in the 85th St Station Area will still have a minimum vehicle parking requirement (matching the rest of the city) but all other uses in the Station Area will not have any vehicle parking requirement.

The City Council is scheduled to adopt the Ordinance at their April 7th meeting. There will be future discussions to clean up the code and discuss possible changes for ADA and bicycle parking. The City’s future Curb Management Plan will also respond to concerns about parking, among other things.

Planning Work Program

Staff presented a new draft of the Planning Work Program that responds to areas where the City Council had clear feedback for changes in project sequencing. Staff then asked for guidance on other topics where there was differences in opinion from the Council, or where they wanted to see more options.

Before the presentation, Troy Schmeil of Sapphire Homes gave comment during Items From the Audience. He stated that despite building middle housing projects in 5 cities, he hasn’t been able to build in Kirkland yet. This is because single-family home developers have outbid him for the land, leading to more large homes. Back in January 2025, developers had expressed concerns that minimum compliance with HB1110 would not be enough in Kirkland. At the time, the City said that further updates would come in 2026. Developers were willing to wait a year, but waiting 3 more is too much. He asked for the City to make a code that incentivizes the outcome they want to see, and to look towards Bellevue and Redmond as an example. Both now have more incentive for middle housing, and recently consolidated from dozens of low density zones to five or less. Chair Rozmyn encouraged Mr. Schmeil (and any other developers listening) to send in specific feedback about standards they would like to be changed.

Commissioners Madeya, Jacobson, Nolan, Bouniol and Rutherford all expressed support for some form of Middle Housing Optimization, and that it should happen sooner than 2028. Commissioners generally agreed on making targeted changes aimed at producing more housing units. No exact changes were discussed, but the Commission hopes to talk to developers and discuss further at their next meeting.

Staff highlighted the low density residential zone consolidation project as a way to streamline the code, permitting, and to facilitate updates for middle housing optimization and transit oriented development. Commissioners Bouniol and Rutherford voiced support, seeing it as a way to make incremental progress towards efficiency and building more homes. Commissioner Rutherford was interested in having zoning more cross-compatible with other cities. Commissioner Jacobson was skeptical that the project will move the needle. The city isn’t planning to create a single zone, and is open to retaining certain “important” differences. Commissioner Jacobson felt that this would lead to it being a bigger project while having less impact. He feels that middle housing updates being delayed for this project would have a negative impact, especially since the city previously aimed for middle housing in 2026.

Commissioner Jacobson also asked for a placeholder project in Q3/Q4 which would save bandwidth for collaborating with developers that come to the city looking for development agreements. This is responding to Councilmember Tymczyszyn saying that the city should prioritize working with developers during the last Council meeting.

The Planning Work Program discussion will continue at the Planning Commission’s next meeting (March 26th). The major topics of discussion will likely be options for SB 6026 compliance and what options for middle housing could look like. Other items may shift in priority order based on Commissioner feedback as well. City Council adoption should follow on April 23rd.

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!)