The Kirkland City Council held a study session at 5:30 p.m. and a regular meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, in the City Council Chamber, adjourning at 10:36 p.m. All seven councilmembers were present. The agenda included a parks ballot measure study session, a King County Metro update, a consent calendar, and action on a tax increment area ordinance and multiple transportation project items.
Someone came. I would like to call the orders at the city council meeting of May 6th, 2023. Community members are welcome to join us in person or by telephone. Councilmember Nixon. Here. Councilmember Black. Here. Council Member Curtis. Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Arnold. Here. Mayor Sweet. Here. Thank you. Sorry. City Manager. Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. So tonight we have a star student lineup for you. Uh the purpose of tonight's uh study session is to really share with you all the information that we've had since we last talked about the park ballot measure. So you're gonna get updates on ops designs, uh, resident surveys, the uh statistic valid survey, the last PFEC recommendation. And our goal is to basically provide you all this information and get your thoughts and feedback, but the uh plans for we'll start talking about trade-offs and decision making will be at the June meeting. So I just wanted to make sure that uh people understand there's a whole new study session at the first meeting in June to continue to explore these items. So uh with that as an overview, I'm gonna turn over to our parks and community services director, Lyndon Swangstra. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and City Council. Uh we're pleased to be with you here this evening. I'll introduce to you all the folks that you see sitting here. Uh we have Mary Gardaki, our Parks Planning and Development Manager. She's been the lead for the uh feasibility study. We have John Lloyd, our deputy director, Jason Fylan, our parks manager, Sarah Shellenbarger, our recreation manager, and our communications manager, David Wolbrecht. And I like to claim him. And uh virtually we have Ian Stewart with EMC. He'll be presenting some information for you. Um we do have a full agenda tonight. Um there are 64 slides, and I'm not gonna pretend that they're all really short, but there are four primary subjects. Um community feedback and survey results, then funding mechanism options, expanded facility options, and ballot measure options. We're gonna stop at three um key discussion points, that being the funding mechanism, facility preference, and elements to include in the ballot measure. First, we're gonna start with a little bit of feedback, community feedback, and uh starting with the park board feedback. As you'll recall, Council and Park Board had a joint meeting on April 4th, during which you discussed the potential ballot measure elements. Park Board shared their general um support of the PFEC recommendation uh for the five elements and the at least one recreation and aquatic center. Um they had a little bit of a differing opinion. They would they had asked for consideration of three additional elements, that being enhanced safety and security, synthetic turf multi-purpose sports fields, and a permanent off-leash dog park. At council's request, uh, these items were added to the community survey so that we could gather further input on that. Park Board did also discuss um some concern about three elements that you see listed, uh and then they did also express a preference for the Houghton Park and Ride location. And on that note, I'm gonna hand it over to David, uh, who's gonna talk to you about survey results? Thank you, Lynn, and good evening, Madam Mayor, Council. Um so just briefly I wanted to talk through timeline of how we got here related to the community survey.