The Kirkland City Council convened at 7:30 p.m. on February 6, 2024, following a study session covering Cascade Water Alliance negotiations, the Stores to Shores Greenway, and a decorative pavement markings program. The regular meeting included honors, public comments, a consent calendar, and several business items. Key actions included approval of a temporary moratorium on building permits in the Goat Hill area, acceptance of a petition to halt forest development, direction to install a HAWK pedestrian crossing on 100th Avenue NE, and authorization to explore a new city flag.
Thank you good evening. I'd like to call this to order. City Council meeting of February 6, 2024. Welcome back, everyone. Tonight's meeting is a hybrid meeting. Our Deputy Mayor Arnold is joining us remotely. Community members are welcome to join us either in person or remotely through Zoom or by the telephone. Clerk, will you please call a roll? Councilmember Dimchison. Here. Councilmember Black. Here. Councilmember Sweet. Here. Council Member Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Arnold. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. Thank you. Our study session tonight is three topics. The first is the Cascade Water Alliance Water Supply Negotiations Udate. Second is Stores to Shores Greenway Project Update. Third is decorative pavement markings program briefing. We respect we expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7:30 this evening. First, we'll do Cascade Water Alliance Water Supply Negotiations Update, City Manager. Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. So here to give that update is our interim public works director, Truck Dever. And I'd like to note that we have three complex topics. We're going to try to keep them to half an hour each, so I will be giving warnings when we get to close to the end of each one. So welcome, Truck. Good evening. Mayor Curtis, Deputy Mayor Arnold, and members of the council. So as you all are probably aware, the city receives its water supply as a member of the Cascade Water Alliance. And there have been some important negotiations taking place regarding the future water supply. So what I'm going to do tonight is really to tee up this conversation. And in March, on March 5th, you'll have a representative from Cascade Water Alliance, Chuck Clark, out here to answer more pointed questions and provide further details about this particular negotiation. So the study session tonight, what we're hoping to do is to collect some initial feedback from the council regarding these negotiations, and then transferring that feedback to Cascade Water Alliance to help them prepare for their presentation to you in March. We'll go through just a quick overview of what CWA is, a little bit about the negotiation background, and then a high-level proposal review. So a little bit about the Cascade Water Alliance. There are seven members. So a bit about what's going on and how we got to this point. CWA currently purchases all of its water in blocks from Seattle Public Utilities. And by 2039, we anticipate that block to begin to decline under our current contract. Now in in anticipation of that, CWA and its members purchased the Lake TAPS reservoir down south as a as a strategy to plan for future water supplies. So given this timeline, uh back in July of 2021, uh CWA's board authorized staff to start negotiating and looking at a way to really bridge the demand between now and when they can get lake taps up and running and in service if that's needed. So really what they were looking for in the negotiation objectives was to find a way again to bridge that gap to potentially extend uh our current supplies out 20 years or longer, um, ensuring that there is sufficient time to defer the lake taps development and um you know, by doing so limiting the the rate hikes to consumers, um providing reasonable and predictable costs, just ensuring that there's some flexibility in that contract to accommodate for you know supply and demand into the future, and also looking at more of a regional uh approach to providing water supply.