We’re only three months into the year, and the Liveable Kirkland community is off to a great start. So far this year, community members at our meetups have assembled:

Our members also contributed to purchase nearly $1000 of wish-list items for the safe parking program in Kirkland. 🫂

We've heard from our community that you want to participate in even 💥MORE💥 service projects and work parties. We've got several new community projects to announce soon, plus our 3rd Adopt-A-Road cleanup event scheduled for next month:

Ready to make a visible difference? Liveable Kirkland is heading out for our third litter cleanup, and we’d love your help! We’ve officially adopted two stretches of road—one in North Juanita and one in Kingsgate—and it’s time to give them some TLC 🧹 .

We’ll start at 10a at both sites and will probably finish around noon. Don’t worry about gear; the City of Kirkland provides everything you need (pickers, vests, gloves, and bags). It’s a rewarding way to spend a morning outdoors with neighbors. Many hands make light work!

Sign up here to join the crew

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)

85th St BRT Station and ST3 Update

The City Council received an update on the 85th St. interchange and BRT Station construction project as well as an update on the effort to close Sound Transit 3’s budget gap. Key points include:

Board/Commission Recruitment Updates

The City Clerk presented the timeline of procedure updates and recruitment activities. She noted that in conversations between the meeting memo being published and the actual meeting, Councilmembers expressed that they wanted more time to discuss what exact method is used to rotate out members of the Interview Selection Committee (ISC), and the exact rules and procedures updates.

The City Council agreed to have the ISC selected by lot one more time, with that selection serving as “year 1” of whatever rotation method is chosen at a future date. The City Clerk drew lots and selected Councilmember Prem, Councilmember Black, and Councilmember Falcone as members of the ISC, which the City Council approved.

The City Council also approved the changes to the application form, with all other policy changes deferred to a later date.

School Zone Signs

The City Council received an update on the city’s project to build more flashing beacons for school zones as well as creating more static school zone areas (without a flashing beacon) including near some private schools. See below for a map of the proposed locations for the expanded school zones:

Staff provided two options for building out the new school zones beacons:

City Staff noted that this project is funded by the money collected from fines for speeding in school zones, which means the money is available for both options.

State Legislation Update

City Council received their final update for this year’s state legislative session.

Here is what happened to Kirkland’s priority bills:

Other significant bills this year were:

Legislative Request Memo (LRM): AI Tools for Permitting

Director Weinstein stated that staff sees the potential value in AI permit review tools, but not large value in being early adopters.

Councilmember Prem, who requested the LRM, agrees with wanting tools to be established before Kirkland uses them, because implementation will take time. She highlighted a desire to make sure Kirkland “doesn’t lose sight” of progress in this area.

Councilmember Arnold supports adding a budget item for 2027-28, because progress can be fast. Since Bellevue is working in this area, Kirkland could be a “fast follower” afterwards.

Ultimately, the City Council opted for Option 1 which continues current plans, but this topic will be discussed in the future.

Legislative Request Memo (LRM): AI Tools for Traffic (ITS)

In response to Councilmember Prem’s LRM on incorporating AI into the city’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) staff provided 3 options:

Council went with option 1.

Public Hearing: 85th St Code Updates

The Planning Commission will be holding a public hearing regarding some minor updates to the zoning code of the 85th St Station Area. The amendments proposed by Staff are:

To share your thoughts on this topic, send an email to [email protected]. You can also sign up to give an oral comment during the public hearing via a sign-up sheet at the meeting, or by raising your hand in the Zoom meeting.

Continued Work Program Discussion

Staff will present a new draft of the Planning Work Program that responds to feedback given by Commissioners at the last meeting. Commissioners will then discuss any other changes before voting to recommend the resulting draft to the City Council for adoption.

The changes in this draft are:

Middle Housing was the topic with the most discussion at the previous Commission meeting. Many commissioners supported adding the work item, but the scope wasn’t discussed in detail beyond wanting to implement quick wins based on developer feedback. The scope now proposed by staff is to clarify floor area ratio exemptions, allow cottages to use the allowed 250 sq ft of garage space as living space, and to make it easier to incorporate existing homes into new middle housing projects.

These proposals don’t seem likely to significantly increase building capacity or reduce costs. Virtually all cottages built in Kirkland recently have included garages even when not required, so this will likely continue. Clarifying existing exemptions doesn’t increase capacity, and it’s not clear how many projects would re-use existing homes. It will be interesting to hear what Commissioners have heard from developers and what they recommend.

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!)