The Kirkland City Council met on February 18, 2025, beginning with a study session from 5:30 p.m. to 6:47 p.m. to brief on the proposed King County Metro RapidRide K Line, followed by a regular meeting from 7:30 p.m. to 10:17 p.m. The regular meeting included a proclamation, public comments, approval of the consent calendar, discussion of the 2025-2026 city work program, approval of a 90-day extension of the Parkplace Planned Action Ordinance (O-4897), and an executive session on potential litigation. All votes were unanimous (7-0).
I know. Test it. Okay. Councilmember Sweet can hear us? I can. I would like to call to order the city council meeting of February 18, 2025. Before the roll is called, I would like to note that Councilmember Sweet is joining us remotely for the study session. And she will be in person during the regular meeting. I'd also like to note that Councilmember Tim Chishol is absent from our study session and will be explained by our city attorney. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to take a brief moment to explain that Councilmember Tim Chisholm has recused himself from decisions regarding the K-line and participating in discussions about it. He recently discovered that uh the property that he has a financial that he has a property interest in is one of the properties portions of the property that need to be acquired for the K-line route under its currently proposed alignment. So because of that financial interest, potential financial interest and uh conflict of interest that proposed that you know presents that he's decided under the rules of ethics to uh recuse himself. So that's the explanation. Thank you. City clerk, would you like to call the rule? Councilmember Black. Here. Councilmember Sweet? Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Arnold. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. Our study session tonight is on a briefing on the King County Metro K-Line and upcoming record of support memos. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7 30. I'd like to welcome our very special guest, City Manager. Okay, thank you. So I seem to be a bit of a resident historian here. So before I turn this over to Doug Backantire, the transportation team, I just want to say I personally am really excited that we're here talking about the K-line. So for many people, this is the first time they're really hearing about it. And so I just want to remind folks that this is really the product of over a decade of advocacy by past and present councils to get more transit to more places more often in Kirkland. And this is played out a whole bunch of ways. Some of it has been in the ST3 um ballot measure that Deputy Murray was a huge part of, as well as uh former mayor sweet now, councilmember sweet and others to really try to connect us to the region. Uh connect us to light rail, connect us to the bus rapid transit up four oh five. And we're starting to see the fruits of all those things occur in the next few years. So uh we want to make sure that we highlighted that because the K-line really does connect us to everything, and it's really the product of a whole host of work, not only from our councils, but also our partnership with King County Metro, um and the hard work of our staff, and especially the leadership we've had from uh King County Council Member Claudia Balducci and King County Council Mr Rod Dembowski, as well as our partnership with the county executive Del Constantine over the years. So this is a really critical investment in transit for our city and for the region. So as you saw in the memo, the K-line is every 10 to 15 minutes, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and it really truly connects everything, and you're gonna hear about that um later in the presentation. So uh it's very exciting to be at this point. Um but I also want to acknowledge that some of the investments, particularly the speed and reliability investments that we're gonna talk about later today, do have real impacts to some property owners and to some businesses. Um I want you to know that we understand that both as the city staff and the metro staff, and we're gonna be doing everything we can to minimize the impacts to those businesses and those residents. Um if they can't be avoided, we're gonna do everything we can to appropriately compensate and mitigate those impacts. So uh we take that work very seriously, it's work that still needs to be done. We're gonna try to do it well. Um and finally, I want to say this is a theme that's come up with all the council members as well and has been in past letters that um when the K-line comes into implementation, it will be a when, right, not an if.